“Roger!”

On the lower deck, Dimension Breaker Nakatsugawa quickly tapped at his console. Spots at the rear of the silhouette of Fraxinus on the sub monitor flashed blue, and the autonomous units, Yggdrafolium, were launched into space. The armed explosive mines each deployed Territories and stopped, scattered around Goetia.

“Good. Now!” Kotori barked. “Fire convergent magic gun Mistilteinn!”

“Affirmative. Firing convergent magic gun Mistilteinn,” Maria responded, and the low roar of an engine starting up filled the bridge, while a dazzling flash of light filled the screen of the main monitor.

A torrent of magic jetted from the end of Fraxinus and stretched out toward Goetia. The instant before the shot was about to connect, Goetia moved impossibly, unnaturally, to the right and to the rear, and slipped through the Yggdrafolium to escape into space.

“Tch! Still skittering around, huh?” Kotori scowled in annoyance.

Captained by Ellen, Goetia’s most powerful weapon was not the ability to slaughter most enemies with a single blow, nor was it its endurance, nor its impenetrable defenses. It was its impossible mobility, movement the eye even had trouble following. Movement that defied the laws of physics. Unlike other airships, Ellen Mathers controlled it directly with her mind. This was the reason Goetia was unmatched.

Facing Goetia was like a large, ponderous automobile facing off against a chess piece freely moved about by a giant. While Fraxinus’s maneuverability had been largely improved thanks to the rebuild, it still lagged behind Goetia.

Or it would have if they had kept everything the same.

“Kannazuki!” Kotori called.

“Yes, sir,” the tall man standing to one side of her captain’s chair responded. This was Fraxinus’s vice commander, Kyouhei Kannazuki. He was wearing a headset to transmit his brain waves to a Realizer.

“Maria,” Kotori said. “Please shift Fraxinus to manual control.”

“Roger,” Maria replied. “One control Realizer is set aside, the remaining are allocated to magic generation.”

Kannazuki smirked as he touched his headset. “It is unfortunate that I do not remember this myself, but you said that in the pre-revision world, we were handed an exquisitely painful loss, yes? Unforgivable, both the Wizard yonder who injured my commander’s beautiful world tree and my own self for failing to protect it.”

“No need for passionate speeches,” Kotori said, rolling her eyes slightly. “I would appreciate, however, if you could take our revenge for that loss.”

“Of course.” He nodded eagerly. “Ah! But isn’t it the teensiest bit exciting to think that we suffered such humiliation whilst unawares, as if things had been done to us while we were in a coma?”

“Kotori. I must object,” Maria interjected, exasperated. “I do not wish to hand over control of the vessel to this person.”

“I get where you’re coming from,” Kotori replied with a sigh. “It’ll be brief.”

Kannazuki seemed to pay this exchange little mind. Actually, he seemed to take pleasure in it.

“We’re doing this,” Kotori continued. “Show them we’re not the same ship as before.”

“I understand. It shall be as you wish, Commander.” Kannazuki had no sooner replied with a bow than Goetia’s signal abruptly approached on the monitors.

Kannazuki narrowed his eyes slowly. The remaining Yggdrafolium at the rear of the ship fired and deployed to block Goetia’s course.

Given the speed and distance of the attack, any normal ship would have been unable to avoid it. Its only option would have been to switch its Territory to defensive and ride it out.

Any normal ship.

Just as it was on the verge of making contact with the explosive Yggdrafolium, Goetia veered sharply—technically, still facing forward, it shifted on a parallel vector and wove its way through Yggdrafolium to close in on Fraxinus.

“Goetia approaching!” a crew member called.

Now it was Fraxinus’s turn to spin around and charge. With the enemy this close, any normal ship wouldn’t have been able to evade a direct attack.

Any normal ship.

“…!”

The Territories of the two ships were within grazing distance of each other when Kotori felt a strange sense of buoyancy. At the same time, the main monitor image changed with terrifying speed from the view captured by Fraxinus’s front-end camera.

“Whoa?!” A baffled cry rang out on the bridge.

A moment later, the monitor showed Goetia’s profile as it passed through the space where Fraxinus had just been.

Not to be outdone, Fraxinus had carried out a parallel shift in trajectory independent of its thrusters. That strange buoyancy Kotori had felt was the effect of the Territory, which was set to protect the ship from the excessive thrust. Moving the bulk of such a massive ship nearly instantaneously was reckless piloting, and if the Territory hadn’t mitigated the shock, the bridge would have been overflowing with the blood and effluvia of severely shaken crew members.

“Hngah! What visits us?! The screen, it flips!” Kaguya cried from the rear, sounding somehow excited.

Kotori flicked the stick of the Chupa Chups in her mouth up and down as she grinned. “Just one showpiece of our refurbished Fraxinus. We throw up another Territory around only the body of the ship inside the original Territory. Activating both Territories simultaneously gives us more leeway with thrust and momentum,” she said smugly, then shrugged. “Although I’ve never liked that the idea came from the pre-reform Goetia.”

Maria’s voice came over the speakers. “There is no problem, Kotori. There are no patents on the Realizers or the airships. Which means…” The AI paused. “…The one that wins is the real one.”

Her inflectionless voice. The only expression on what could have been called her face was the letters M-A-R-I-A displayed on the sub monitor.

Kotori felt somehow like she could see the transparent figure of a girl smiling mischievously. The corners of her own mouth softened, and she fixed her gaze on Goetia.

“You’re exactly right, Maria,” she said. “Now then, how about we make them really understand who they went and picked a fight with?”

“Roger!” Kannazuki and the rest of the crew called out as one.

However, a single brow on the bridge furrowed—Nia’s.

“Mmm. Uhhh, li’l sis, you sure about this?” she asked. “Like, I’ll give you that this is amazing, but we just sorta copied our enemy and upped our speed. It’s not like we actually blew them out of the technological water, yeah?”

It was a valid view. Kotori turned her eyes toward Nia, and just as she was about to reply, Maria’s voice came over the speakers again.

“Who is this person? Is she the sort who tries to prove she is cool by simply complaining?”

“Nah, that’s not what I’m doing here.”

“You are the sort that always needs to speak to the manager, then. This is the sort of person who turns into a monster parent once they have children. It is embarrassing. Please stop.”

“Huh? Wait, she’s really coming at me,” Nia said, furrowing her brow in bewilderment.

Kotori shrugged. “We can only play the cards we were dealt. That means focusing on Goetia right now.” She pointed the stick of the Chupa Chups in her mouth toward the airship on the monitor.

“…Hmm.” Ellen Mathers let out a short sigh on the bridge of the high-speed ship Goetia.

Actually, “bridge” might not have been accurate. In the center of a space filled with electronic equipment, there was a pod-shaped seat where Ellen sat, several cords snaking out of the pod to connect with her wiring suit.

This was as it should be. Goetia operated in an entirely different way from a normal airship; it could have been better described as an enormous CR unit for Ellen alone.

“That movement…” She narrowed her eyes at the video of the ship’s exterior projected before her eyes. “Did they copy Goetia? I see. It seems the ship is not new in name alone.”

The maneuverability of the Ratatoskr airship Fraxinus far surpassed Ellen’s memory.

And there was another annoyance—the Spirits inside of the vessel.

If she went ahead and destroyed Fraxinus, the Spirits inside would be caught in the cross fire. In the worst case, their Sefirahs would be scattered across the vastness of space.

Thus, Ellen would have to stop the Fraxinus model as she rendered the ship helpless. If Ratatoskr was keeping the Spirits on board because they were counting on this, then they, too, were fairly cynical in their methods.

“Well, that’s quite reasonable.” Ellen did not lose her presence of mind in the slightest. “In the face of the lion, the rabbit has merely become a fox.”

She put Goetia into high gear once again, picturing her body expanding outward through her wiring suit. Then came a sinking sensation, like leaping into an infinite ocean.

She was now one with the platinum airship. The enormous vessel raced through space exactly as she imagined. There was nothing in this world that could keep up with Goetia and Ellen.

“I shall amend my declaration, Fraxinus. Three minutes is more than enough.”

Dancing freely through space, she fired her guns at the enemy airship. Fraxinus was managing her attack for now, it seemed, but given time, the slightest difference in reaction speed would slowly but certainly generate an insurmountable gap.

“Hah,” she sighed.

The stars sparkling in the heavens carved a beautiful arc in her field of view. It was almost like she had wandered into a cluster of meteors.

She moved at dizzying speeds, but her brain perceived the world around her clearly. Her mind was racing; everything else seemed to move in slow motion. It was a transcendent sensation, the distinct feeling that no one in this world could stand shoulder to shoulder with her.

“Amount of magic generated, recharge time, and above all else, that maneuverability. It would indeed seem that this is an improvement over the previous Fraxinus. The most crucial element—strategy—has not changed in any meaningful way. How crude.”

She sniffed in disgust and charged toward Fraxinus as if gliding along on top of the torrent of magic awaiting release.

“I commend you on setting foot in my domain.” She turned her guns on the defenseless ship’s hull. “But those who seek to reach the heavens inevitably have their feathers plucked. Burn with the fire of the gods. Fall, Icarus.”

There was a flash of light as the generated magic recharged to near-critical levels and broke free, stretching out toward Fraxinus.

The Territory protecting the vessel had been dramatically weakened due to the contact with Goetia’s Territory. There was no way Ellen would let an opening like that escape her. At this distance, with this timing, it would be impossible for them to dodge this blow.

However…

“…?”

Ellen gasped.

The moment the blast made contact, Fraxinus shimmered for a beat, and Goetia’s magic bullet shot off to its rear.

“How are they capable of…?” Her eyes widened in shock, and she looked at Fraxinus anew. Well, she tried to.

Fraxinus was nowhere to be found. As if in its place, an incredible shock rocked Goetia.

“Wha—?!” Ellen braced herself to somehow keep from being thrown from her pod as the cockpit violently trembled back and forth. “What is this?!”

A Territory was stretched out across Goetia’s entire exterior surface. Even an asteroid slamming into her shouldn’t have caused such an impact.

The only thing that could damage the airship was an attack imbued with generated magic. And in the present moment, she was up against only one enemy airship.

Yes. Fraxinus. Cloaked in silver flames, every part of the ship shifting and changing, the airship had taken Goetia’s rear with unbelievable speed and attacked.

Just as Ellen realized this, Goetia’s sensors blared in alarm.

A Spirit signal. Rather than magic generated by Realizers from the ship before her eyes, Goetia was detecting the power of Spirits.

“Fraxinus!” Ellen cried out in a rage. She understood everything now, and the world before her was colored red.

“Whoever said there had to be just one trump card?” Kotori wiped away a cold sweat as she looked at the enemy ship shown on the monitor, the high-speed ship that had, for the first time, taken a direct hit from their magic guns, revealing the interior structure of its armor.

She was in her captain’s chair, leaning deep into its cushions. Wires stretched out to electrode-like devices plastered all over her body. To the rear of her seat was a pillar-like device the Spirits pressed their hands against.

“Thanks, gang,” she said. “Pretty sure my Spirit power alone wouldn’t have been enough.”

“It’s okay… I’m glad. I could help.”

“Kah-kah! We are indeed unrivaled when our powers are combined!”

“Assent. No enemies can stand before us.”

The Spirits replied happily, one after the other.

“So, all of our Spirit powers are miiixed together! That means we’re all one! Doesn’t it just make you sooo happy?!”

…One girl, at least, was happy for different reasons.

At any rate, the fact remained that Fraxinus had managed to strike a blow at Goetia, thanks to the help of the Spirits.

System Brot—the new trick up the sleeve of Fraxinus Excelsior.

Similar to the Spirit power gun Gungnir, this system allowed power to be charged up beyond the Territory’s maximum capacity—albeit for a brief time—with the help of the Spirits.

Naturally, Kotori would have preferred not to use it if possible since a certain amount of Spirit power had to flow back from Shido. The Spirits only produced a fixed amount of Spirit power after having it sealed. As a result, the effect was spectacular. They were presently using the power of five Spirits—Kotori, Yoshino, Kaguya, Yuzuru, and Miku.

The word “ship” didn’t quite describe Fraxinus at the moment. If Kotori had to say, it was a bullet with a will of its own, free to race across the sky.

“Pretty sad, huh?” she said. “In terms of Realizer performance, we come out on top at Ratatoskr, although just barely, and yet we have to go and use these kinds of illegal methods.”

It was, in fact, hard to say that they’d truly turned the tables given how wide the gap was between them and their foe.

“Still, this is a win for us. Fall, most powerful Wizard.” Kotori snapped her thumb up and then twisted it downward.

A second shot from Fraxinus’s magic gun pierced Goetia. The other ship’s reaction was delayed, perhaps because of the damage it had incurred.

Then the platinum airship that flaunted the title of “strongest” began plummeting toward the Earth, a stream of black smoke tracing its descent.

“Aaah!” Shido clutched Haniel—now Michael—in both hands like a lance as he raced ahead, flying inside of the Territory.

Bandersnatches had already flooded the area around Mukuro. The Spirit waved Michael as she attacked the mechanical dolls closing in on her with beams of light and meteor showers.

This was good. Ironically, the DEM dolls formed a wall that hid Shido and Tohka. However, the Bandersnatches weren’t their allies. When Shido and Tohka leaped into the brawl, several dolls aggressively charged them.

Tohka danced out ahead of Shido, the greatsword Sandalphon in her hand flashing. “Haah!”

She sliced through the distorted gray human forms before the Bandersnatch attack could reach them.

“Shido,” she cried. “Go!”

“Right!” He threw himself forward onto the path she had opened, charging toward Mukuro, the tip of his key Angel poised to push forward. “Michael…!”

Just as the Angel was about to come into contact with her, her quiet voice rang out in the empty space.

“Lataib.” She had no sooner spoken than a small door opened and swallowed the tip of the Michael Shido had thrust forward.

“Wha—?!” he gasped.

“Did you assume the increase in enemies would allow you to escape from my line of sight?” Mukuro glared at him and brandished Michael. Particles of light popped into existence.

“Shido!” Tohka cried. “Get out of there!”

“Hngh…!” Shido tried to do exactly that, but he was too late.

Mukuro’s Michael fired several beams of light.

“Shido!”

“Hm-hmm?” Mukuro said curiously as an enormous object flew in from the right and blocked her attack.

An armored panel of the airship engaged in battle nearby had come flying all the way over to this battleground. Although it was enveloped by Fraxinus’s Territory, a mere hunk of metal could not defend against a Spirit attack.

It only prevented a direct blow from the light beam. The armor panel kept flying backward with enough momentum to crush Shido.

“Hngah!” he cried.

The panel shuddered, and its advance stopped after it was some distance from Mukuro.

“A-are you okay, Shido?!” Tohka asked. It seemed that she had come after him to stop the panel.

“Y-yeah… Thanks, Tohka.” He patted the panel that had sacrificed itself in the nick of time. “The timing was eerily good, though. I mean, this panel comes flying between me and Mukuro—huh…?”

Just as he started to speak, he stopped. He found something on the backside of the panel.

“…Hm-hmm. That should take care of the smaller details.” Mukuro sighed as she looked out at the space that was filled with a lot more debris than before.

Fragments of the humanoid machines drifted around her, all the remains of those who had turned their hostility on Mukuro and were consequently destroyed.

She reached out a hand to a hunk of metal drifting nearby and scrutinized it.

“A curiously large number of visitors today. Well…”

She casually tossed the doll head away and turned her gaze toward the distance.

“Are they not all simply filled with hubris, then, Shido?”

There was a boy, eyes burning with determination, and a girl standing in front of that boy like a shield.

“Have you come to discard the life that was so recently saved?” she asked, holding up Michael. “Surely you are aware there will be no more convenient happenstances.”

Shido looked to her, eyes brimming with resolve, even as beads of sweat pooled on his forehead. “Like I could run away to save my own skin. I told you; I came to open your heart.”

“And Muku told you. I do not wish to be involved with your hypocrisy,” Mukuro said, rolling her eyes, and spread an arm. “What will you do now? The dolls you attempted to make use of are rubbish now. Such cunning tricks will be ineffective.”

“We’ll see about that. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Shido grinned and brandished the fake Michael high in the air.

The fragments of the dolls hanging in the area responded, shooting toward Mukuro like tiny asteroids.

That wasn’t all.

“Tohka!” Shido called.

“Mm!” the girl responded, and the pair slipped amongst the countless missiles and headed for Mukuro.

Was his strategy to create an opening with the debris and the girl’s attack?

“No…,” Mukuro said, narrowing her eyes, refuting the idea.

“Haaah!” Interrupting Mukuro’s thoughts, the girl swung her sword with a shriek.

Mukuro could tell this blow wasn’t seriously intended to cut through her. The swordsmanship lacked any trace of bloodlust. That much was expected—given how Shido kept going on about being Mukuro’s salvation, she highly doubted his companion would truly intend to slice her in half.

Evading such an attack was a simple matter. Mukuro tightened her grip on Michael.

“…”

Mukuro dodged the blow by a hair, shrinking back just as she was on the verge of catching the blade.

“What?!” The girl fell forward, clearly not expecting Mukuro to dodge the instant before making contact.

Mukuro moved to push the girl further off balance, nearly stepping on her shoulder, and twisted herself around again.

In the next instant, a door opened up in the space behind her, and the tip of Michael flew out from within it.

“Wha—?!”

She heard a bewildered voice from ahead—from where Shido stood. She looked that way to find his face colored with surprise. And just as she’d expected, the tip of Michael in his hands was swallowed up by the door gouged out of empty space.

“I knew it,” Mukuro huffed.

He would distract her with the countless missiles and the girl’s attack, open a door with Michael, and place himself in the space behind Mukuro. This was the obvious and logical means of moving forward if the reproduced Michael possessed the same power as the real Michael. It would, in fact, have been an extremely effective method of attack, taking deft advantage of the Angel’s talents.

Only, however, if the person he was using it on was not the true owner of that Angel who knew its abilities inside and out.

“You were so close,” Mukuro said, and thrust her Michael into the door Shido had opened. “Now, then… This is the end.”

The tip of the key passed through the space twisted by the Angel’s power and closed in on Shido in the distance.

This was the battle’s end. However tenacious Shido may have been, he wouldn’t be able to move if his body were locked.

Just as Michael was about to stab Shido, though, she heard a wild cry.

“Whoo-hoo!”

Shido abruptly shrank and transformed into a small girl with messy hair and a somewhat grumpy look on her face. Clutching her head to escape Mukuro’s attack, she shrieked, “N-now, Shido!”

“Hm-hmm?” Mukuro’s eyes grew wide at this unexpected turn of events. She felt a presence behind her.

“…?”

She turned her gaze rearward and found Shido, Angel in hand.

“Absurd,” she said. “What exactly are you…?”

“Just a passing high school student.” Shido thrust Michael forward. The tip of the key slid into Mukuro’s chest like a knife through warm butter.

When? Why? Where did he come from? These questions swirled around in her mind.

This thinking only lasted a few seconds.

“Lataib!” With this word, Shido twisted his weapon.

“Ah.” Instantly, Mukuro felt something akin to a ray of light shining into the heart that had long been locked up.

“Phew!”

“Haah!”

Origami’s Einherjar and Artemisia’s laser blade clashed over and over, sending magical light scattering into the darkness of space.

“Hngh…” The weight of the sword shot through Origami’s lance, and her arms trembled.

She wasn’t simply being beaten back. In her current form, she had a new way of fighting that had previously been unavailable.

“Metatron!” she cried out, and the group of feathers hovering over her back like wings shot off as if each had its own will. The tips turned toward Artemisia and emitted deadly beams of light in unison.

“Whoopsy!” Artemisia murmured as she neatly twisted her body and dodged the attack.

“I won’t let you get away.” Origami narrowed her eyes sharply and telepathically issued Metatron commands.

About half of the innumerable feathers deployed to Artemisia’s rear, creating a lattice of beams that blocked any escape route. The other half clustered at the tip of the Einherjar Origami held and transformed into something akin to an enormous drill.

“Haah!” Origami cried as Metatron spun at high speed. The light it launched carved a spiral as it closed in on Artemisia.

“Look at you.” Artemisia sneered, and narrowed her eyes. In the next instant, the feather-like parts attached to her backpack opened fire at the concentrated Metatron.

“Ngh!”

The two torrents of light collided spectacularly.

The brief stalemate ended when Artemisia threw the laser blade at Origami’s head.

“Tch!” Scowling, Origami leaned back to dodge.

Artemisia took advantage of the millisecond, whirled around, and used Einherjar’s hilt as a stepping stone to escape from Origami’s siege.

“Phew! That was a bit of a close one.” Artemisia sighed as she got some distance from Origami and used her Territory to pull back the sword she’d thrown. “So, this is the combination of Spirit power and generated magic, hmm? Fascinating. Unfortunately, I don’t really have time to play today. I’ll finish this—”

Her words got stuck in her throat.

Origami looked at her warily, wondering what was going on, then followed the girl’s gaze and saw for herself.

Goetia and its pilot, Ellen Mathers, were plummeting toward the Earth, black smoke streaming behind them.

“Ellen?! That can’t be… Goetia?!” Artemisia was usually relaxed, and yet for the first time, agitation flickered across her face.

“You lost,” Origami said, keeping the tip of her lance pointed at Artemisia, her guard still very much up. “Accept defeat and go.”

“…”

After a moment of silence, Artemisia turned to glare at her.

“…Don’t get the wrong idea,” she said. “It’s true, Ellen being shot down was unexpected, but that doesn’t mean you’ve won. Our objective today is…”

“…” Origami inhaled sharply at this ominous pause.

“…‘take down a Spirit,’ ” Artemisia finished, her gaze shifting to the right.

“Hngh! Metatron!” Origami immediately issued orders to her Angel. But she was too late.

Artemisia fired a beam of magic that slipped past Metatron’s defenses and raced toward Shido and Tohka.

“A-ah…”

The world was blinking in and out. Mukuro was bewildered by the sudden change in her world, the confusion. Her body was overwhelmed by a sensation like blood suddenly flowing to numb extremities.

Confusion. Yes. That was exactly what she was experiencing.

She should not have been able to feel confused. Her heart had been locked up by Michael.

Ah, no, that was why. Indeed. Understanding gradually came to her. The inserted key. Michael. Shido. Shido Itsuka. Lataib. Open. Her heart. The lock on her heart. Her heart, so long sealed away. Now, a torrent of emotion. Flowed. Pouring out. The invisible color she had long been insentient to. Indignation at her heart’s forced opening. Curiosity at his surprising methods. Shido, the boy who had done all this for her sake with no thought of himself—

“Mukuro!”

She heard a voice call out to her. With her dam broken and emotions flooding, she wasn’t sure how to respond. Her feelings and mind were still not connected. Somewhere in the chaos of her mind, though, she was able to piece together the situation she was in from the visual information.

Approach. A beam. An arrow of light aimed squarely at her.

This had to have been what Shido had yelled to her about. But. However. Even so. The violent waves of emotion kept her from moving in any way she knew how. In another second, she would be pierced by that beam of light.

Oh, I’m scared.

Yes. Scared. Pain was scary. Dying was scary. For the first time in a very long time, terror took root in her heart.

However…

“Ngh!”

In the next instant, that terror was tamped down by another emotion.

Shido had thrown his arms around her to protect her from the oncoming beam of light.

“Ah,” she groaned.

“Zafkiel!” Shido cried, and a shield of ice formed at his back. A heartbeat later, a powerful burst of magic slammed into it.

“Gah. Ah!” Shido cried out in anguish. The impromptu ice shield couldn’t absorb such tremendous force all on its own, and the spillover sent him and Mukuro flying.

Mukuro felt a curious sensation. The mysterious warmth around them only a moment earlier vanished, and an invisible force abruptly began to tug on her.

It didn’t take her very long to realize that this was the force of Earth’s gravity. Propelled into the darkness of space by the magic attack, Mukuro and Shido had been pushed out of the mysterious region where Shido had been active.

If they didn’t do something, they would plunge into Earth’s atmosphere. She tried to open a door in space with Michael and escape to safety. But no matter how she concentrated, she couldn’t get her body to do what she wanted.

“Hngh! Raphael! Zafkiel!” Shido called. A wind swirled around them, and a wall of ice formed. He squeezed Mukuro tightly. “It’s okay…Mukuro! I’ll…protect…you!”

Thump, thump. She could feel the pounding of his heart.

“…”

A single shade rose from the rich colors of emotion in her heart.

Before she realized which emotion it was, she and Shido were swallowed up by the blue planet.

Chapter 7

Opened Heart

Violent gunshots and earthshaking explosions rang out in all directions. The footsteps of destruction. Signs of the castle’s fall. Prelude to the end, everything built up crumbling down.

The total destruction of Ratatoskr headquarters by DEM Industries. A group with the same godlike technology free of the framework of human knowledge and reason as Ratatoskr—the Realizer.

Ratatoskr obviously hadn’t opened its gates to this invading force. In fact, the base was equipped with one of the most capable defense systems in the world—a network of several layers of Realizer-powered antiaircraft weapons, and above all else, a thoroughly concealed location thanks to Invisible.

Elliot Woodman believed that the greatest defense measure was not the armed might to repel an attacking enemy, but a location that was undiscoverable in the first place—even for a key stronghold that would not so much as budge regardless of how ferocious the attack.

Ratatoskr was a secret organization, and its mission was not to protect the country, nor was it to pressure rivals with a show of force. Thus, there was no need for its headquarters to be symbolic like the castle of a feudal lord or a nation’s department of defense. In fact, conspicuousness could prove fatal for the organization.

Because of this, few people (even among those within Ratatoskr) knew the location of this base, and only airships with Invisible similarly deployed were permitted to visit it. No intelligence agency in any country had ever discovered the location of the large-scale facility. Ratatoskr’s bitter enemy, DEM Industries, should have been equally oblivious.

Yet this absolute barrier of ignorance had been broken surprisingly easily thanks to the omnipotent Demon King Beelzebub.

“It’s not that I wasn’t apprehensive they’d get to us eventually, but to think that we would be so spectacularly routed! I’d expect nothing less of Ike,” Woodman said quietly, with a slight shrug. He was a middle-aged man with blond hair mixed with gray tied back in a ponytail. Even now, pressed by crisis and danger on all sides, he maintained his usual carefree demeanor.

But this, too, was natural. Woodman was the chairperson of Rounds, Ratatoskr’s ultimate decision-making body. In other words, he was, for all intents and purposes, the head of the organization. In which case, he could not lose his head whatever fresh disaster came his way. Panic in a superior officer clouded judgment and was easily transmitted to his subordinates. Woodman firmly believed that those who sat at the top needed to keep a relaxed smile on their faces right up until the bitter end.

In fact, he had anticipated this assault from DEM Industries. If his former friend and current rival, Isaac Westcott, had gotten a hold of the omnipotent Demon King, Woodman could easily imagine that the very first thing he would seek to learn would be the location of the sealed Spirits and that of the traitor Woodman.

Thus, Woodman moved to this base, which employed the most formidable defense systems of all Ratatoskr facilities.

“You jest. Isaac has not thought that far ahead. He’s a child who can hardly wait to come brag about his new toy to you, his old friend,” said the Nordic blond who stood beside him at the ready. She stared at Woodman with beautiful blue eyes through thin wire-framed glasses.

Karen Mathers. Woodman’s secretary, and younger sister to humanity’s most powerful Wizard, Ellen Mathers. Just like Woodman, she had once been an engineer at DEM, which was why her assessment of Westcott could be so accurate.

“That might very well be,” Woodman agreed with a smile. “Ike hasn’t changed a bit. But that alone’s plenty to worry about. Think about it—he’s an immensely curious boy left to his own devices in a room full of buttons that can launch nuclear warheads.”

“That does send a shiver up my spine. The height of madness.” In contrast to her words, Karen’s expression seemed calm and collected as she dropped her gaze to the portable terminal in one hand. She tapped at it quickly, then lifted her face once more. “I’ve secured an escape route. This way.”

“Mm.” He nodded. “What about the documents?”

“Not an issue. Although if Isaac peeked at them with his toy, we would have to live with that.”

“Good. Shall we go, then? Advise all personnel to evacuate, as well.”

“Yes, sir.” Karen nodded slightly and reached under the desk to press a hidden button. The wall behind the desk opened, and an emergency escape elevator revealed itself.

“If you’ll excuse me.” Karen grabbed the handles of Woodman’s wheelchair and headed to the elevator.

The door closed as they entered, and Karen tapped at the panel built into a wall. Together with the low rumble of a motor, the elevator descended to the basement.

Before long, the vibrations stopped, and the door on the opposite side of the elevator opened. A dimly lit concrete path stretched out ahead of them.

“I have a helicopter waiting at the exit,” Karen said, as she pushed the wheelchair down the hall. “Please bear with me. It isn’t much farther.”

Before long, the clacking of her heels and the echo of the wheelchair tires stopped.

A man in a jet-black suit was blocking the corridor.

“Ah, Elliot. Been a while since we came face-to-face, hmm?” he said, his face stretching into a faint smile.

“…”

Woodman felt a faint twitch through the wheelchair handlebars. Even Karen had trouble keeping herself from reacting. The fact that she contained her distress at this man’s sudden appearance displayed a courage worthy of special mention.

“Mm-hmm. It’s been a dog’s age, Ike.” Woodman narrowed his eyes.

“Ike” had ash-blond hair burnished gold with the passage of time and eyes like stagnant pools. Should the entirety of the world’s corruption coalesce and take shape, perhaps it would look something like this. The heretical thought crossed Woodman’s mind despite its immense disrespect.

With his failing eyesight, Woodman could only perceive the other man as a blur, even with his glasses. His voice, his mannerisms, his unusual air—they all insisted to Woodman that this was indeed his formerly like-minded friend.

“I never dreamed you’d ambush me here,” Woodman said. “I had a number of other fake escape routes in place. Is this also the power of Beelzebub?”

“Ah, no.” Westcott shrugged theatrically, amused. “Unfortunately, one of your Spirits scribbled all over Beelzebub. It was, at best, instinct that led me here. I simply thought you would choose this way.”

“Mm-hmm. It really is hard to best an old friend.”

Woodman and Westcott both chuckled.

“So?” Woodman asked. “What exactly brings you here? For a simple visit, the knock on the door is rather rough.”

“Ah, apologies. It’s nothing so serious. I merely thought to bring you and Karen back to DEM,” Westcott said, as though making casual conversation. In fact, he probably intended for it to be just that. Even if it meant the destruction of an entire organization.

Woodman was not surprised or outraged, however. He grinned. “And what if I told you we’d rather not? Would you kill us?”

“Of course not!” Westcott protested. “There would be no point to me leaving Ellen behind, now, would there? I want to respect your wishes. I don’t intend to force you. But in that case…”

He shrugged, narrowed his eyes, and held out his right hand.

“Beelzebub.”

Instantly, darkness swirled above his palm and took the form of a book.

“Perhaps you’d play a little game?” he asked.

“Mm.” Woodman placed a hand on his beard with a slight groan at the sinister miasma before him.

His opponent was a Demon King. He would have preferred not to go up against it. Given the situation he was in, though, he didn’t have much of a choice.

“…Well, I guess I could,” he said finally. “You’ve never been one to listen anyway.” He sighed quietly and pushed against the armrests of his wheelchair to stand.

A hand grabbed his shoulder from behind. Karen.

“You mustn’t, Elliot,” she insisted.

“I’ll be all right, Karen,” he told her.

“But—”

Woodman removed her hand with a gentle smile and staggered forward. “…I suppose that’s two times left, then,” he murmured, too quiet for anyone else to hear, and came to stand before Westcott.

“Now, then,” he said. “Shall we begin? Come to think of it, Ike, this might be the first time I’ve ever faced you like this.”

“That would be correct, for I am weak.” Westcott laughed as though he had made a joke. “My legs shake from fear standing before you like this, Elliot.”

Woodman smiled and pulled what looked like a pair of golden dog tags out from under his shirt.

The age at which a person becomes old enough to understand the goings-on around them differs from person to person, but going by their earliest memory, it would have been the age of five.

By that time, they were already all alone. This was not a theoretical issue. They weren’t talking philosophically of some abstract idea about how no one understood them. It was simply that by the time they gained an awareness of themselves as a human being, the mother, the father, the siblings—the family that should have been there, was not.

It was hard for them to put into words how it felt when they realized they had nothing that could have been called a family.

Certainly, it was no good feeling, but it was somehow different from simple sorrow or loneliness. Those were feelings that came from having a family and losing it. Those people felt sadness because they had known warmth and now grieved its loss.

However, they had been alone from the start. They could not even qualify this feeling as loneliness. It was a fact of life—children with families were the odd ones—special. They weren’t special, and that was all there was to it. If they had to say, the feeling was more akin to resignation and nihilism.

After a while, they came to be a part of a family for the first time. Of course, there was no blood relation. A couple who wanted a child took a liking to them and said they wanted to take them home.

They didn’t remember exactly what the process had been like. In fact, they had only half listened as someone from the orphanage told them about it, but the child they’d been at the time hadn’t really understood what was being said.

None of that mattered.

Theirs. They had no memories of anything but being alone, and now they had a family for the first time. It was almost too much of a shock, and they were dazed by it for a while.

A father, a mother, and a girl to be their sister. Theirs. Their very own family.

“Hello. As of today, we’re your family.”

The moment they heard those words from the mother, they cried.

“Ah. Ah. Aaah…”

Tears streamed from their eyes like a broken dam, and they felt vibrant color painting their monochromatic world.

People to love them. People they were allowed to love.

They vowed they would love these people—the father, the mother, the sister—for their entire life.

“…Ah.” Shido opened his eyes with a groan. “What was that…?”

He felt like he’d been having a weird dream. Fondly familiar, yet unfamiliar. A very sad but warm dream.

“Mm…” Still half-asleep, he felt something tickle his face and brushed a hand against his cheek.

He found it was wet with tears. And clearly not with just the two or three that might come from a powerful yawn. He’d been crying in his sleep.

“…Why would I—?”

He ran a hand through his hair and looked around. Before too long, his hazy view sharpened into reality. He was in bed. Sterile white walls and ceiling. This was probably the infirmary on Fraxinus.

He sat up slowly and stretched at length, feeling a slight pain in his stiff muscles, and his back cracked quietly.

At that moment, the door to the room swung open, and Kotori came in, followed by the Spirits.

“Coming in,” Kotori said, and then cried out when she saw him sitting up. “Shido!”

“Oh! You’re awake?!” Behind Kotori, Tohka opened her eyes wide in surprise together with the other Spirits.

“Yeah.” He turned toward them with a pained smile. “I just woke up.”

Tohka tilted her head. “Shido, what’s wrong? Are you crying?”

“Oh. No… I just yawned, is all.” It was kind of awkward to admit he’d been crying in his sleep, and he also figured worrying them would do no good.

“…”

Perhaps picking up on something in his attitude, Kotori looked at him dubiously, then sighed. “Well, let’s leave it at that. How are you feeling?”

“Huh? Oh… I think I’m fine.” He was confused by her serious attitude at first, but prompted by her question, the silhouette of his foggy memories abruptly sprang into sharp relief.

Right. Just before he lost consciousness, he’d been plummeting into the atmosphere with Mukuro in his arms and nothing to protect them. He might have had the blessings of many Angels, but it was natural for Kotori to worry.

“Mukuro…” He wrenched himself around, twisting the sheets up across his body. “What happened to Mukuro? Is she okay?!”

Fortunately, he was left with no serious injuries, thanks to the defenses of Zafkiel and Raphael combined with the healing abilities of Camael. Because he’d blacked out before reaching the ground, however, he hadn’t been able to make sure Mukuro was similarly safe.

Kotori’s expression turned troubled. “I don’t know. Mukuro was gone by the time we found you. We considered the obvious possibility that you got separated midair, so we searched a fairly large radius around your landing point, but…”

“You can’t actually mean…,” Shido stared at her anxiously, and Kotori shook her head.

“She might have been in a stupefied state, but Mukuro is a Spirit,” she told him. “And she was wearing an Astral Dress. Plus, considering we found you in one piece, it’s hard to imagine she was hurt too badly. It’s more likely that after landing with you, she regained consciousness and ran off somewhere.”

“I—I guess that makes sense…” He let out a sigh of relief.

“…”

He immediately rethought this and pursed his lips tightly. The fact that Mukuro was all right was indeed news to be glad about. They had no idea where she had run off to, though. They had hit a dead end.

He dropped his gaze to his right hand and clenched it into a tight fist. As if checking for the sensation of the key turning that still remained in his palm. He knew he had pushed the fake Michael into Mukuro’s chest and opened her heart’s lock.

That was just the first step, though. Unlocking her heart was no guarantee that Mukuro had changed how she felt about him. All he’d done was awaken her emotions. In the worst case, she may have become even more hostile.

And in the moment of first contact, the point on which the entire mission depended, he had lost consciousness. While that certainly wasn’t his fault, he nevertheless couldn’t help but contort his face in regret.

“…Sorry, gang. You all worked so hard, and I…,” he said slowly.

The Spirits stared at him in surprise, eyes wide, before they all began to shake their heads vigorously.

“What are you talking about?” Tohka said. “We all know how hard you tried, Shido.”

“Th-that’s right,” Yoshino agreed. “Please don’t…talk like that.”

“You’re really in the dumps, huh? You okay? Wanna touch my boobs? Although there ain’t much to touch! Ha-ha-ha!” Nia said, with a burst of raucous laughter.

Shido had no idea how he was supposed to respond, so he simply smiled awkwardly, a trickle of sweat running down his cheek.

“What? Do you meeean it?!!” Miku, in contrast, began to waggle her fingers excitedly. “What an unbelievable offer! Are you a saaaint?!”

Kotori held up a hand. They were getting far off track. “Miku, quiet.”

“Aw! No faaaair!” Miku pushed her lips forward in a pout.

“Haah, honestly.” Kotori sighed. “Getting down about it’s not going to change anything, Shido. It’s not like we’re back at square one, okay? If you want to pay everyone back for their hard work, first thing you gotta do is start looking forward.”

“Y-yeah. I guess so,” Shido agreed with a wry smile. Kotori was exactly right. He wouldn’t say regret was pointless, but if he couldn’t learn a lesson from this and keep moving, it was nothing more than stagnation. For the sake of everyone who believed in him and helped him, he couldn’t stop—“Ah.”

“What?” Kotori frowned. “Something wrong, Shido?”

“Kotori…,” he said, clenching his hands tightly as another memory came back to him. “What happened to the Ratatoskr base?!”

Right before they flew off to space, the base where Fraxinus was stationed had been attacked by DEM Industries.

Kotori sighed. “…I can’t say it’s unharmed. The damage certainly isn’t minimal. We’ll likely have to abandon the whole thing.”

“H-holy smokes,” he said, a look of fear coming across his face. “What about Mr. Woodman and Karen?”

“…”

Kotori wordlessly dug around in her jacket pocket, pulled out a small terminal, and turned it toward him.

“Huh?” A few seconds later, Woodman’s face was shown on the terminal’s screen. “Mr. Woodman!”

“Ah, Shido,” the older man said. “You’re all right, then. I heard you crashed into the atmosphere with no protection?”

“Y-yeah. I made it somehow. How are you, though?”

“I seem to be all right. Apologies if I caused you to wor— Hrngh!” Woodman cried in anguish.

Shido jumped. “M-Mr. Woodman?”

“In what world is someone who nearly lost an arm and a leg ‘all right’? The only apt description of your condition is ‘beaten to a pulp.’ ”

The voice he heard next was not Woodman’s, but rather the bell-like voice of a woman. Karen. Her tone was humdrum as ever, but there now seemed to be a note of anger about it.

“Please, get into the medical Realizer right away. You are on strict bed rest for the time being.”

Woodman smiled wryly as he turned his gaze back toward Shido. “Apologies. I did wish to speak with you a little longer, but you see how Karen is.”

“O-of course,” he stammered. “That’s fine… But an arm and a leg?”

“Elliot.”

“Yes, yes, I heard you. Don’t yank, Karen.” Woodman disappeared from the screen, and the transmission ended.

Kotori tucked the terminal away with a shrug. “There you have it. They managed to escape.”

“O-oh.” Shido looked at her with concern. “That all sounded real ominous, though.”

“Mm, I’m dying from curiosity myself. But Woodman keeps dodging questions and won’t tell me what happened.” Kotori sighed and crossed her arms, shifting gears. “At any rate, you rest up for now, Shido. We’ll keep looking for Mukuro, and you’ve gotta be up and running when we find her.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said. “Where did she even go?”

“If we knew that, we wouldn’t be busting our butts. With her Michael, she can go anywhere she wants. Maybe she ran off to some deserted corner of space again. Or maybe she’s surprisingly close—” Kotori abruptly cut herself off, and her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates as she stared beyond him.

“Huh? Wh-what, Kotori? Why are—?” He furrowed his brow in confusion before stopping abruptly, just like Kotori. To be more precise, he gasped from utter shock, which forced him to stop speaking.

Most people would react that way when two arms suddenly snaked out from behind and wrap themselves tightly around your shoulders.

His whole body stiffened, and he turned his head. “Huh?” He stared in disbelief at the girl who had suddenly appeared.

“Hmm. You have awakened, then,” she said, grinning slightly. The eyes peeking out from the gaps in her long golden hair still boasted their golden gleam and were now scrunched up in apparent happiness.

His mind was instantly thrown into disarray. Not because the girl had emerged from behind him with absolutely no warning, but because of the girl’s incongruously happy expression.

There was no mistake. This was definitely…

“M-Mukuro?!”

Yes. The Spirit he had faced off against was leaning out of a door that opened into empty space to twine her arms around his shoulders.

“Wha—?!”

“H-how is she here?!”

“Panic. What is the meaning of this?”

The Spirits also cried out in surprise.

“Hm-hmm?” Mukuro glanced at them but quickly turned back to Shido. She stroked her fingers against his cheeks. “Such a hateful boy to keep Muku waiting. However, fine. I shall forgive you. I feel strangely jovial.”

“Hah… Uh… Huh…?” Shido stared blankly.

“Speak. You look as though you were bewitched by a fox. Ho-ho. Would this, then, be ‘love’?” Mukuro asked in a syrupy voice as she booped his nose.

“…?!”

Shido was extremely flustered. How else could he possibly react? This was the Spirit who had mercilessly rained asteroids down upon him the last time he’d seen her. The softening of her attitude—no, this was well beyond the level of softening. She was so different that he would have believed it if he’d been told she was a different person entirely.

Tohka, Kotori, and the others looked similarly shocked.

“Ah.” He had a sudden jolt of insight as to the cause of this new Mukuro. “Could this be…because your heart was unlocked?”

“…!”

The Spirits gasped.

The girl he’d seen in space and the girl here now. In between them was the moment he had opened her heart’s lock.

Her face so richly expressive, she was obviously different from the Spirit he remembered. Had this been her personality before she locked her heart away?

…No, even if that were the case, he felt like she was draping herself over him a little too much.

“M-Mukuro?” he said, sweat beading on his forehead. “How come you’re being so nice and friendly to me? Uh, I mean, it’s not a bad thing. I’m actually glad, but…”

“Hm-hmm?” Her eyes widened curiously for a moment, then: “Is it so strange that Muku would be struck by you, my lord, after you expended such effort to unlock her heart? Who was the impudent man who spoke of saving Muku and swore to make Muku happy from the moment our eyes met?”

“Hnngh…”

That pretty much summed it up. Shido knew the pain and anguish he’d gone through to eventually resolve to save the Spirits. But from Mukuro’s point of view, he must have looked like a playboy who showed up out of nowhere, screaming “I love you.”

“My apologies. I cherish thee and I cannot help but tease.” Mukuro laughed merrily at his troubled expression. “I speak no lie. The instant Muku’s heart was opened, your heartfelt appeals and ceaseless efforts caused a flood of gratitude. That is the truth… However, the more direct reason I feel an affinity for you, well…”

Mukuro twirled a finger as if setting her thoughts into motion, then snapped that finger to a halt.

“Simply because, I suppose.”

“…Oh, come on,” Shido responded with a sigh.

Mukuro didn’t seem to be joking as she continued. “You may attempt to investigate the whys and wherefores of likes and dislikes, but I’ve said just about all there is. Simply because. My lord feels close to Muku.”

“Close?” He cocked his head. Well, it was totally normal to like a person whose opinions and tastes aligned with your own, but what kind of closeness would Mukuro have felt for Shido?

She let out a peal of carefree laughter as he was lost in thought.

“No matter,” she said. “More importantly, you shall fulfill your pledge to me.”

“Pledge?” he parroted.

“Mm.” She nodded firmly. “You told Muku you would make her happy. You would make her your flesh slave. I cannot quite discern what a flesh slave might be, however. You will explain it to me, yes?”

The Spirits all frowned dubiously.

“Wha—?!”

“Shido, is that true?”

“Uh. Um…”

“Whoa… Not cool…”

“N-no!” Shido protested. “That’s a— Okay, maybe it’s not a misunderstanding, but I had a good reason—”

“Hold up.” Kotori stepped forward and stopped him. “You mind, Mukuro?”

“…Hm-hmm?” Mukuro frowned suspiciously and looked at Kotori. “What are you?”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Shido’s little sister, Kotori.”

“Ho-ho? And what business does the little sister have with Muku?”

“Shido’s not in tip-top shape at the moment. He’s still recovering from the damage he took slamming into the ground with you in his arms. He wasn’t lying to you, though. Just give him a little time. Till tomorrow, at least.”

“Hm-hmm.” Mukuro paused thoughtfully, then rubbed her chin as her mouth relaxed happily. “I see, I see. So, he was injured while aiding Muku. ’Tis a shame. I shall wait, then. Tomorrow, yes?”

“Yes!” Kotori said. “Thanks. Big help. If you’d like, you can rest here until—”

“No need.” Mukuro spread out her hands as if to cut Kotori off and untangled the arms that had been wrapped around Shido’s shoulders. She slowly pulled herself up straight. “I accept these circumstances. I look forward to tomorrow with anticipation, my lord.”

She waved a hand and returned to the door open in empty space, smiling. The moment she stood up straight, the door pulled into itself like a whirlpool, leaving only the infirmary wall.

“…”

Silence reigned for a time. Eventually, however, Nia exhaled loudly, like she couldn’t stand the strain any longer.

“Pwaaah! That was freaky, right? That was the Muku?” she half shrieked. “She sure was a whole lot different than y’all said!”

The other Spirits also sighed as the tension dissipated.

“Shock. It is just as Nia says. I had pictured a more unsociable Spirit. And Shido, what exactly is a ‘flesh slave’?”

“Is it because. Shido unlocked her heart? Um. I am. Curious.”

“Hmm. But she was cuuute, wasn’t she? Small, but the curvy parts were cuuurvy. Hee-hee-hee! You love her, too, darling?”

“…Miku, you’re creeping me out. Shido, you’re even creepier.”

“Listen, that was the choice I had to make,” he protested weakly, and everyone glared at him. He sighed helplessly and touched his shoulder, still faintly warm from Mukuro’s embrace, as he looked at his sister. “Kotori.”

“Yeah. Sorry for going ahead and filling your dance card for you.” She averted her eyes apologetically. “Anyway, when we were fixing up Fraxinus, I had them put in new equipment, separate from the medical pods. You’ll be resting up there today.”

“New equipment?” he asked with a slight frown. “How is it different from the pods?”

“You’ll see,” she replied, crossing her arms. “I’ll vouch for the results, though. You’ll be completely recovered by tomorrow.”

“Got it.” He nodded in return, then said, “Thanks, Kotori.”

“Huh?” She stared at him blankly. “Wh-why are you thanking me?”

“It’s just, you bought me this extra night because you were worried about me, right?”

“Wha—?!” Her face nearly burst into flames, and she shook her head hurriedly. “Wh-what are you talking about? We’re obviously not set up to support you properly yet, that’s all!”

“Ho-hooo!” Kaguya cried with a grin.

Nia clicked her tongue in fond exasperation. “Look up tsundere in the dictionary and there’ll be a picture of you, li’l sis.”

“A-anyway! Tomorrow’s the big day! Make sure you’re in top form and raring to go!” Kotori shouted as she snapped a finger out at Shido and left the infirmary.

“Ha-ha!” Shido smiled as he watched her go. “Well, I guess I’ll give this amazing medical equipment a go, then. Oh, that reminds me. She left without telling me where it is.”

He scratched his head, and Miku clapped her hands together.

“Aaah. We’re also allowed to use those facilitiiies. We can show you the way!”

“Oh yeah? Then, please and thank you.”

“Yes, please leave it to uuus. Hee-hee-hee!” Miku chuckled with a pleased air.

“…?” Shido cocked his head curiously to one side.

“…Aah…”

About half an hour later, Shido was soaking in a large bathtub.

Miku and the others had led him to an enormous bathroom.

Apparently, the hot water was infused with Realizer-generated magic, and a simple soak was supposed to help him recover. It was an effective treatment for cuts, scrapes, fatigue, general physical complaints, et cetera, et cetera. The dungeons in role-playing games and the like often had springs where you could recover hit points by bathing—this was the same idea. It was clearly a much more pleasant experience than being put into a medical treatment pod.

He sank into the milky water up to his shoulders as he sighed once again. “This is great. I get why Kotori was acting all high and mighty about it.”

He laughed quietly, stretched again, and looked up at the ceiling through the clouds of steam rising up from the water.

“Tomorrow, huh…,” he muttered.

While he’d gone on several dates with Spirits by now, he still got nervous before them. It was mainly the anxiety of not knowing what kind of danger he’d be in, and the worry about how exactly he was going to get the Spirit to fall for him.

Mukuro had started acting absurdly friendly now that her heart was open, but that didn’t necessarily mean she would meekly let him seal her powers. If she really was a timid, sweet girl without any problems, she wouldn’t have locked her heart with her Angel in the first place.

“…Well, fretting about it’s not going to change anything,” he told himself, and scooped up hot water to splash on his face and ease his tense muscles.

While visualization did have its place as a preparatory tool, what he needed to do right now was get into peak condition for the following day, just as Kotori said. Sure, physically he was fully recovered, but he’d get nowhere if he was feeling off mentally because the stress and anxiety had rendered him unable to sleep.

He made up his mind to stop thinking and fully enjoy the thoroughly restorative bath. He sank down until his mouth was in the water, then burbled at the water’s surface to try and increase the efficacy of the treatment by even the smallest bit.

“…Mm?”

He furrowed his brow. Bubbles that he didn’t make were popping up. When he looked closely, he caught sight of a silhouette in the milky water, almost like an alligator locked onto its prey.

“…”

Shido stared suspiciously, until the silhouette broke the surface with a splash.

“Shido.”

“Gah?!” Stunned, he hit his head against the edge of the tub.

The silhouette held out a hand, expressionless. “Are you okay, Shido?”

“…Origami.” He immediately covered his eyes.

The reason was simple. Origami didn’t have a thing on except rivulets of water.

“All right, I’ll bite…,” he said slowly. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought I would wash your back,” she replied.

“So you dived into the bathtub?”

“Yes.”

“Naked?”

“Public bath etiquette.”

“…It’s been a full ten minutes since I got into the tub, though…”

“Your soaking has generated Shidonium in the water.”

“Shidonium?!” he cried out at the name of the newly discovered element.

Origami moved toward him, the water parting around her. “It must be hard for you to wash in your injured state, Shido. Allow me.”

“N-no! No! I’m fine!” he protested. “Anyway, you’re supposed to wash before you get in the bath!”

“You’re still not clean enough,” she insisted. “The bath being suffused with your scent is proof enough of that.”

“The only people who could smell that are bloodhounds like you and Tohka!” he shrieked.

Origami paid this no mind. She grabbed the hands he had over his eyes and tugged.

“Ah!”

Instantly, he saw plenty of Origami’s pale skin, and he hurriedly squeezed his eyes shut.

He was a healthy teenage boy. It would have been a lie if he said he didn’t want to look at the naked body of a good-looking girl like Origami. He just wasn’t sure what he should do here—he couldn’t help but feel that he would end up in a lot of trouble if he gave in to his urges, like she was a minefield or a carnivorous plant.

Unaware of his misgivings, Origami tightened her grip on his hands. “Allow me,” she said. “I’ll lick—I’ll wash every nook and cranny.”

“Did you just say ‘lick’?!” he shrieked.

“Don’t worry about it. Allow me.”

“Aaah!”

Origami yanked his hands to either side and licked at his neck like a vampire. Shido screamed.

He heard a sudden clatter and whipped his head to the side to see the door to the bathroom flung open and Miku leaping into the tub naked.

“Daaarling!” she cooed. “I came to wash your baaack!”

“…!”

“Aaugpfft!” he cried. “M-Miku?!”

She lifted her glistening wet hair as if she were in a shampoo commercial and smiled as she unabashedly showed herself off.

“Yes! It’s me, yooour Miku! Sorry to keep you waiting! Aaah! Origami’s here, too?! The service here is iiincredible!” Miku squirmed and wriggled with glee as she came closer.

Wordlessly and with a hint of regret, Origami furrowed her brow.

On Miku’s heels, a cluster of new bathers bustled in—the other Spirits. They all had respective bath looks and walked happily (or shyly, depending on the girl) toward Shido, Origami, and Miku.

“Shido! How’s your body?! We came to help!”

“Kah-kah! Do you satisfy yourself with the healing waters? Perhaps I, too, shall take part and give myself to the spring.”

“Translation. Miku said she was coming to wash Shido’s back, so Kaguya endures embarrassment to intervene.”

“I did not say that! And we’ve bathed together before, okay?!”

Tohka, Kaguya, and Yuzuru were wrapped in nothing more than bath towels. The curves of their bodies, normally hidden under their clothes, were sharply highlighted, putting Shido at a loss for where to put his eyes.

He felt it was somehow easier than usual to tell Kaguya and Yuzuru apart, but he figured voicing the thought aloud would get him in trouble. Could this be the so-called power of words?

“Sheesh. It’s party central in here. Don’t forget—Shido’s recovery is the priority.”

“…Why did I get dragged into this? We clearly do not need this many people.”

“Ha-ha-ha! But. A bath all together. Will be fun.”

“That’s right. You and Yoshino can scrub each other, Natsumi!”

“Scrub?! I—I—I could never…”

Appearing next were Kotori, Natsumi, Yoshino, and the puppet Yoshinon, all in colorful swimsuits. Kotori was in a red bikini, Yoshino and Yoshinon were in matching blue one-piece suits, and Natsumi wore a striped suit like a convict.

“Ah, what a sight, so many hotties all together. Eh-heh-heh! I can hardly stand it.”

The last to appear was Nia, completely naked and utterly indifferent about it. Her words, bearing, and behavior were just slightly more reminiscent of an old man than a young woman.

“Whoops!” She slapped the cloth she held in her hand against her backside, and the needle swung all the way to old man.

“Wh-what are you all…?” Shido said, his eyes wide with bewilderment.

A hand stretched out from one side, and in the next instant, something large and soft was pressed against his back.

“Eeah?!” he shrieked.

“Hee-hee-hee! I tooold you, didn’t I?” Miku’s coquettish voice tickled his ear. “We all came to wash your back, daaarling.”

Sweat beaded on his forehead. “N-no, I can do that myself…”

“Oooh, honestly, daaarling! No. You. Can’t! I’ll get you niiice and clean with my sponges.”

“Ah! Uh. Hey!”

Grinning ear to ear, Miku closed in on him. The other Spirits raced over to stop her.

“C-come on, Miku! What are you doing?!”

“Shido! You okay?! Don’t worry, I’ll wash you right now!”

“Dah-da-da-daaah! Nia Honjou to the rescue!”

“Hey, whoa, now you— Aaah!”

Shido didn’t really remember much of what happened that night, but for a while after that, he was troubled by a strange phenomenon—he would begin to shake uncontrollably whenever he saw laundry being knocked around in a washing machine.

“Where is Ike?!” Ellen shamelessly, brazenly yelled the second she stepped into DEM Industries head office.

“E-Executive Leader Mathers?!” the receptionist in the lobby asked, eyes widening in surprise. “What happened to you? You’re injured.”

Ellen clicked her tongue unhappily and grabbed the tie around the receptionist’s neck. “When exactly did I tell you to concern yourself with my physical condition? Answer the question. Where is Ike?”

“Eek! M-Mr. Westcott returned to the building earlier. He’s most likely in the infirmary.”

“Is that right?” Ellen sniffed indignantly and marched across the lobby.

Hearing the commotion, several employees turned suspicious eyes her way. They all averted their gazes deliberately—perhaps they realized the person yelling was Ellen Mathers, executive leader of the second enforcement division.

Ellen was not composed enough to concern herself with courteousness.

It had been about three hours since she had suffered her embarrassing defeat in space and come back down to Earth in the half-wrecked Goetia. Her heart was turned upside down with a variety of emotions: murderous rage toward Fraxinus and its crew for their audacity in handing her the first airship battle loss of her career, frustration with herself for letting her guard down, and…

“Ike! What is the meaning of this? You kept an attack on Ratatoskr from me?!”

…angry indignation at her comrade, Isaac Westcott.

She was partially in a daze as she rode the violent waves of emotion, to the point where she had returned to DEM headquarters before getting her injuries treated. She was holding back the blood and pain with her Territory.

Ellen marched down the hallway, her shoulders squared, until she heard a woman’s voice from behind.

“Ellen!”

There was an extremely limited number of people who could call her name so casually.

“…Artemisia,” she responded without looking back to her.

“I finally found you!” The blond-haired, blue-eyed girl quickened her pace to catch up with Ellen. “I went to the hangar, and they told me you’d come to headquarters. I was so surprised! Are you all right?”

Ellen glanced at her and then scowled in very ill humor. “Please, don’t bother with me. Or did you come to laugh at me?”

“This again?” Artemisia rolled her eyes. “Ah, you are hurt. Here, let me see.”

“…!”

Ellen waved away Artemisia’s hand, annoyed, and walked faster. She opened the door to the infirmary.

“Ike!” she yelled as soon as she was inside.

The medical staff looked her way, stunned. And among them…

“Heyo, Ellen. You’re back so soon. Artemisia, a fine day to you, too. Seems the two of you had an unusually difficult fight out there, hmm?”

…was Isaac Westcott, waving a hand in his usual familiar way.

“…! That was my mistake,” Ellen said, stepping toward him. “You may follow up however you see fit. But Ike, you will explain why you would say nothing to me and go to Elliot—”

But halfway to him, her words and her feet both stopped.

The reason was simple. Westcott was waving at her with an arm missing everything below the elbow.

“Wha—? Ike, you’re—,” she stammered.

“Hmm? Oh.” He dropped his gaze to his neatly severed arm, bone and muscle peeking out from the cross section, as though he’d only just noticed the lower half was missing when Ellen pointed it out. “Really got me this time. Fortunately, we recovered the arm, and the cut’s clean. A medical Realizer will have it reconnected and as good as new by tomorrow.”

“M-Mr. Westcott!” one of his treating physicians said, somewhat panicked. Understandably so. A patient receiving medical treatment was suddenly waving his stump of an arm. Any medical practitioner would have been bewildered.

“Ah, yes. Sorry.” Westcott seemed not to feel an iota of pain as he resubmitted his arm to treatment.

“We’ll begin the regeneration now,” the physician said. “Are you ready?”

“Yes. Please go ahead,” Westcott said, before turning back to Ellen. “So you see, Ellen… My apologies, but perhaps we could talk later? You also look to be injured. Might want to get yourself checked out, too.”

“Ah! Ike!” Ellen was nearly pleading, but Westcott didn’t look back as he stepped into the treatment room.

A white door closed automatically behind him. For a few seconds, Ellen stared at it, stunned. Eventually, however, a note of fierce indignation colored her expression, and she clenched her hand into a fist.

“Er. Um. Executive Leader Mathers?” a medical technician said to her hesitantly. “Would you mind if we took a look?”

There was no hidden malice in these words. Perhaps the tech was simply trying to carry out Westcott’s orders. Either way, the staff were no doubt sincerely concerned about Ellen’s condition.

But in that moment, her heart was just barely maintaining equilibrium with the surface tension of a pool of water, or nitrogen triiodide exploding at the merest touch of a feather. Even the faintest stimulation irritated her, and she took all the emotion in her heart, put it into her clenched fist, and slammed it into the wall.

Bam!

And the infirmary fell silent.

“…Aah!”

Ellen groaned as she clutched her fist, and the silence was broken.

They couldn’t remember how long it lasted exactly, but for a while at least, after they were taken in by their new family, they had been anxious about what to do with all of their feelings.

The fact that they’d been abandoned by the mother who gave birth to them was more than enough to make them feel that they had no value, and the sense of resignation it produced within them became a defensive wall that just barely protected their heart. They were worthless: No wonder their mother had abandoned them.

No one wanted them. That was just the way it was.

This way of thinking allowed them to pretend they hadn’t been jealous of everyone else all this time.

Then one day, a new mother, a new father, and a new sister appeared out of the blue and said they wanted them. They were perplexed. Suddenly, someone wanted their worthless self.

At first, they doubted the family. They thought the family would eventually abandon them, too, no matter what they said.

Yet as time passed, they came to understand they were the only one who thought this way.

Just as they finally realized this, they began to feel a strange distance between themselves and their family—an awkwardness. They had missed the right moment to start calling the father “Dad” and the mother “Mom.”

It had been in May—Mother’s Day.

Clutching the allowance they had no idea how to use, they went to the flower shop by the train station and bought some carnations. That evening, after supper, they handed those flowers to the mother and very tentatively said, “Thanks, Mom.”

The mother was briefly taken aback before tears welled up in her eyes, and she gently hugged them. The sensation was so soft, so warm, so gentle.

Before they knew it, tears were flooding from their own eyes. The father broke into a warm smile and softly stroked their hair. The little sister saw them and the mother crying and ran right at them. “Don’t cry, Mommy! Don’t cry, Big Bro!”

They couldn’t tell if it was a joyous situation or a funny one—but they laughed, tears still staining their cheeks.

“Okay. Are you ready, Shido?”

“…”

“Shido? Are you listening to me?”

“…! Y-yeah. Sorry. Of course.”

Shido lifted his face with a gasp. It was the next day, and Kotori had called him on the bridge of Fraxinus.

“Listen, you…” She sighed and rolled her eyes. “You need to get it together. Don’t you realize who you’re up against today?”

“Ngh. Sorry.” He bowed apologetically.

She furrowed her brow uneasily. “…Body still not one hundred percent?”

“No, no. I’m doing okay there.” He threw his arms out and waved them around to show how perfectly fine he was. He hadn’t meant to make her worry.

While his post-bath memories were a little hazy due to his panic, the effects of the bath were real. At the moment, he was almost in better condition than normal.

“But,” he said slowly, “I had this weird dream.”

“Dream?” Kotori frowned. “What kind of dream?”

“Mm.” He cocked his head to one side. “It was like a super old memory. Or maybe not?”

“…Well, that clears that up,” Kotori retorted. Shido didn’t think it was much of an answer either.

“…A-anyway, I’m okay,” he said, patting his chest. “Raring to go.”

Kotori’s suspicious gaze fell upon him, but she soon shrugged, exasperated. “I’ll take your word for it. Your opponent is Mukuro Hoshimiya. An open heart has softened her attitude, but she’s still an unknown Spirit. Be on your guard.”

“Yeah. I know,” Shido replied, a serious look on his face. Rightly so. He had been almost killed by Mukuro a number of times now. He couldn’t be too cautious.

That said, anxiety and fear weren’t the only emotions he was feeling. He was finally going to talk with the real Mukuro.

When he first met her via a three-dimensional projection, she had firmly rejected him. She didn’t need any sealing. She didn’t need any friends. She was fine so long as she could simply exist unmoved, so she said.

He had struggled at one point with those mechanical words. He thought perhaps he was barking up the wrong tree, that he had no right to intervene if this was what she truly wanted.

Yet if Mukuro—the Mukuro whose heart was unlocked—actually wanted to be a part of the world…

“I’ll leave her weak in the knees, you can count on it.”

This was his desire. He made a fist, strengthening his resolve. Any trace of hesitation in his heart vanished.

Kotori nodded at Kannazuki and the crew of Fraxinus.

He had made his decision, and he had the backup he needed to support him in his mission. They had before them the optimal conditions for a Spirit attack.

There was just one problem.

“…So, Kotori,” he said slowly.

“What?” she asked in response.

“…Where am I gonna meet her?”

“…”

Kotori furrowed her brow and said nothing.

This was really no surprise. The day before, Mukuro had promised to see him today, then vanished into thin air. There were no details exchanged for the rendezvous. She had simply said, “Let’s go on a date tomorrow!” and nothing else.

He pressed a hand to his forehead, troubled. However firm his resolve, there was no point to any of it if he didn’t know where to find her.

“Th-there’s no way she ghosted us with grace, right?” Nailknocker Shiizaki said, scratching her cheek where she sat on the bridge’s lower deck.

“…No.” Analyst Reine Murasame closed groggy eyes and shook her head slowly. “If she were ghosting us, she wouldn’t have shown herself yesterday. We should assume she’ll contact us. Maybe she’ll open a door behind Shin again—”

At that exact moment, the space behind Shido twisted like a vortex, and a black door opened wide.

“Huh?!”

“I-is this…?!”

Kotori and the crew gasped and cried out in surprise.

Shido alone was silent. Not because he wasn’t surprised, but because the door was generated behind him, which rendered him a heartbeat late in noticing this anomalous phenomenon.

“Huh—”

And before he could react, a thin arm stretched out from the door, pulled him by the shoulders, and dragged him backward.

“Uh. Aaah?!” he shouted.

“Shido?!”

Kotori’s cry ringing in his ears, his world faded to black.

A second later, a clear blue sky and…

“Hm-hmm. It’s time, my lord.”

…Mukuro crouching next to him filled his field of view.

“M-Mukuro?” he said, opening his eyes wide in amazement.

“Mm.” Mukuro grinned. “What now, Shido?”

“Oh, uh, where are we?” he asked as he slowly sat up and let his gaze wander, checking out the area around them. “Wh—?” He gasped.

It was only natural. He was lying on a road paved in asphalt…

“…Huh? Those kids…”

“Wait, what? Are they cosplaying?”

“No, but did you see that…hole there just now?”

“Mommy! Why is that boy lying on the road?”

…with people coming and going and chattering.

He knew this street. It was a corner of Tengu he sometimes passed through.

“…! Crap…!” He gasped. The Spirits’ existence was a secret, and the consensus was that the general populace was better off not knowing about them. Not to mention, if Mukuro did anything conspicuous, the Self-Defense Forces’ AST or DEM Industries might sniff them out. He hurriedly leaped to his feet and grabbed her hand. “M-Mukuro, let’s go!”

“Whither?” she asked.

“S-somewhere without people!” he cried.

“Hm-hmm.” She nodded slightly and started to raise Michael, the enormous key-shaped staff in her hand.

“S-stop!” he yelped. “What are you doing?!”

“Hmm? We shall travel to a space without people, yes? Then, Michael—”

“No! J-just come with me!”

“Ooh, how daring! Using force?”

He grabbed her hand and pulled her into an alley. She followed him without resistance, smiling merrily.

The pedestrians in the area looked at them curiously but soon returned to their own doings. They may have been interested if Shido and Mukuro were being funny, but given that they were just weird, the passersby likely wanted to avoid getting too involved. Shido was so grateful for the general disinterest of city dwellers.

“Phew! We should be okay now.” He finally let out a sigh of relief in the deserted alley. At the same time, he heard a burst of static in his right ear and the voice of Kotori aboard Fraxinus.

“Aah, we’re connected! Shido, you okay?!”

“Y-yeah. More or less,” he whispered to keep Mukuro from hearing. He was glad he’d already been wearing his communication earpiece in preparation for Mukuro.

“I never imagined she’d up and yank you away like that,” Kotori said, a note of relief in her voice. “Caught us off guard. Good thing we had your earpiece in. It’s also a relief that you didn’t go too far away. We would’ve had a real time of it sending drone cameras if she’d taken you to the other side of the Earth.”

Shido smiled faintly. She was right; at the mercy of Mukuro’s whims, he could have been abducted somewhere much worse. He was a bit surprised to still be in Tengu, but it may actually have been a decent place to end up.

“And some good news. We went ahead and checked your likability with Mukuro right off the bat. Compared with before, when it didn’t twitch from absolute zero, we saw some quiet variations.”

“S-so then…”

“Yep. You really did manage to open her heart. Keep it up, and we’ll hit a value that’ll be more than enough for you to seal her Spirit power.”

“Yeah?” he said. “That’s great.”

Mukuro peered at him curiously. “You mutter to yourself. What do you say?”

“Ah! O-oh… Sorry.” He jumped and turned back to her.

She nodded, satisfied, and continued. “Now, how do you intend to make Muku happy, my lord?”

“Um,” he said slowly. “Well, you know, all kinds of stuff…”

“Then you will show them all to me. Shall we hurry?” she said and started out as if to lead him. But her own long hair tangled around her feet, and she nearly fell. “Mm?”

“Whoops!” He reached out to steady her. “You okay?”

“It has been some time since I was on this planet. Mm-mmm. It is slightly dirtied now,” Mukuro said as she held up a lock of hair and tenderly brushed off the dirt.

This was indeed Earth, an environment different from the outer space where Mukuro had spent so much of her time, a world atop of dirt bound by gravity. And while her long, long hair was partially tied up in buns on either side of her head, enough of it trailed down to impede her walking.

“Wherever we’re going, it might be best to do something about that hair first,” Shido said. “Hey, how about we give you a little trim—?”

“No,” Mukuro replied flatly, her gaze sharpening. “I do not wish my hair to be cut. You are indeed special to me, but this I will not allow.”

“…?!” He shuddered.

This, too, was natural. Mukuro’s cheerful demeanor had, in an instant, changed into a fiery one.

He heard an alarm over his earpiece, a familiar warning that blasted when a Spirit’s mood took a dark turn.

“Shido! Say something!” Kotori cried in a panic, and he wrestled with how to pacify her.

But a few moments later, Mukuro herself gasped as though she had realized the sharp edge in her words. “Apologies. I cannot recall the reason…but I do not wish it.”

The alarm blaring in his ear stopped, and he let out a sigh of relief.

“Y-yeah? I think I’m the one who should be apologizing, though,” he said, glancing at her hair. It was fantastically blond with soft waves rippling through it. It was only natural she would prize it. He got that. They say a girl’s hair is her life. He’d maybe been a little hasty in suggesting she cut it.

That being said, like this, she risked getting her precious hair dirty walking through town.

“It’s gotta be hard to walk like that,” he said, peering at her tentatively. “Wh-what if… Would you hate having it tied up?”

“Hm-hmm.” Mukuro stroked her hair and shook her head slightly. “…So long as there is no cutting, that would be acceptable. What shall be done?”

“Um. Well,” Shido stammered, then heard Kotori’s voice in his right ear.

“Shido, we’ve got options.”

Three choices were displayed on the main monitor on the bridge of Fraxinus.

“All hands! Choices!” Kotori commanded, and the crew on the lower deck of the bridge all tapped at their consoles in unison to make their selections.

In mere seconds, the aggregate results were displayed.

“Two comes out on top, followed by one, hmm?” she said. “Who picked three?”

“Sir! I did, sir!” On standby next to her captain’s chair, Kannazuki threw his arm into the air with gusto.

“I do like an honest subordinate,” she said approvingly. “As a reward, I’ll let you sit on an air chair for thirty minutes.”

“What?! Do you mean it?!” Delight beamed across Kannazuki’s face. He crouched down, bent his knees at a ninety-degree angle, and froze in place.

The rest of the crew watched with lifeless smiles.

“Honestly. What were you thinking?” Kotori shook her head, exasperated. “Oh, hey, Maria?”

“Yes? What is it, Kotori?” When Kotori called her name, the letters M-A-R-I-A were displayed on the sub monitors, and the voice of the Fraxinus’s AI came from the speakers.

“You came up these options, yes?”

“That does depend on how you define the personality and thought of artificial intelligence, but because the options are automatically derived from the Spirit values and the data collected up to this point, it is not the case that I deliberately and purposefully created them. Although it is possible for me to infer and explain, in a fashion, the intention behind the choices.”

“…Oh yeah?” Kotori raised a skeptical eyebrow. “This is something I’ve been curious about for a while now. There’s always one risky or over-the-top option, isn’t there?”

“I see your concern. Looking at the patterns thus far, I would assume that the selection is based on the Spirit’s emotional index and composed of ‘likely winner,’ ‘antagonism,’ and ‘long shot.’ ”

“Long shot?” Kotori couldn’t help but smile at this all-too-human expression. It sounded like Maria was suddenly talking about gambling.

“Yes. There would be no meaning in having options if they resembled each other too closely.”

“I can get behind that. And these adventurous choices have saved our bacon before. But isn’t this one a bit too…creepy?”

“It’s all right. You might lose once, but if you double down, a single win can clean the slate.”

“None of you are using Maria’s calculation functions to predict horse races, right?!” Kotori shouted. She couldn’t help but feel like the machine had learned some unnecessary concepts.

She was pretty sure she saw more than a few shoulders jump up among her crew members, but she couldn’t tell if this was because they were simply surprised by her yelling, or if they had some questionable dealings with the AI. She made a note to herself to check the control logs later.

Tmp, tmp, tmp. Tapping came over the speakers. Shido was asking for an answer.

“Ah, sorry,” she said. “It’s two, Shido. Leaving it to a professional’s not a bad idea, but since this is an unsealed Spirit, it’s best if you handle this yourself.”

Shido nodded on the monitor to indicate his understanding.

“Okay then, Mukuro,” Shido said, following Fraxinus’s instructions. “How about we stop by my house? We’ve got a brush and hairpins and things there.”

“You speak of your abode?” Mukuro’s eyes grew wide, as if this was unexpected. “Oh, hmm. Interesting. Excellent. I entrust myself to you. Do as you wish.”

“Ha-ha! Thank you. I’m in your debt.” He shrugged and then bowed respectfully. He wasn’t sure what it was, but Mukuro’s stilted and old-fashioned way of speaking made him feel like he was her servant or retainer.

“Ha-ha-ha!” Mukuro said with a carefree laugh, perhaps aware of her own habits, perhaps not. “Well ho, my lord, you do speak curiously.”

“…Y-yeah.” Shido gave her a pained smile as he scratched his cheek.

“In any case, how do we reach this abode?” she asked.

Shido groaned as he peeked at the main road through a gap in the buildings.

Fortunately, they were in Tengu City. They could make it to his house in about twenty minutes on foot. But walking with such a remarkable girl in tow increased the difficulty of this mission exponentially.

While he struggled to figure out a way forward, Mukuro tilted her head.

“What troubles you?” she asked. “You simply return to your dwelling.”

“Mm. True, but…,” he started.

Mukuro put a hand on his shoulder, then stabbed her staff into empty space and twisted it sharply. “Michael. Lataib.”

Instantly, a door opened, large enough for a person to pass through.

“Wha—?” He gaped in amazement while she leaped into it without a moment’s hesitation.

A lone hand came back out of the door and beckoned him to follow.

“H-hey!” he cried.

“Shido, go after her! A drone will go with you!” Kotori said over the communication device in his ear.

He ran his hands through his hair anxiously and made up his mind. He threw himself into the door.

His field of view went dark for a moment, and then he saw Mukuro looking around at a familiar interior with fascination. Once he’d made it all the way through, the door shrank in on itself and disappeared.

“Hm-hmm,” Mukuro said curiously. “So, this is thy dwelling? How lovely.”

“Mukuro…”

“Mm?” She turned to look at him. “Is something the matter?”

“…No. To be honest, that was really helpful,” he said. “But maybe hold off on using your Angel in public?”

She stared at him curiously for a moment but eventually nodded. “Certainly.” She waved her hand, and Michael disappeared. “Now, what would you do, my lord?”

“Right. C’mere a minute.” He stood her in front of a mirror. “Okay. Sit right here.”

“Mm.” She obediently lowered herself onto the stool.

Shido untied the buns in her hair, picked up a brush, and started carefully pulling it through her golden hair.

“…Hm-hmm.” She twisted around toward him, and he stopped brushing.

“Oh, sorry,” he said. “Was I pulling?”

“It merely tickled. Pay it no mind. Continue.” Mukuro shook her head slightly as if to say more. The movement was adorable somehow, and Shido smiled to himself as he started again.

“How should we do it, then? We could do a whole updo. Or pigtails might work. Any requests?”

“Hm-hmm.” She stared into space thoughtfully. “I wish for you to assemble it into a style incapable of becoming disheveled.”

Shido furrowed his brow and sighed before combing her hair up into the buns she’d been wearing. He felt like this hairstyle was her trademark. He plaited the rest of her hair into braids.

It was a slightly complicated operation, but he had helped with Kotori’s hair for ages, so he was no stranger to braids. Before long, Mukuro’s blond hair was neatly pulled back into one long plait.

“Ho-ho!” she cried. “You are quite adept at this!”

“You do me great honor with your words.” Shido bowed respectfully. “I didn’t really do anything about the length, though. Maybe it’ll still be hard to walk?”

“No matter. Hup!” Mukuro said, and whirled her head around in the sharp, precise manner of a Kabuki actor. Her hair spun around with it to neatly wind itself about her neck.

Oh, that worked. This way, the length would indeed not be a problem.

He heard a cheery buzzer in his ear.

“Nice going, Shido,” Kotori said. “Your likability’s going up so smoothly, I can hardly believe she’s the same person. No need for sneak attacks, let’s go ahead and storm the front gates. Her hair’s done up and all. How about you go out on the town?”

“Roger… Oops!” Shido replied quietly and gave Mukuro a once-over. She would definitely stand out in her Astral Dress with the shining constellation design. “Oh, I know. I’m just gonna borrow some clothes, Kotori.”

“Huh? Oh, the Astral Dress, huh? Sure, go ahead.”

He went to Kotori’s room, picked out an outfit that looked all right, and returned to Mukuro.

“Hey, so I was thinking we could go out,” he said casually. “But your Astral Dress’s really conspicuous, so maybe you could wear this.”

“Ah, is that so?” Mukuro lifted her face and stood up from her stool.

When she clapped her hands, the Astral Dress covering her body melted away into particles of light and vanished into thin air, generously revealing her pale, naked body. The chest that had been restrained by her Astral Dress was now freed and jiggled like overfull water balloons.

“M-M-Mukuro?!”

“Why do you panic so? I must change my outfit. Give me the garments.” Despite the fact that she was wearing nothing but her birthday suit, she threw her head back with no sign of embarrassment and took Kotori’s clothes from his hand. She scrutinized the outfit as if to check its constitution before slipping her arms through the sleeves.

However…

“…Hm-hmm?” Mukuro frowned as she tried to button the blouse up. It didn’t appear to fit. “This will not work. It pains my chest.”

“…”

The silence over Shido’s earpiece was deafening. Deafening silence was a strange turn of phrase, but that was precisely how Shido perceived it. Kotori sounded as though she were desperately pushing down feelings she could not voice.

“You don’t have to wear that specific one. I mean, you can recreate clothes you see with your Spirit power, right?”

“Ah. Was that your intention?” Mukuro took off the outfit, tossed it aside, and clapped her hands once more.

Her body shone, and the hazy light gradually took the form of clothing. The design was the same as Kotori’s outfit, but the size was perfectly fitted to Mukuro’s body.

“Mm. This is commodious,” Mukuro said, pleased, and smiled brightly.

Shido heard a dissatisfied voice over his earpiece.

“…Huh? You could’ve just done that from the get-go. Why did she have to try on my clothes? Huh?”

“Ah. Ha-ha-ha,” he laughed weakly. “A-anyway, you wanna get going, Mukuro?”

“Mm. Let’s.” Mukuro nodded agreeably and held out her hand like a princess making a request of her escort.

“Um. So this is…” Shido thought hard for an instant before bowing like a butler and taking her hand. “Shall we away, my lady?”

“Mm. Hm-hmm! ” An excessively delighted smile rose to her face.

Seeing her so happy felt good. Shido took her hand and stepped out of the Itsuka house and into the city.

For the next six hours or so, with the support of Ratatoskr, they wandered around the city of Tengu. Their date was a standard one—a stroll through the city stopping at shops that interested them, dinner, stepping into an art gallery that caught Mukuro’s attention.

He learned that she tended toward quiet places over busy hot spots, she liked Western food over Japanese, and she preferred more traditional ornaments and accessories. He asked her what sort of thing she would like to get in an accessory shop, and she pointed to the shop across from them, at a fan with a metallic lacquer. Shido was surprised. She had a young face, but her tastes were rather refined.

The clock struck seven, and the hasty winter sun hid itself behind the buildings. The sky was streaked with gradations of darkness.

Having had their fill of standard date ideas, Shido and Mukuro sat down together on a bench in a deserted park. Waving the metallic fan they’d bought earlier, Mukuro hummed in the highest of spirits.

“Looking good,” Kotori said. “Mukuro’s really opened up today, Shido. You’re almost there. Just another push to sealability. Why were we even working so hard before? Keep your guard up and push on to lock this down.”

“R-right…,” he agreed hesitantly as he watched the innocently excited Mukuro out of the corner of his eye.

Kotori must have noticed something going on with him. “What? Something wrong?” she asked curiously.

“No.” He shook his head slightly. “I mean, Mukuro’s having a great time, and if your likability and her mood are both going up, that’s all that counts. I’m a little worried, though.”

“About what?”

“Why did she lock her own heart? Why was she out in space alone?”

It had been weighing on Shido’s mind.

Mukuro was currently enjoying herself a great deal, and from what Kotori was telling him, her indices were all moving in a favorable direction. He’d been with her the whole day, and he hadn’t been able to find anything particularly out of sorts. In fact, as far as Spirits went, she was among the straightforward sort.

That was precisely why he couldn’t fathom a reason behind locking her own heart.

Feeling nothing, thinking nothing, believing nothing. Cutting off all connection with the world, simply drifting like a stone. What events led her to choose that?

Shido couldn’t help but feel Mukuro had a face he hadn’t yet seen.

“Okay, true,” Kotori conceded. “What’s important isn’t the old Mukuro, but the girl in front of you now, right? That question’s not a reason to let this chance to seal her power slip away.”

“Yeah.” He nodded slowly. “You’re right.”

“Hee-hee-hee!” Mukuro laughed. “I apprehend this now. You have indeed spoken, my lord. This was a pleasurable day.”

“Ha-ha… I’m just glad you enjoyed the day.”

“Why, yes. I shall thank thee. If Muku had remained thusly in the sky, she would not have tasted any of these pleasures. And you are the one who went to these lengths for me,” Mukuro said, and narrowed her eyes daringly.

“Huh?” Shido felt like she saw each of his worries. He threw his head back, as though seeking escape. “Wh-what?”

“Dost thou fancy Muku?” The adorable words she spoke with a playful smile were contrary to what he had thought she was going to say.

He laughed. “…I like you, Mukuro. I want to protect you.”

“Hm-hmm. I see, I see. So, you favor Muku. Hm-hmm.” She hid her mouth behind the fan and smiled gleefully as she kicked her legs back and forth. Then she flung herself forward, peered at Shido, and moved her flower-petal lips. “Muku also takes favor with thee. I like you, Shido.”

“…! O-oh…” He gasped, his heart beating faster. For some reason, the look on her face was strangely bewitching despite her small stature.

“That is not the response,” she demanded. “Once more.”

“Huh? Oh. I—I like you, too, Mukuro,” he said as prompted, and she smiled with satisfaction.

“Mm-heh-heh. If you would speak even those words unto me, then I have no other choice in the matter. Excellent. I shall consider the petition you made in space.”

“Really?!”

“Mm. Although the potential loss of my Spirit powers does cause some consternation, if you will protect Muku in return, then perhaps it would not be a terrible exchange,” Mukuro said, twirling her finger around in the air.

Shido felt the tight thread of tension around his heart loosen the slightest bit. He was indeed concerned about Mukuro’s past. But like Kotori said, the most important thing was Mukuro in the present. If she agreed to the sealing of her power, then he couldn’t ask for anything more.

The moment he started to sigh with relief, Mukuro continued speaking in the highest of spirits.

“There is, naturally, a condition. So long as you are pledged to Muku, you must vow to have no contact with the maidens in that room yesterday.”

“Sure, I— Wait, what?” She laid out the condition so naturally that Shido thoughtlessly started to agree, then stopped himself, tilting his head. “Huh? Wh-why?”

“Why does this surprise you so? Is this not natural? You like Muku, yes? And Muku also cares for thee. In which case, you may do as you wish with me. Would it not be strange for other maidens to intervene?” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. In fact, she no doubt thought it was. It wasn’t like he couldn’t understand where she was coming from.

This way of thinking was more along the lines of what a person could expect from a marital relationship, though. For Shido, who had sealed the powers of the Spirits each time one appeared, this condition was a potentially fatal blow.

“Mm?” She looked at him with clear eyes. “Has Muku spoken strangely?”

“…Oh. Um. It’s just…” His eyes darted around. Given he was the only one with the power to seal the Spirits, he had to keep doing what he did, but when it was framed like that, he started to feel like he was being incredibly unfaithful to the Spirits.

“C’mon, Shido,” Kotori said suddenly in his ear. “How come you’re letting her win this?”

“S-sorry,” he stammered. “I’m having pangs of guilt…”

“Pang later! You know that condition is a nonstarter. And if you lie and accept it just to seal her power, the backlash later will be scary. We’ll just have to make her understand that sealing and marriage are different. Persuade her somehow.”

“…I guess.” Shido nodded slightly, took a moment to breathe, and then turned back to Mukuro. “So, Mukuro. Listen. I can’t do that.”

“Mm?” She arched an eyebrow. “Are you an adulterer?”

“…”

“Quit letting her get to you,” Kotori said, exasperated.

He cleared his throat to shift mental gears and continued. “Like I told you, I want to save all the Spirits. So…if another Spirit like you shows up in the future, I’ll have to seal her powers, too. I love all the Spirits I’ve sealed so far just as much as I love you, Mukuro. It’d make me really happy if you could be friends with them.”

“…Hm-hmm.” Mukuro fell silent, a puzzled look on her face. After a few seconds, she clapped her hands together. “I see, I see. Is that the case? You are so kind, my lord.”

“Huh?” His eyes widened. This was not the reaction he had expected.

She bobbed her head up and down like she had convinced herself of something. “Understood. No need to speak any further. You may leave this matter to Muku.”

She nimbly got to her feet, snapped her beautiful metallic fan shut, and brought it neatly to her lips. “Now, then. This is where we part ways this eve. We will meet again before long, my lord.” She abruptly turned and ran off down the dimly lit street.

“Mukuro?!” He hurried to chase after her, but her small shadow had already disappeared. She had probably used Michael to whisk herself off someplace.

“What exactly is she going to do…?” He stared blankly, standing stock-still on the road illuminated by the uncertain streetlamp, bewildered by her mysterious parting words.

Chapter 8

Closed Memories

“Hmm, hmm, hmm-mm, mm. ”

In the middle of the night—actually, to be more precise, among a sea of stars, Mukuro Hoshimiya drifted along, her hair floating around her. Above was the endless black of space; below her, the enormous blue planet.

After parting with Shido, she had used Michael to open a door and return to this dead place. It wasn’t that she hadn’t enjoyed Shido or being on the ground. In fact, the city he had shown her was quite the wonderful place. She simply decided that this place—a place with absolutely no ambient noise—was more ideal for being alone with her thoughts.

“But…,” Mukuro murmured to herself, and blinked rapidly as she turned her gaze down toward Earth. “ ’Tis lovely. To have such a vision before my eyes at all times and to feel nothing of it… Muku has certainly been wasteful.”

She rubbed her chest in the place where Shido had inserted the fake Michael the other day.

“Hee-hee! I must be grateful to Shido.”

She stretched out her limbs and threw her head back. It felt good to move her body. And it wasn’t just that. The scenery, a sigh, the light of the sun, the taste of a meal—she was feeling all of these external stimuli for the first time in so long—they were all so delightful, she could hardly stand it. This was exactly—

“…Hmmm?” She cocked her head. Why would she have taken a key to her own heart despite these many wonders in this world?

“Mmm?” She crossed her arms and legs, slowly spinning around as she wrestled with the question, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t remember. Eventually, she sighed in resignation.

“Well. No matter.”

Right now, she had something much more important in her life.

Shido. Shido Itsuka. The boy who had unlocked her heart and given her a world of rainbows. She loved him, and he loved her back.

“Ah, hmm, how gratifying. Has mutual love always been such rapture?”

Simply thinking about Shido made her heart soar; she felt truly blissful. She understood now. Shido had been exactly right.

There was just one small problem. Her beloved was too kind.

“Muku must do something about that.” She smiled brightly and pulled the enormous key out of nowhere.

Each day of their life was somehow better than the last. When they got up in the morning, the mother, the father, and the older sister said good morning to them. They had no idea that it could be this wonderful to have your own family there when you woke up.

After the good mornings, it was time for breakfast with the whole family. Before that, there was one other little joy—their sister would tie their hair back.

“Your hair is honestly so pretty,” their sister always used to say as she pulled a brush through their hair.

They were pleased and proud to be complimented by their beloved sister. They adored this time spent together each morning.

Their sister’s deft fingers wound their long hair up into neat buns in no time flat. In mere minutes, the disheveled mass of bedhead would disappear and all that would be left was an adorable girl. The first time their sister transformed them like this, they were certain their sister was, in fact, a witch. When they told her this curiously, their sister looked surprised, then smiled and gently stroked their head again.

Once their hair was taken care of, they would eat the delicious breakfast the mother prepared for them, say their good-byes, and go to school. And when they got home from school, the mother was there to welcome them.

In the evenings, the family would eat supper, and they would go up onto the roof to stargaze with their star-loving sister. On hot summer nights, they would spread out a plastic tarp, lie back side by side, and gaze up at the sky. Their sister would point to one twinkling light after the other and tell them the origin of its name, its constellation.

As a young child, they couldn’t actually understand all of it, but they loved to watch their sister as she passionately explained the stars. They went up to the roof nearly every day.

Eventually, overcome by sleepiness, they would start to nod off, and their sister would joke that she’d gone on for too long and gently stroke their hair. They loved slowly drifting off to sleep like this.

Then they would wake up, and a new day would start.

Their straightforward life brought them so much joy. They nearly burst with love for the new father, mother, and sister they had gotten. A family of their very own. A space of their very own. People who loved them. People they were allowed to love.

Their young self believed that this happy time would go on forever, but the end of that world came far sooner than they thought.

This ending wasn’t brought about by anything serious. They didn’t get into an accident and go on to the great beyond; their parents didn’t get divorced and scatter the family across the four corners of the earth; their birth parents didn’t suddenly come knocking on their door and insist on their parental rights.

But one day…

It was a day they had been very much looking forward to. Their sister had promised to take them to Tengu Tower.

As it turned out, their sister planned on bringing along a friend from school.

Yes. That was all. A single slice of life hardly worth writing about.

But to them, it was absolutely unforgivable. After all, their sister was their sister. This promise was supposed to have been just for them. Their sister was supposed to be someone only they were allowed to love. Their sister was supposed to love only them.

And this sister had, without their knowledge, been playing with a friend they didn’t even know. This person was encroaching on their and their sister’s territory.

Just the thought of it made them feel like an iron fist was squeezing their heart; it was so, so painful they could hardly stand it.

However, they gritted their teeth and tried hard to have fun that day with the sister and the friend. Until they were looking out at the city from the observation deck, and the friend said to them, “You know, XX. Your hair’s so long. Maybe you should cut it a little? It could be cute, don’t you think, YY?”

The friend sought the opinion of their sister, and their sister made a show of thinking about it before answering.

“Hmm, I guess. Maybe it is a bit too long. How about I give you a little haircut?”

Neither of them was speaking maliciously. In fact, the friend and their sister were simply concerned about them walking with this too-long hair swinging behind them.

But these words shocked them to their core, a hand crushing their heart, and they fled from the tower.

They were so, so sad. It was unbearable.

Their sister had said it was so pretty. Their sister had said she loved it. But their sister had made a complete 180 after the friend’s remark.

In other words, their sister cared for the friend more than them. If their sister was put in a situation where she had to choose between them or the friend, she would choose the friend.

When they thought about this, anxiety spread out within them like ink dripping onto fabric.

Without any evidence at all, they had assumed that the father, the mother, and the sister loved them the most. But the three of them had lived in this world for a long time before they took them in, and they each had their own relationships they knew nothing about. The father, the mother, and the sister were all talking and laughing with people they didn’t know in places they didn’t know.

Unh… Ah. Aaah!

Just the thought of it made them want to throw up. The heart that had learned how to love and be loved finally recognized this feeling as sadness.

And then…

“…Unh.”

The morning after his date with Mukuro, Shido welcomed the day a little earlier than usual. He didn’t have any appointments or errands to take care of, and he hadn’t set an alarm. He simply hadn’t been able to sleep very well. He couldn’t stop thinking about what Mukuro had said when she left him the previous evening.

His bad dream hadn’t helped. It was so sad, just like the one he had when he fell from space the other day.

…Although in his own case, he’d gotten a cute new younger sister rather than an older one.

“…Mm.” Lack of sleep left him feeling ragged, but he wasn’t going to go back to bed now. He decided he might as well get breakfast ready a little early. He glanced at the clock to check the time and crawled out of bed, yawning.

He strolled down the steps, washed his face, and got dressed. Then he put on a man’s battle garb—an apron—and started prepping the meal with a familiar hand.

Before too long, the delicious scent of grilled fish wafted through the air, and he heard the plap plap of bare feet from the second floor.

Kotori was awake. She’d been on Fraxinus late into the night working on the search for Mukuro and processing the observation data. She had to have been even more tired than he was.

She stumbled down the stairs like a zombie, rubbing her eyes. He smiled wryly and held up a hand.

“Hey. Morning, Kotori.”

“Mm… Moonin’…” She had no sooner started to speak than her eyes flew open wide. “Eeeaaah?!”

“…?! Wh-what…?!” He covered his ears as he turned toward her, baffled. “What’s wrong, Kotori? Are you okay?”

She ignored his questions as she narrowed her eyes sharply to glare at him.

“Who are you?! And why are you in my house?!” Kotori shouted in alarm.

Now there was an unexpected response.

“…What?” was all he managed, his pupils shrinking to mere dots.

That much was to be expected. Anyone would be at a loss if asked this question, and no one could know how to respond to it when it was posed in their own home. While he and Kotori weren’t blood related, they were still brother and sister, and he’d been living in this house for over ten years now.

“…Um. What are you talking about, Kotori?” He scratched his cheek as he took a step toward her.

“Stay away from me!” she shouted to stop him. “I’m calling the police!”

“Wh-what…?” Still perplexed, he wiped away the sweat beading on his forehead.

What on earth was going on with her? She seemed too panicked to be joking. So, then…

Shido set his mind to work, and Kotori picked up a nearby object in agitation.

“You…,” she growled. “What are you even playing at here? I am. Telling you. To get. Out!” She threw the thing in her hand with all her might.

“Ah?!” Shido hurriedly ducked to one side and avoided it. “H-hey! You could’ve really hurt me—”

“Shut up! And get out! Right now!” she screamed hysterically and reached for her next missile.

He didn’t know what had happened, but he could see that whatever it was, there was no talking to her right now. He hurriedly snatched up his bag and blazer and hunched over as he fled the scene.

“Eek!” he yelped.

“Ah! Hey! Stop right there!”

First she was yelling for him to get out. Now she was shouting for him to stay. He wanted to ask her to make up her mind, but it wasn’t exactly the time. He snatched up the shoes in the entryway as he raced out onto the street in bare feet.

“Haah… Haah… Haah…”

After running for a minute or two, he looked back to make sure Kotori wasn’t chasing him and heaved a sigh. He took a deep breath to calm himself, took off his apron, and put on the school gear he’d recovered from the house.

“Sheesh! I know she didn’t get enough sleep, but that was some over-the-top sleepwalking. Big Bro’s crying here,” he muttered to himself, running his hands through his hair, and glanced around at the road he’d run down.

It was January. He was freezing in just a blazer. He would have liked to go back to the house and change into something warmer.

Given the possibility that Kotori was still half-asleep back there, though, returning to the Itsuka house didn’t seem too smart. She wouldn’t actually call the police, but if she started yelling again, it could spark rumors in the neighborhood again.

While people always get distracted by the newest thing, Shido had been stuck lately in a vicious cycle where the next rumor would start circulating before the last one had completely died out. If possible, he wanted to avoid any bad word spreading.

“Man. I guess I’ll just go to school,” he said, resigning himself to his fate, and trudged down the road, rubbing his hands together in the cold.

After he’d walked for twenty minutes or so, sneezing all the while, he arrived at Raizen High School. He changed into his indoor shoes and headed for his classroom. He hung his bag on the hook on his desk like he always did, pulled his chair out, and sat down.

“… Hmm?” As he sighed with relief at the warmth of the classroom, he felt something was slightly off. It was almost like he’d accidentally gone to the wrong classroom. His classmates kept glancing at him curiously, some beginning whispered conversations.

“Huh?” He tilted his head and looked down at himself, worried he was still wearing his pajama bottoms or that he’d put his shoes on backward because he’d been chased out of the house so unceremoniously.

From what he could see, though, everything was in order. Just in case, he touched his hair, too, but he couldn’t feel any noticeable bedhead.

“Hmm.”

Maybe they thought it was weird he’d come to school shivering without a coat in the cold weather. He settled on that as the explanation, and he put the matter out of his head as he started to pull his pens and notebooks out of his bag.

“Hohn-ho-hohn, ho-ho-ho-ho—koff-koff—ho!” A boy with an incredible amount of product in his hair, humming a strange song (and coughing in the middle of it), came over. Shido’s frenemy, Hiroto Tonomachi.

“Hey, Tonomachi,” Shido said, standing up.

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, morning,” Tonomachi replied casually. “Been a while, huh? Been ages.” He paused. “Actually, okay, sorry, man. I didn’t wanna be rude, but like, who are you? Sorry.”

Tonomachi looked more and more uneasy as he spoke until finally he bowed his head apologetically.

Shido gaped at him. “Uh?”

“No, for real, sorry,” Tonomachi said. “Oh! Were you at karaoke that day? It was such a huge gang; I couldn’t keep track of everyone.”

“…No. Wait,” Shido said, frowning. “What are you talking about? It’s me. Shido Itsuka. We’ve been in the same class forever.”

Now it was Tonomachi’s turn to look at him curiously. “Uh? The same class?”

“Tonomachi?” Shido frowned. His friend did make weird jokes that sometimes didn’t really land for Shido, but the look on his face seemed different from usual. Almost like he really didn’t remember Shido.

And unless he’d gotten really good at acting without Shido knowing…

Shido looked around and then called out to another group of students. “Hey, Yamabuki, Hazakura, Fujibakama.”

“Uh?”

“Huh?”

“Whuh?”

Three girls sitting and chatting nearby turned their faces toward him. One tall, her uniform slouching around her; one with an average physique, whose distinctive feature was that she had no distinctive features; and one small with glasses—the famed trio of Grade Eleven’s Class Four, Ai-Mai-Mii.

“Tonomachi’s messing with me again,” Shido said. “You guys know me, though, right?”

The three girls stared at him blankly before shooting looks at each other.

“…Um. Who are you?”

“Whoa! Are you trying to pick us up? Classic!”

“For real, wild. We’re finally going full duckling to swan here. So which is it? Which one of us are you after?”

Ai-Mai-Mii immediately started buzzing with excitement.

In contrast, Shido felt all color drain from his face.

“You don’t…know me?” he said, his voice hoarse, as he looked around. No one was speaking up in objection to Tonomachi or Ai-Mai-Mii. In fact, some students were even looking at him just as curiously, tilting their heads ninety degrees.

This was clearly an unusual situation. Either he was still dreaming, or his entire class was pulling an elaborate prank. His once-familiar classroom suddenly seemed foreign.

“Oh! Morning, everyone!”

“Morning.”

Two girls called out greetings as they stepped into the classroom. Tohka and Origami.

“…!”

The second Shido saw them, he raced over entreatingly. “H-hey! Tohka! Origami!”

“Oh?! Wh-what on earth? You scared me.”

“…”

Tohka reacted with exaggerated surprise, while Origami simply turned her face to him, her expression unchanging.

“O-oh, sorry,” he said. “Listen. Everyone’s being really weird. Actually, it’s not just the class. Maybe Kotori wasn’t half-asleep.”

“Mm…?” Tohka only furrowed her brow, puzzled.

Shido felt like his heart was being wrung. His pulse raced and sweat erupted from every pore on his body. He was overcome by a violent dizziness and nearly crumpled to the ground. He could hardly breathe.

Yet neither Tohka nor Origami noticed this state of panic. They were painfully merciless in their responses.

“Sorry, but what are you talking about?”

“Who are you?”

“…!”

Shido froze in place.

It was one PM. The sun, which would have been near its zenith, was hidden by a thick layer of clouds, and its warmth did not make it all the way to the ground. The occasional wind was fearsomely cold, slowly wicking away Shido’s warmth. He sneezed dramatically and rubbed his shoulders, sniffling.

Instead of his classroom at Raizen High School, he was in front of the apartment building next to the Itsuka house. To be more precise, he was across the road with a clear view of the front entrance. He was hidden behind a telephone pole, keeping a careful eye on the building.

“…!”

After he’d been waiting for who knew how long, the door opened, and two small girls walked out. One was a sweet-looking girl with a cute hat and puffy coat with a rabbit puppet on her left hand. The other looked excessively grumpy, a dark coat buttoned up tightly and a scarf wrapped around her neck. They were Spirits who lived in the building, Yoshino and Natsumi.

“…Ah! It’s so cold! I can see my breath!” Natsumi said.

“Hee-hee. You’re right. Haaah!” Yoshino exhaled puffs of white breath, and the rabbit puppet Yoshinon twisted and squirmed.

“Whoo-hoo! White breath!”

Yoshino giggled happily. Natsumi scowled in contrast, troubled and somewhat apologetic.

“…Um. Yoshino? You don’t have to come shopping with me, you know. It’s no big deal, and it’d be a whole thing if you got sick…”

“No! It’s totally okay. I’m good with the cold. And…” Yoshino took Natsumi’s hand and tucked it into the pocket of her coat with her own hand.

“Eeah?!” Natsumi shrieked in surprise.

“Eh-heh-heh!” Yoshino flushed slightly with a mischievous smile on her face. “Warmer?”

“Y-yeah… I guess…,” Natsumi replied awkwardly, as her own cheeks grew two hundred times redder than Yoshino’s. Perhaps she started to suddenly sweat more, too; with her free hand, she tugged on her neatly wound scarf and let the wind at her neck.

“…Ha-ha!” The adorable scene brought a smile to Shido’s face. But he quickly pulled himself back together. This was no time for him to be taking in the view.

He pursed his lips to get his mind back on track and stepped out from behind the telephone pole in front of the girls. He swallowed his rampaging anxiety. “Yoshino! Natsumi! And Yoshinon!”

“Huh…?”

“Wh-what? Where’d you come from…?”

“Whoa-ho! Scared me!”

Shido gulped.

“Hey, gang. You remember me, right?” he asked, almost like a prayer, clenching his hands into fists.

But.

“Uh. Um. I’m sorry. I don’t know you.”

“…I don’t get it. C’mon, Yoshino, Yoshinon.”

“Ah-ha-ha! Sorry, young man. Try someone else!”

It was the same as it had been with everyone else.

Yoshino and Natsumi looked at him with suspicious eyes, then slipped past him on quick feet.

“Ah…” He couldn’t even reach out or take a step toward them. He simply crumpled to his knees in despair. “This can’t be… What the hell is happening…?”

Following the terror and unease he felt after Tohka and Origami claimed to have no memory of him, he had decided to visit the other Spirits to see if they remembered him.

Kaguya and Yuzuru in Class Three next door had looked at him just as dubiously as Tohka and Origami, and Nia, living in a skyscraper condo in town, had mistaken him for a rude fan and shown him the door. When he got to Miku, the mere sound of his voice over the phone made her shriek, “Aaah?! A phone call from a strange maaan?!” He hadn’t been able to get in touch with her again after that.

He’d been waiting for Yoshino and Natsumi as a last bastion of hope. But they were the same as everyone else.

He hung his head lifelessly and ran his hands through his hair. Nothing had changed since yesterday. The city was the same as ever. The people were the same as ever. Everything was exactly the same.

There was just one thing—the Spirits and his friends had forgotten him. That was the one difference. He felt anxious, as though he had wandered into a parallel world.

“Dammit, I don’t understand. What even is this?! Is there no one…no one who knows me?” He put a hand to his forehead as he let his mind work. But the only people left he could think of were the most malevolent of Spirits, Kurumi Tokisaki—and he didn’t know where she was; Westcott and Ellen of DEM, Shido and his team’s bitter enemies; and that one person who had disappeared, leaving him dazzled and disoriented.

“…”

He gasped. A name popped into his head and spilled from his trembling lips. “Mukuro…”

Yes. Mukuro Hoshimiya. The Spirit with the key Angel Michael, which could “lock” anything and everything. The range of this power’s effect was not limited to the visible. Mukuro had used this Angel to lock her own heart, after all.

It’s not that he was hoping she still remembered him.

“Understood. No need to speak any further. You may leave this matter to Muku.”

The words she had spoken when they parted the day before came to his ears. He hadn’t understood at the time what they had meant, but now he realized they were the key to understanding the strange phenomenon that had befallen him.

The Angel Michael could lock even the intangible heart and seal away its emotions. Could that power be used on people’s memories as well?

“Is this actually all your doing, Mukuro?!” He pressed a hand to his mouth, a shiver of fear coloring his face.

Of course, this was all conjecture. He had no proof, no evidence; it was firmly in the realm of his imagination. But the whole world forgetting his existence wasn’t the sort of thing that happened spontaneously, and Mukuro was on the top of the list of Spirits capable of something like this.

“…”

He silently lifted his head. He put a hand against the wall next to the road, pushed himself to his feet, and exhaled at length.

He truly felt as though he were in a parallel world. He could try and get help, but anyone who might have helped him had forgotten his very existence—the worst-case scenario. The truth was, right up until that very moment, he hadn’t known what to do next. But this new hypothesis gave him more than enough hope to get back on his feet.

It went without saying that Mukuro wielded tremendous power. But there was an enormous difference between being adrift alone in an incomprehensible anomaly, and having a rough idea of what the situation actually was and who had put him in it.

And if Mukuro really had locked everyone’s memories with the power of Michael…

He looked around to make sure no one was in the area before he closed his eyes and called the name of an Angel. “Haniel.”

A broom-shaped Angel manifested in his hand. He took a deep breath to focus and moved his lips once again. “Kaleidoscope!”

Haniel shone with silvery light and twisted up like kneaded clay. After a few seconds, it had transformed into a staff in the shape of an enormous key.

When he opened Mukuro’s heart, he’d replicated Michael to do it. The Angel responded to its master’s wishes. So if the reason the Spirits had forgotten him was Michael’s power, he assumed he could unlock those memories just the same.

However…

“Huh?” he said, baffled, freezing in place, hands on the fake Michael.

From inside a small door that was suddenly in the space right next to his Michael, a massive key tip appeared and stabbed the pseudo-Angel.

“N-no—,” he cried.

“Segva.” He heard a disembodied voice, followed by the click of a key turning in a lock, and his eyes grew wide.

Instantly, the fake Michael shone faintly and reverted to its original Haniel before splitting into particles of light and melting into the air.

“Ah.” He stared at his now empty hand, stunned, then shifted his gaze to the key tip still suspended in the air and spoke in a trembling voice. “M-Michael…”

As if in response, the door in the air gradually grew larger and larger until finally, a girl popped out from inside of it. Small with blond hair wrapped around her neck and clothes in the same design as Kotori’s.

Mukuro Hoshimiya.

“Mukuro!” he gasped.

“Mm-hee-hee-hee. I did expect that you would come to this realization, having unlocked Muku. You did not fail me,” she said with a bright smile, and he felt a chill down his spine.

She had been watching for the moment he attempted to use his Angel to unlock everyone’s memories, and when she caught him doing exactly that, she had locked the power of the fake Michael with the real Michael.

He didn’t have to think too hard to understand why. It was to seal any ability he had to unlock the memories of the Spirits. This proved his hypothesis as unequivocally correct.

“Mukuro,” he said again slowly. “You locked everyone’s memories?!”

“Mm. That I did. Impressive, yes?” She put a hand on her hip and tossed her head back smugly.

“Why?!” he cried out, a deep crease digging between his brows. “Why on earth would you do that?!”

“Why? Hm-hmm. Such strange questions you ask.” Mukuro looked at him blankly, then grinned. “This way, we shall be alone together. There is no longer need for concern. You may love Muku without reservation.”

“Wha—?!” Shido gasped in horror. His mind was thrown into chaos by the incongruity between her words and her adorable expression.

He had sealed the powers of a number of Spirits. He had encountered untold dangers and been through many a fierce battle; he had been exposed to the most powerful of enemies and the most incredible hostility.

This was different.

The girl before him now was totally different from any that had come before.

The most malevolent Spirit, Kurumi Tokisaki, had been terrifying. He hadn’t been able to take a single step when she turned her murderous impulses and madness on him.

Similarly, when up against DEM’s Westcott and Ellen, Shido had been petrified. He had nearly been crushed in the face of this overwhelming, inhumane evil perpetrated by one person toward another.

But Mukuro possessed no malicious intentions. All he could glean from her face were innocent love and goodwill.

“Say, my lord?” Mukuro moved her lips, a gentle smile rising up on them. “You do care for Muku, yes?”

Her words were so adorable, so pure.

Yet Shido could not respond to them.

Afternoon on a day off.

Tmp tmp tmp tmp.

Kotori had no sooner heard footsteps in the hallway than Miku was charging into the Itsuka living room.

“Aaah! It’s been aaages! But I never forgot any of you for a single secooond the whole time we were apart!”

“Eeep!” Natsumi jumped, tumbled off the sofa in a hurry, and hid behind it.

But Miku reacted to the quick-moving Natsumi like a cat discovering a mouse and lunged at her.

“Myeaaah!”

“Eeeah!”

Trapped in Miku’s (to put it nicely) passionate embrace, Natsumi kicked and flailed and groaned.

“Honestly.” The home’s master, Kotori, sighed. “You always make such a fuss. ‘The whole time we were apart’? We saw you yesterday.”

“Heh-heh! Hai han’t heave hoo hahone hike his.”

“…I have no idea what you said. Maybe you could take your face out of Natsumi’s belly?” Kotori said, rolling her eyes, and Miku lifted her face, satisfied.

“Pwaaah! I am rechaaarged! Refreshed, the day’s exhaustion gone!”

Kotori did feel like Miku’s skin was somehow even more dewy than before. In contrast, Natsumi, now with a large lipstick print on her stomach, was thoroughly desiccated. Attack! A vampire’s been spotted in the residential streets of Tengu!

Kotori shrugged in exasperation and let her gaze roam the living room.

The Spirits were all present. Tohka and Origami on the sofa, the Yamai sisters monopolizing the TV with video games, Yoshino nursing Natsumi after her life force had been sucked up by Miku, and Nia scratching her head as she faced her notebook at the table. From the look of it, she was having trouble with her manga storyboard.

Kotori hadn’t invited them all over, but perhaps her house was a comfortable place; they all naturally gathered here on days off.

Sound exploded from the TV. The Yamai sisters had apparently finished their contest.

“Aaah! So close! There! What?! Aah!”

“Victory. That was quite close, but Yuzuru has claimed victory. I have gained the right to trade lunch parts.”

“Hnnngh!”

They had apparently been betting. Kaguya beat the floor in frustration.

Kotori sighed as she spoke. “I’m not trying to butt in on your contest, but make sure you eat a balanced diet. You’ll get sick.”

She glanced up at the clock. Twelve. Just like the twins said, it was time for lunch.

“…Hmm?”

Once her thoughts reached this point, Kotori tilted her head. She felt like normally, a meal was laid out on the table by now. But lunch still wasn’t ready.

“Huh? That’s weird. I didn’t— Wait. Do I usually cook?” She furrowed her brow at the curious sensation.

“Is something the matter, Kotori?” Yoshino turned worried eyes on her as she rubbed Natsumi’s back.

“What? Oh, no. It’s nothing. I’m just getting hungry.” She changed the subject. “How about we order pizza?”

The eyes of the Yamai sisters immediately lit up.

“Really?! I request the feast of the phoenix!”

“Exposition. Kaguya says that teriyaki chicken pizza would be good.”

“Yes! That! Heh-heh! Pizza means no parts to trade! Too bad, huh, Yuzuru?”

“Negation. The right to trade remains in effect. I will trade my pizza crust for your pizza toppings.”

“The crust?!”

“Mercy. I will take pity, at least,” Yuzuru said in a deliberately gentle voice. “We shall get the fluffy pan crust rather than the crispy crust of which there is little to eat.”

“You’re inhuman!” Kaguya shrieked.

“Obvious. I am a Spirit.”

Well, this was Yuzuru. Once she had her fill of Kaguya being upset, she’d probably let her have some pizza with toppings on it. Kotori shrugged and pulled out her cell phone to call in the order.

“…?”

Again, she felt that something was off, and she looked toward Tohka on the sofa.

It wasn’t that Tohka was doing anything weird. She was simply sitting there with her arms crossed and a troubled look on her face.

That was unusual in and of itself, however. They were ordering pizza, and not only was Tohka not requesting her favorite toppings, but she also wasn’t even shouting for joy like usual.

“T-Tohka. You okay?” Kotori asked tentatively. “If you’re feeling sick, you can lie down.”

“…Mm?” A few seconds later, Tohka’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, sorry. I was just thinking.”

“Thinking? You? Over pizza? …No, wait. I don’t mean it like that.” The rather rude words thoughtlessly spilled from Kotori’s mouth, and she hurried to correct herself.

Tohka didn’t seem to notice. Or rather, she seemed to have something concerning her more. All she did was groan quietly.

“Something going on?” Kotori asked. “I mean, you’re not usually so lost in thought.”

“Mm.” Tohka looked up at her. “It’s nothing serious, but I met a strange boy at school yesterday.”

“A strange boy?”

“Mm-hmm. There was this boy in our classroom, and he called out to me and Origami. But when I said we didn’t know him, he got this really sad look on his face and left.”

“What’s that about? Some kind of fanboy? That is pretty weird, but not something you need to spend all this time on—” Kotori had gotten that far when she stopped, and the ends of her eyebrows twitched up. She maybe had an idea about this boy.

“What’s the maaatter?” Miku asked curiously.

“Actually.” Kotori put a hand to her chin. “That reminds me, I ran into a similar guy yesterday. When I woke up, there was this stranger in the kitchen, making breakfast.”

“What?!” Miku cried, aghast. “A strange man in the kitchen?! Why, that’s a horror mooovie! A-are you all right, Kotori?!”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “I chased him out right away. I asked Fraxinus to beef up the security, so I don’t think it’ll be a problem, but—”

“Ah!” Miku slapped her hands together.

Kotori jumped a little. “What? What’s going on, Miku?”

“A-actually, it happened to me, toooo! I got this phone call yesterday. And this strange man suddenly started speaking. I was so surprised, I hung uuup! I looked at the call history, and it said the call was from ‘Darling’! I don’t remember putting that contact in my phone at all. It’s sooo scary!”

The other Spirits also raised their eyebrows as they listened, like they were connecting some dots of their own.

“Hey, Yuzuru. Do you think it’s the same guy?”

“Recollection. We also met him. A boy came charging into our classroom before homeroom and passionately demanded, ‘You know who I am, right?!’ ”

“…Actually, he might have come to my place, too. I had just pulled an all-nighter, then this doofus comes ringing my doorbell. Annoyed the hell out of me, so I sent him packing.”

“Th-that reminds me. When Natsumi and I went out yesterday, this strange man spoke to us…”

“…Oh yeah. He did, there was that guy. And he followed us, too. Wonder what his deal is. He looked seriously upset,” Natsumi grumbled, rolling her eyes. In Yoshino’s embrace, she had finally recovered enough from Miku’s attack to speak again.

Kotori scowled. “That guy came to all of us? I mean, yeah, we don’t know if it was the same guy, of course. But it’d be a little naive to think there’s no connection.”

Certainly, it was possible that he was just a weirdo, but he also might have been a DEM operative. She didn’t know what this guy was after, but everyone here was a Spirit with catastrophic powers. There was no harm in being careful.

“I’ll put in a request for stronger security for all of you for the time being,” she said finally. “If you notice anything strange, report it right away.”

“Roooger! I’ll contact you in a jiffy!”

“…Ah, security’s great and all, but could you get me an assistant while you’re at it? This chapter’s a real doozy. Specifically, I’d like someone talented and teensy whose name starts with N.”

“…Hey, Kotori? I wanna change my name. How do I do that?”

The Spirits all nodded their agreement. Well, Kotori did feel like there was a bit of unwanted business mixed in there, but she decided to ignore that.

There was one girl, though, who hadn’t responded—Origami. She was simply staring silently at the floor, not uttering a single word. While she was normally a girl of few words, Kotori felt like this was different from usual.

She peered at the other girl’s face. “Origami? You okay?”

“…All good,” Origami replied. “My head just hurts a little.”

“Then it’s not all good. Don’t push yourself. We should get you home if it’s bad.”

“…Please.” Origami’s voice was unusually weak.

Kotori was actually worried now. She walked over to the other girl and leaned down, offering her shoulder. “Come on,” she said. “Can you stand?”

“…I’m fi—” Origami put her hand on Kotori’s shoulder and tried to get to her feet. But in that moment, all the strength drained from her body, and she fell forward with a thud.

“Origami?!”

“Wha—?!”

“I-is she okay?!”

The Spirits all cried out in surprise. But this was to be expected. Maybe they wouldn’t have been nearly as shocked if it had been anyone else, but the one who had collapsed was the girl of steel, Origami.

Kotori inhaled sharply and reached for her phone to request backup from Fraxinus. She didn’t know what was going on but bringing her to the ship’s infirmary would be much faster than calling an ambulance.

Yet her hand froze in midair above the call button.

“…”

Origami had yanked herself upright as though nothing had happened.

“Origami? Don’t force yourself to get up,” Kotori said hurriedly. “We don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

But Origami shook her head firmly from side to side like she’d never been feeling poorly at all. Looking straight at Kotori, she said, “Mm-mm. I’m fine. I’m sorry to have worried you.”

Her tone was very clearly different from before.

“…”

Kotori felt a bead of sweat roll down her cheek. “O-Origami?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“Um. I’ll just ask to be sure. You are Origami, right?”

“What? Yes, I am. What are you talking about?” Origami said and gave her a wan smile. The Spirits shivered at this expression, so full of vitality.

“E-eep…!”

“Shiver. Do you have a high fever? No, Master Origami, it can’t have already reached your brain…”

“Someone! Help! Please heeeelp Origamiii!”

“Huh? Is that how I come across…?”

Origami smiled lifelessly at the overreactions. Her expression quickly hardened, and she looked at them all. “Well, setting me aside. Do you really mean what you all said? None of you actually remember…him?”

“Huh?” Kotori furrowed her brow and put a hand to her chin. “ ‘Him’… You mean the mysterious guy making rounds?”

Origami nodded firmly. “And from the look of you, you really don’t know him, then. This has to be Mukuro—”

“Mukuro?” The unfamiliar name made Kotori tilt her head. She’d never heard of a “Mukuro” before.

“You can’t mean you don’t remember her, either?” Origami opened her eyes wide in surprise. “The Spirit who was in space! We all fought together there!”

“Wh-what are you talking about?” Kotori said, arching her eyebrow.

“…Is that it?” Origami grimaced like everything had suddenly clicked into place. “She is thorough. I suppose this means she locked not just memories of him but of herself as well. And it’s true that this way no one would go looking for her…”

She fell silent for a moment, seemingly troubled, then abruptly shifted her gaze to Natsumi. “Listen, Natsumi,” she said. “Can I ask you something? Would it be possible for you to copy Michael with your Haniel?”

“Huh?” Natsumi stared blankly at her. “What’s Michael? An Angel?”

“Yes.” Origami nodded; her eyes fixed on Natsumi’s. “It’s a key Angel with the power to lock anything in creation.”

Natsumi averted her eyes to escape the other girl’s heated gaze. “…You can’t be serious. I’ve never heard of it. How am I supposed to make a fake without an example to work from?”

“I…I guess so.” Origami scowled and covered her mouth with a hand as she muttered, “So even if she didn’t intend to, she sealed Haniel? That is not great… What are we going to do?”

“H-hold up a minute. You’re not making sense, Origami,” Kotori said, perplexed. “What are you even talking about? Who’s Mukuro? And this ‘him’… Do you know that guy?”

“Yes.” Origami nodded as she stared directly into Kotori’s eyes. “You all know him, too. You—no, we, all of us were saved by him—by Shido Itsuka.”

“Shido…” Kotori furrowed her brow slightly at the name. She felt weirdly like she’d heard it before, or maybe not. The other Spirits seemed to have similar reactions.

But.

“Unh…ngh?”

Just like Origami earlier, another Spirit dropped to her knees, clutching her head.

“Hm-hmm, what fun.” Mukuro beamed at Shido and swung his hand in hers back and forth. “Aren’t you having fun, my lord?”

“…Yeah,” he replied. “This is great fun, Mukuro.”

“Hee-hee! ’Tis, ’tis.” She glanced at him coyly. “Say, do you like Muku, my lord?”

“Of course. I adore you.”

“And Muku you. Hee-hee! Such happiness!” Her cheeks coloring faintly, Mukuro smiled even more broadly.

“…”

Shido looked at her carefree face and gritted his teeth. He was currently strolling down Tengu’s main boulevard holding hands with Mukuro. She had apparently enjoyed their date the other day so much that she wanted to walk through the city with him again today.

“Oh! What is that?!” She looked at everything as if it were all endlessly fascinating, and she called out to him every few steps, her eyes lighting up. Each time, he would respond with gentle kindness.

Naturally, however, he wasn’t simply enjoying a day out on the town with her. A few hours earlier, after Haniel had been rendered powerless, he’d tried desperately to talk some sense into her. He’d explained that while he did in fact like Mukuro a great deal, he cared about the others just as much. He asked her to please turn them back to normal.

But she refused. It wasn’t out of malice or ill will. Her unshakable system of beliefs was that Shido liked Mukuro, so he shouldn’t need any other girls. In fact, it was the existence of those other girls that kept him from being honest about his feelings.

Yes. She truly was pure and innocent. Her will had simply turned in a direction unfavorable for Shido.

“…”

This didn’t mean he was giving up, however. It was true, the situation could hardly have been said to be ideal. For all intents and purposes, he was without a single ally, and Haniel’s power to turn that around had been locked up by Mukuro. But he still had one tool in his kit to break this stalemate. He touched his lips wordlessly.

Seal her Spirit powers with a kiss. The strange special ability Shido alone had, the objective of him and his team.

Open Mukuro’s heart, make her weak in the knees, and kiss her. If he did that, her powers would be sealed, and everyone’s locked memories would be unlocked once more.

There were a few obstacles, however.

First of all, there was his likability with Mukuro. From what he could see, she was fond of him. But now that he’d lost the support of Ratatoskr, he couldn’t say with certainty whether it was within the range that would make sealing her power possible. Which meant that he couldn’t go off half-cocked. Mukuro had Michael, after all. If she found out what he was thinking, she could lock his ability to seal Spirit powers just like she had locked Haniel’s ability to turn into Michael.

An Angel that locked everything in creation versus the ability to seal Spirit power… He didn’t know which would come out on top, but if she did actually manage to lock his ability, he would be out of cards to play. He had to tread carefully.

And…

“…Mukuro, why are you…,” he said, somewhat unconsciously.

The reason she wanted to monopolize him to such an unhealthy degree and the reason she had locked her own heart to go off and drift all alone in space. Even if he did succeed in sealing her Spirit power, he felt like that wouldn’t resolve the fundamental issue.

“Hmm?” Mukuro cocked her head to one side.

“Why would you do all this?” he asked. “You said I felt close to you, right? What exactly did you mean by that?”

“Simply a feeling. But if pressed…” She held a finger up to her chin. “After I fell to the Earth in your arms, I had a strange dream. And thus, I became strangely intrigued by you.”

“A dream?” he parroted.

“Mm. It was not that I envisioned you while I slumbered. The dream was merely sad. A small child, alone from their first moment of consciousness, at last gains a family. Howbeit, when I awakened with this sadness lingering… For some reason, Muku wished to gaze upon your visage.”

“Huh?” Shido frowned. Puzzle pieces were starting to come together for him. That dream, as it turned out—

“Itsuka!” a voice called out from behind, interrupting his thoughts.

“…Huh?!” A heartbeat later, Shido jolted and looked back.

There were two reasons for his shock. One was simple—no one besides Mukuro had spoken his name in two days. All his friends and acquaintances had had their memories locked by Mukuro, and he assumed that she hadn’t missed anyone.

The other reason was that this voice was familiar.

“O-Origami?!” he cried out and whipped around.

Yes. The person who had called his name was his classmate and a Spirit, Origami Tobiichi herself. When he saw her the day before in the classroom, however, she hadn’t remembered him. How exactly had she escaped from Michael’s power?

“And—Oh.” Suddenly, he realized that Origami hadn’t called him “Shido,” she’d called him “Itsuka.” And that the air around the girl standing ahead of him was a little gentler and softer than Origami Tobiichi. He stared with wide eyes. “A-are you actually…this world’s Origami?!”

“Y-yeah. It’s been a while, huh? I guess that’s a weird thing to say. I’ve been hanging out with you this whole time.” Origami laughed awkwardly.

This un-Origami-like smile clinched it for Shido. Before him now was—and was not—Origami.

He had once used the power of the Angel of time to travel to the past and rewrite history. Now, inside of the body of this girl, there existed two Origamis—the one who had lived in the original world, and the one who lived in the new world. Rather than their personalities being neatly split, however, it was more like they had mingled and given rise to a new Origami. The one standing here now was very clearly the Origami he’d met after the world changed.

Something else concerned him even more in this moment, however.

“Origami,” he said, carefully holding back his excitement. “You remember me?!”

“Of course.” She nodded. “It seems like the memory of the surface me was locked—oh, actually, I guess it’s maybe the channel to pull out the memories?”

“…!”

Shido gasped. This was a godsend. He had been feeling so isolated and helpless, his heart nearly crushed by anxiety, and here came someone who knew him. This fact alone was enough to rouse his tattered spirits.

Clearly, this new development wouldn’t turn the whole situation around just like that.

“…Hm-hmm?” Standing next to him, Mukuro looked skeptically at Origami. “You…were one of the girls with Shido. How strange. Your memory should have been locked.”

She sighed in annoyance, held up her right hand, and manifested a shining key out of thin air.

“Well, so be it. I know not by what means you opened Michael’s lock, but I shall simply lock it once more.”

“…! Mukuro!” Shido cried out. He couldn’t stand it if he lost this precious ally when she had at last appeared before him.

“You can’t!” Origami also shouted to stop Mukuro, but her motivation was somewhat different from Shido’s. “If you manifest your Angel here, she’ll find you!”

“What?” Mukuro cocked her head to one side.

“ ‘She’?” Shido furrowed his brow curiously. And then he heard a clack from above, followed by a grumpy “Hmph.”

Guided by these sounds, he looked back and lifted his face to see a girl standing on the streetlight, her arms crossed.

The long hair that fluttered in the wind was the color of the deepest night, and eyes that glittered like crystals looked quietly down on them. Her body was wrapped in an inky Astral Dress of concentrated darkness. She would have easily blended in with the sky itself at night. But it was day, and her nonchalant silhouette was outlined by the brilliantly burning sun.

“Wha—” Shido’s eyes widened at the sight. Not because he was surprised by her strange appearance, though.

It was because he knew her.

“I found you, woman. Hmm? Some other odd ones here, too. A Spirit, and… Hmph. The boy from that day? Perfect. I will turn you all to ash together,” Tohka said, eyes as cold as ice, pronouncing a death sentence.

Chapter 9

Outside Oblivion

There’s still a lot we don’t know about inversion.

This was what Kotori had said to Shido after he’d seen an inversion for the first time.

A conversion of the Sefirah attribute that occurred due to the Spirit falling into a deep despair. A phenomenon where the Spirit value showed as a negative and transformed into a different kind of power.

Shido knew of three Spirits this had happened to.

One was Origami. On a day in her youth, she had sworn to seek revenge on the enemy who had killed her parents. When she found out this enemy was, in fact, her own time-traveling self, she had inverted, unable to bear the cruel misery of the discovery.

Another was Nia. Held prisoner for long days by DEM, she had endured cruel tortures beyond imagination. When those memories were brought back to her, she had inverted.

And the third was currently standing before him.

“Toh…ka…?” Shido wasn’t sure if there was any point in calling her name—after all, she did not recognize this name as belonging to her.

Last September, Shido had been fatally injured by the Wizard Ellen Mathers during a fight at DEM Industries’ Japan branch. While he’d clung to life thanks to Kotori’s healing flames, Tohka had fallen into despair after witnessing his presumed death, and her Sefirah inverted. What had appeared then was the same Dark Tohka who was looking down on them from the streetlight.

Her expression and tone of voice were the same as always, but she was something else—something not Tohka. They were looking at an inverted Spirit who wielded the enormous power of a Demon King.

“Wh-why is Tohka inverted…?” Shido managed to say, anxiety and confusion causing his mind to spin. The fact that she was inverted meant that she had encountered a deep despair recently. A black emotion so dark that it was on par with Shido being killed. What on earth could have happened to her while he’d been gone?

That was as far as his investigative deduction could go before it was interrupted. Still standing on the streetlight, Tohka threw her right hand out to one side, and ebony particles converged to take on the form of a sword.

“Ngh! Nahemah?!” he gasped. The Demon King Nahemah. This sword was Sandalphon’s counterpart, carrying unparalleled destructive power. Who knew what damage she could do if she swung it right here in the middle of the city?

“Stop, Tohka! You can’t—”

“Quiet. Begone,” she interrupted, clearly not inclined to listen to him, and narrowed her eyes coldly as she swung Nahemah.

A slash of the blade that could only be described as a black light carved out a crescent moon arc as it closed in on Shido and the Spirits by his side.

“Uh?! Aaah?!” He shrank in on himself.

The next instant, he heard Mukuro’s voice.

“Lataib!” She threw Michael up into the air and opened a large door in empty space that sucked in Tohka’s slashing attack. The aftershocks of the blow that escaped the range of the door gouged into the earth, leaving enormous claw marks in the concrete sidewalk.

“Ah?!”

“Wh-what was that?!”

The passersby in the area cried out at the sudden explosion.

But Tohka herself did not deign to look at the masses. She turned sharp eyes on Mukuro, the Spirit who had nullified her attack.

“You.” She sniffed disdainfully. “The fact that you stopped my attack means you are prepared to accept your fate, then.”

“I should speak those same words to you.” Mukuro scowled in annoyance. “What have you come for? Your memories have been locked by Michael. Should you interfere any further with Muku and her lord, she shall show no mercy.”

“Do your worst. I will make you regret surviving that attack.” She kicked off the streetlight to drop down to the ground. Slowly readying Nahemah before her, she approached Shido and the two Spirits.

“Mmm.” Even Mukuro had clearly picked up on the fact that the inverted Spirit before her was an enormous threat. Eyeing Tohka carefully, she dropped her center of gravity and readied Michael like a lance.

The situation was explosive. The air between the two Spirits crackled, and Shido took a step back.

“Hngh,” he groaned. He couldn’t exactly just leave them to go at it, though. In a full-on fight between Tohka and Mukuro, the city would be razed.

Though when they stood at the ready like this, the tension refused any entry to outside trespassers like an invisible wall. There wasn’t actually a wall there, like a Wizard’s Territory, but a reflexive terror took over his brain and kept his feet planted where they were, the instinctive worry that any mere human who tried to come between these Spirits would be instantly crushed like an insect.

The average person couldn’t have even safely stepped between them, much less stopped their violent clash. But that didn’t mean he could simply turn around and walk away. Steeling his resolve, he took a step forward.

He then felt a hand on his shoulder. Origami.

“Itsuka, leave this to me,” she said softly. “I…have an idea.”

“Huh…? B-but…,” he protested, but she had clearly made up her mind.

A nervous look on her face, she stepped in between Mukuro and Tohka. “Please wait a moment!” she said, her voice shaking only a little.

“What?”

“You intend to interfere?”

Mukuro and Tohka both stared daggers at her.

“E-eeep!” Origami jumped, her eyes filling with tears as if to make a lie of her earlier courage.

She managed to hold her ground somehow and began to speak hesitantly in a weak voice. “Uh. Um. So. Please calm down and listen to me…Mukuro.”

“…Hm-hmm?” Mukuro furrowed her brow dubiously.

Origami stared into Mukuro’s eyes for a second as if steadying herself and then continued. “M-Mukuro, you like Itsuka, don’t you? That’s why you hate Tohka for coming to take him away.”

“…Mm. Well, that is a simplified way of saying it, I suppose. Although you are included in Muku’s hatred as well.” Mukuro held Michael up, and its dangling rings jangled together.

“You can’t! Itsuka hates violence! A-and I’m pretty sure there’s another way to win his love!”

“…Hm-hmm?” Mukuro cocked her head to one side, a complicated look on her face.

Tohka took an impatient step forward, and Origami gasped, turning toward her.

“T-Tohka, you have to calm down, too!” she pleaded. “What’s your objective here?”

“ ‘Tohka’? Do you mean me?” Tohka scowled. “Well, fine. You would know my objective? This boy, he once scorned my hardships. I cannot be satisfied until I wipe out this humiliation. I care nothing for you or the key Spirit, but if you stand in my way, I will show you no mercy.” Her voice was a fount of unbridled, murderous rage.

Origami felt beads of sweat pop up on her forehead. But something Tohka said caught her attention, and she timidly asked, “Itsuka, hardships… Are you maybe talking about when you manifested at DEM headquarters?”

“The place is unknown to me.” Tohka sniffed indignantly. “However, I clearly remember the humiliations I was made to face.”

“…I wasn’t there, but I did hear about what happened,” Origami said slowly. “It’s true that you perhaps faced defeat by Itsuka’s hand—”

Tohka swung Nahemah, grazing Origami’s cheek and scraping the ground with the jet-black blade.

“Eep!” Origami shrieked.

“Watch your mouth,” Tohka snarled. “Who was defeated by whom?”

“I—I’m sorry. I phrased that wrong!” Origami quickly backtracked. “When you faced off against Itsuka before, you may not have had a very good experience because of an act of God…”

“…Hmph.” Tohka snorted, a grumpy look on her face. But this phrasing seemed to be acceptable, at least, and Origami sighed with relief.

“Please remember,” she continued. “Did Itsuka swing his sword at you then? Did you yield to his power?”

“Shut your mouth.” Tohka’s expression immediately hardened once more. “Such a thing could never happen.”

Origami spread out her hands placatingly. “Th-that’s right! That’s exactly it!”

“…What?”

“In terms of sheer power, Itsuka could absolutely never beat you! But that’s not how things turned out! So, could you really say you won if you defeated Itsuka now through brute force? In fact, if you make the wrong move here, you might actually lose your chance to get your revenge, right?”

“…”

Tohka narrowed her eyes in thought. “How should I inflict humiliation on this boy, then?”

“You… H-his heart! True victory would be making him yield in spirit and not in might!”

“…U-uh, Origami?” Shido said nervously. He could tell she was trying to lead the warring Spirits down a different path, but he was becoming more and more uncomfortable with the direction she was heading in.

Wedged in between two Spirits on the brink of battle, Origami didn’t have the extra bandwidth to respond to him. She looked particularly unsettled herself, sweating profusely as she watched for the Spirits’ reactions.

Mukuro and Tohka tilted their heads simultaneously, questioning Origami.

“How, then, might I win the love of my lord from this insolent girl?”

“Answer me. What do I do to make the boy’s heart yield to me?”

“Right, yes.” Origami kicked her brain into high gear. “There’s a way to decide this contest while achieving your objectives!”

“Hmm?”

“Oh?”

They both seemed interested and waited to hear what Origami would say next.

“How about…” She cast about desperately and then raised a hand in a theatrical gesture, snapping a finger out at Shido. “Whoever takes Itsuka’s kiss is the winner!”

“…Whaaat?!” Shido let out a shrill cry.

Naturally, he was not alone.

“What?” Tohka turned suspicious eyes on Origami. “Do you toy with me?”

“O-of course not! Or is it that you’re scared? You might be a Spirit, bu— Aaah!” Origami stopped mid-sentence as the tip of Nahemah grazed the tip of her nose.

“I believe I told you to watch your mouth,” Tohka growled.

“R-right…,” Origami replied, legs shaking.

Tohka lowered her sword and put a hand to her chin as if deep in thought. “Mmm. When I last appeared here, this boy did perform such an act. I’m certain that he did in fact rout me then. It may be amusing to devastate him as I take my revenge.”

“…Huh?” Shido’s pupils shrank to tiny dots.

“Hold.” Mukuro pursed her lips unhappily. “You may not make this decision. My lord’s lips, you say? What reason would I have to accept such a contest?”

“It’s all right,” Origami reassured her. “Tohka’s objective is to make Itsuka’s heart yield to her. Assuming you and Itsuka are firmly coupled, you won’t have any problems. Or…are you maybe worried you won’t win? That Itsuka would pick Tohka over you?”

“…Hm-hmm?” Mukuro jabbed the tip of Michael at Origami’s abdomen.

“Eeep!” Origami shrieked. “Wh-what is this?! It doesn’t hurt, but it’s something! Something!”

“Shut your mouth lest I turn the key,” Mukuro warned distractedly. “But, well, to take my lord’s lips first… Hmm, this might be a reasonable means by which to inform this girl of her place.” She pulled the key out of Origami’s stomach.

“Wh-wha—?!” Shido was stunned. He never dreamed they would get on board with that wild idea. He turned a pleading gaze toward Origami, begging her with his eyes to tell him what was even going on here.

She caught his gaze and held a thumb up as if to say, “We did it, Itsuka,” then touched her own lips and patted her chest.

“What? …Oh!” A heartbeat later, he guessed at Origami’s intention.

She had not simply come up with some random, desperate plan, nor had she offered him up as a sacrifice. She was trying to break free of this deadlock by making them kiss him—and thus either sealing Mukuro’s Spirit power or calling back the real Tohka. He’d been surprised at the offbeat proposal, but it was true that this would—

In the next instant, his thoughts were interrupted.

“…?!”

A moment later, his brain caught up, and the scene was replayed. Tohka kicking at the packed earth. A shadow appearing in front of him. The sky spreading out. In the time it took to blink, Tohka had closed the distance between them, grabbed his collar, and forced him to his knees.

“Huh?! Ah?! Hey!” he yelped, eyes darting frantically.

“Quiet. This will be fast,” Tohka spat, cool as a cucumber, while she yanked Shido up. With a ruthless edge in her eyes, she looked down at him and brought her lips toward his.

He was helpless, powerless to resist.

But their lips never met. A second before they would have, the tip of an enormous key was thrust into Tohka’s head.

“I will not allow it!” Mukuro glared at Tohka, her eyes hard.

“Hmph.” Tohka neatly threw her head back and dodged this blow. She shot a quick glance at Mukuro and brought Nahemah down with the hand not holding Shido’s neck.

Black light jetted outward and dug deep into the surface of the earth.

Mukuro nimbly flipped back to avoid the attack and pushed Michael at Tohka once again.

Nahemah, which could slice even an Astral Dress with a single blow, and Michael, which could seal an opponent’s powers if it so much as made contact. The powerful Demon King and Angel clashed again and again so fast the eye could not follow.

All in front of Shido, who was quite literally held in place.

“Eek!” he shrieked. “Eeeaaah!”

Blade and staff dripping with Spirit power grazed the area millimeters in front of his nose.

Tohka’s firm hold on his neck had him stuck where he was. Not only could he not flee, if he flinched the wrong way, his head might end up taking a trip without the rest of his body.

“…!”

“Hah!”

Not to mention that in the midst of this storm of sword and staff, both Tohka and Mukuro were persistently diving toward him and his lips. Inevitably, his body swung around with his neck as the fulcrum, like nunchucks in the hands of a kung fu star. The incredible g-force generated weakened his hold on consciousness.

“Hey! Stop! Please stop, both of you!” Origami’s voice rang out once again, just as he was on the verge of passing out. “I-I’m telling you, this is not the way! Your objective is an actual kiss! If you take it by force, it’s the same as attacking him with your weapon!”

“…Mm?”

“…Hm-hmm?”

Tohka and Mukuro furrowed their brows, perplexed. The fighting stopped as quickly as it had started, and Shido hit the ground.

“Hnrrf !” he groaned.

Origami made a small, worried sound, while Mukuro grumbled about Tohka.

But Tohka, holding Shido’s neck, showed no sign of being particularly bothered by any of this. She turned her gaze toward Origami and looked the girl squarely in the eye. “So then, what do you suggest we do?”

“…Hm-hmm.” Mukuro shifted her prickly gaze from Tohka to Origami. This appeared to be the question on her mind as well.

Suddenly the focus of two belligerent Spirits, Origami’s eyes darted around as if searching for words, a cold sweat springing up on her face. “Uh? Um. F-for instance…”

“Say ‘aaah.’ Open your mouth. If you don’t, I will make a hole in your cheek.”

“Do not lend your ear to what this outrageous girl says, my lord. Her actions quite obviously indicate she does not have a serious head on her shoulders. Ignore her. Come now, turn toward Muku.”

“What did you say?”

“What?”

“…Um.”

About an hour later, Shido was under a different kind of attack from both Spirits.

They were at a coffee shop well away from the street where they had brawled earlier. Having caused that much of a scene, they couldn’t exactly pop into somewhere nearby and have a quiet cup of tea.

Actually, would “quiet” really be the right word? Regardless, Shido was planted in between Tohka on the left and Mukuro on the right, a fork with a strawberry stabbed on its tines pushed at him persistently.

After some desperate persuading on his part, Tohka had changed from her Astral Dress into normal street clothes, but he couldn’t say this had made her less intimidating. And…how could he put this? The coffee shop Origami led them to was slightly different from a regular coffee shop.

“Welcome home, Master!”

“We await your return, Master!”

Cute waitstaff in frilly aprons greeted and sent off the customers.

Yes. This was a so-called maid café, where girls in maid uniforms served customers. Shido himself had once been forced to toil in a shop like this due to certain unavoidable circumstances, which gave him a decent understanding of how things worked at places like this.

“…Hey, Origami?” he asked in a hushed voice. “Why’d you pick this place?”

“…S-sorry,” Origami replied apologetically from her seat across from him. “I thought we wouldn’t stand out here.”

Yes. She had chosen the shop.

When Tohka and Mukuro had pressed her for an answer about how to get his coveted kiss without force, Origami had told them, baffled, “A kiss is actually what you do after you go on a date and get closer.”

“And I am asking you for a specific method,” Tohka had replied, irritation clear in her voice.

“I—I don’t really know the details myself,” Origami had replied. “But, um, maybe things like making him say ‘aaah’ and feeding him something?”

“Hm-hmm. I see.” Mukuro had nodded. “Well then, let us do that.”

The conversation had proceeded apace, and Shido now found himself pressed between two Spirits with catastrophic powers.

Still, they were either married to the strong-arm style or they hadn’t actually understood a word Origami said.

Shido himself didn’t yet totally understand what was happening. As a fork was shoved at him from either side, he said, “Hey, Origami? Why did Tohka invert? And you, too…”

“Um,” Origami said, obviously different from the usual Origami. “In my case, Mukuro closed the usual memory channels, which allowed the part that still had those access privileges to surface. Which is me, even though I’m not usually out on top too much. And…”

She glanced nervously at Tohka.

“This is a guess at best, but…I think maybe when Tohka’s memory channel was closed off, her sense of loss about losing you built up unconsciously. Nothing else that would make her despair has happened anyway.”

“Y-yeah?” he said. Nothing to make Tohka despair—which meant nothing had happened to Kotori and the others. He was well aware he couldn’t let his guard down in a situation like this, but that warranted a sigh of relief.

Perhaps frustrated with Shido for not paying attention to her, Tohka grabbed his head tightly in annoyance. “What are you whispering about? Forget that and look at me.”

“Hngaah!” His head was turned, and a cry spilled from his throat.

While this was only natural, Tohka showed no sign of any consideration for his pain. She simply thrust the fork with the speared strawberry at his mouth.

In the next instant, a small door opened in front of his mouth and swallowed her fork.

“What…?” she said, bewildered.

“Ompf,” came a voice from Mukuro’s direction.

He peeked over to find Mukuro chomping on the strawberry poking out of the door in front of her. Just as Tohka had been about to feed Shido a strawberry, Mukuro opened a door and ate it herself.

After chewing and swallowing the berry, Mukuro turned to Tohka with a bold smile. “What’s this? Muku assumed that you wished my lord to say ‘aaah,’ but it appears you intended to feed the fruit to Muku. Mm, are you in fact targeting Muku’s own lips?”

“…”

Tohka scowled, and a second later, her fork flashed, invisible to the naked eye.

Skreenk! The strawberry Mukuro held out was knocked flying, along with the end of her fork.

“Hmm?” Mukuro stared at her tine-less fork, and a heartbeat later, Tohka opened her mouth to catch the strawberry falling in a parabola toward her.

After swallowing this, she spit the end of the fork out onto the floor. The stainless steel utensil clattered against the tile.

“I return those words right back to you,” she said. “Exposing that fruit so defenselessly before me is no different from offering it up.”

“What did you say?” Mukuro turned infuriated eyes on Tohka.

Perhaps noticing the chaos unfolding at their table in the corner, one of the maids came racing over. “Ah! No, you mustn’t, my lady!”

“…What are you?”

“…Hmm. Such a strange appearance.”

Tohka and Mukuro both looked at the maid with dubious expressions.

The maid’s eyebrows twitched in surprise, but she was a professional. She quickly regained her service-industry-smile and continued, adorably. “You’ll trouble the master with all this rough play. Why don’t you try feeding it to him in a cute way?”

“Hmm. And what does that entail?” Mukuro asked as the maid cranked up the intensity of her smile.

“I’ll teach you a special secret spell to make the master want some cake, okay?” she chirped. “Put your hands together and make a heart like this.”

“…Like this?”

“Hmm.”

Copying the maid, Tohka and Mukuro made heart shapes with their hands. The maid shot a look at Origami, and she hurried to follow suit.

“Okay! Everybody ready? Here we go! Make it yummy, warm-n-cutie!”

“Make it yummy.”

“Warm-n-cutie.”

Expressionless in Tohka’s case and confused in Mukuro’s, the girls copied the maid’s little dance and repeated the lines. It was a surreal sight.

“Perfect!” the maid squealed. “Now you want to eat this cake, right, Master?”

“Huh? M-me?” Shido said, baffled.

“You. Want. To. Eat. It. Right?” the maid said insistently, pushing her face toward his. Her service-industry-smile was still plastered across her face, but a strange pressure also radiated from it, almost like she was saying, “Quit messing around here. These are your women, reign them the hell in.”

“…Y-yes,” he stammered. “Shido loves cake.”

“Great! You get a little happy face!” The maid smiled brightly, bowed, and left.

“I see. I have learned something here.” Tohka sniffed in satisfaction, reached for the plate of cake, and moved it from the table to the floor.

“…? What’s wrong?” Shido asked, unable to understand her actions.

Tohka made a heart shape with her hands and turned it toward the cake on the floor. “Make it yummy, warm-n-cutie,” she chanted before grabbing Shido’s shirt and yanking him down.

“Gah?!”

Her immense physical strength nearly made him fall over onto the floor. He threw out his hands so that he ended up on all fours.

“Good.” Tohka nodded, satisfied, and released his shirt. Then she stood up and sat down on his back.

He felt an indescribable, naughty pleasure at the soft sensation, the pressure of her weight, and above all else, this posture, and he flushed. “Hey! Wh-what are you doing, Tohka?!”

“Once the spell is cast, you cannot help but eat,” she told him sternly. “The only action you are permitted is the devouring of that which is upon the plate.”

“Uh, l-listen—”

Whap! Tohka slapped Shido’s rear end. “Do not talk back.”

“Hrrn!” Shido yelped at the sudden pain.

“Now eat. Like a dog,” she said, and pushed his head down.

Mukuro also stood up and crouched down in front of his face.

“Pshaw. You are a vulgar girl. Here, my lord. Muku will assist you.” Mukuro picked up a new fork and brought a bite of cake to her mouth. She then caught Shido’s cheeks in her hands and brought their lips toward each other. “Mm.”

“Wh-whoa?! Mukuro?!” Shido cried out as he realized what she was trying to do.

The next moment, his head suddenly turned upward, and Mukuro’s lips, having lost their target, planted themselves on a spot beneath his chin.

He hadn’t turned his own face away, however. Realizing Mukuro’s intentions, Tohka had yanked on his hair.

“What is this?” Mukuro demanded. “How dare you interfere.”

“Stop,” Tohka told her. “The agreement was the kiss comes after alms are given.”

“Hm-hmm? Of what do you speak? Muku was simply attempting to feed my lord cake.”

“Perfect. If you alter our agreement, I will accept its nullification. I can simply make this boy yield to me once I have slaughtered you.”

“You? Slaughter Muku? Surely you jest. I see the elements of a clown in you.”

“How dare you.”

Tohka and Mukuro glared at each other icily, and Shido could almost see the sparks flying.

“My ladies! This is a maid café! You must treat your master with respect and adoration!” The same maid came running over to admonish them.

“What?” Tohka glared at her. “You wish to grovel here as well?”

“Tohka?!” Shido joined Origami in bowing and apologizing and hurriedly dragged Tohka and Mukuro out of the café.

“We still don’t know where Tohka and Origami are?!” Kotori called out to her crew from where she sat in her captain’s chair on the bridge of the airship Fraxinus, hanging in the sky 15,000 meters above the city of Tengu.

“No, sir. There’s no sign of them in the east Tengu area!”

“And because they left their cell phones behind, we can’t use GPS!”

The crew replied as they tapped at the consoles on the lower deck, and Kotori gritted her teeth in frustration.

“Ngh!”

It had been nearly two hours since Tohka and Origami vanished from the Itsuka house. She’d been searching for them ever since, but she still had no clue as to their whereabouts.

“Where did you go?!” Kotori scowled. Naturally, if they had simply stepped out, she wouldn’t have all hands on deck looking for them. She had reasons for panicking.

First, the change in Origami. Kotori and the other Spirits had been surprised by how Origami seemed to abruptly switch personalities, but after some careful thought, she realized that she knew that Origami. That had been the Origami who lived in this world before it was changed. That personality had blended with the original world’s Origami, and she didn’t know why, but for some reason, it had surfaced.

“Ngh…” Kotori felt a stabbing pain in her head and pressed a hand to the back of her skull.

The world had been changed. Who had carried out such a gravely important task, and why? Why did she simply accept this unbelievable idea as natural and inevitable? She didn’t really know.

“Is this… Is that boy involved in this, too?” she muttered, contorting her face in anguish.

The name Origami had spoken—Shido Itsuka. A boy with the same surname as Kotori. Out of everyone there, only Origami had known the name of the boy who had appeared before all of them.

And Mukuro. The Spirit with the key Angel who’d apparently been in outer space.

Neither Kotori nor anyone else remembered anything about this boy or this Spirit. Neither did the Fraxinus crew, and when she asked the AI Maria, her response had been that she had no such data.

Just as Origami was talking about these unfamiliar people, Tohka had clutched her head and thrashed in pain. Then, similarly to Origami, she’d lifted her face to reveal a completely different Tohka.

She had looked around suspiciously before meeting Kotori’s eyes and asking her where Origami was. She had then materialized a jet-black sword, destroyed the Itsuka house, and left.

Yes. An inversion.

Kotori still didn’t know what had caused it, but Tohka’s Sefirah had abruptly changed attributes.

No alarms were ringing, but an inverted Spirit was loose. It was hard for Kotori to imagine what all of this meant. Most importantly, she needed to know what exactly had happened to Origami and Tohka.

The key to unlocking all these mysteries was most likely one of the names Origami had—

“…! Commander!” Nailknocker Shiizaki called from the lower deck of the bridge. “We’ve found their signals!”

“Really?!” Kotori leaned forward in her chair. “Can you put them on-screen?”

“Yes, sir! I’ve sent drone cameras that way, we will soon…” Before Shiizaki had finished speaking, a video popped up on the main monitor.

It appeared to be a maid café in the city. In one corner, Kotori could indeed see the very Tohka and Origami who had disappeared from her house. Actually…

“That boy… And that girl…” She frowned. The boy she’d encountered the day before and a girl she’d never seen before were there with Tohka and Origami.

An alarm blared from the speakers on the bridge.

“Wha—? Now what is it?!” Kotori cried, and the letters M-A-R-I-A popped up on the sub monitor.

“We’ve picked up on Spirit signals. We’re detecting Tohka, of course, but we are also detecting a very strong Spirit signal from the girl with her.”

“What…?” Kotori furrowed her brow as she turned her gaze on the girl shown on the monitor. Blond, golden-eyed, small-statured. For some reason, when Kotori looked at her physique—mainly her chest—she was captured by a sensation like she was remembering an unendurable humiliation from the long-distant past. Maybe it was some connection to a past life?

She didn’t have the time for that now, however. The fact that they’d detected a Spirit signal meant…

“So, she’s a Spirit…is that it?” she asked. “This can’t actually be the Mukuro that Origami was talking about?”

“It would be a reasonable assumption,” Maria agreed. “And while it is on a strange wavelength, we are also measuring a Spirit signal from the boy as well.”

“Wha—?!” Kotori gasped. “Hold up just one second there. You’re saying the boy is a Spirit?!”

“I cannot say with certainty,” Maria replied, coolly but with deep interest. “The signal is slightly different from the usual Spirit signal.”

“What on earth…? What is going on here…?” A hint of tension bleeding into her expression, she turned her eyes back to the monitor. On it, the boy—Shido—was on all fours with Tohka sitting on him, while the mystery girl—Mukuro—appeared to be trying to feed him cake with her mouth.

“…No, seriously, what is going on here…?” she said, bewildered, and put a hand to her forehead.

The air between Tohka and Mukuro turned violent, and the situation became explosive. Origami intervened while Shido soothed and placated the other two girls. Then they all moved from the café to a new location.

“I—I don’t understand it, but we can’t just leave them out there. Follow them!” Kotori commanded. “We’re on full alert here! Make sure we’re ready to move at a moment’s notice!”

“Roger!” the crew cried out.

“…Hmm.” Mukuro sighed unhappily as they walked down the road. She could not contain the irritation in her heart.

This was perfectly natural. After all, these two girls were supposed to have their memories locked so she could be alone with Shido, yet here they were.

What had happened? Michael’s power was absolute. Tohka and Origami shouldn’t have remembered Shido.

Yet Tohka and Origami had remembered him and were now interrupting their rendezvous. She gnashed her teeth. This situation was simply unbearable.

After they left the coffee shop, Origami led them around to a variety of date spots in the city. The movie theater, the arcade, the shopping mall… At all of them, though, Tohka had interfered in the sacred kiss between Mukuro and Shido and kept them from being alone together.

What was even more vexing was that these were all places that would have been pure heaven if she and Shido had visited them alone.

Tohka and Origami. Their presence chipped away at Mukuro and Shido’s precious time together. This was the ultimate stressor for her.

Shido belonged to Mukuro alone. He was the person who would love Mukuro and no one else. He was the person Mukuro alone would love. She could not forgive anyone who came between them—she didn’t care who it was.

She’d managed to make a show of not being bothered in her dealings with them because she couldn’t bear the thought of Tohka and Origami looking down on her. But she wasn’t sure how long she could keep that up. She was seething, her stomach roiling like a stew simmering violently.

Her time with Shido shrank with every second she had to spend with them.

Shido talking to, responding to, smiling at someone other than Mukuro. The voice, the words, the smile that should have been hers were being stolen by someone else.

Just the thought made her want to tear off her own skin.

“…What to do?” she murmured, her voice too quiet for anyone to hear, as she bit the nail of her thumb.

Normally, she would have immediately thrust Michael into both of their heads and locked their memories. But because Origami and especially Tohka were on their guard, she doubted it would be all that simple. And she still didn’t know how they had freed themselves from Michael’s lock to start with. Without knowing that, even if she did lock their memories again, it was possible that they would saunter up to Shido and Mukuro again with their smug little smiles.

Perhaps there was another Angel that could copy the power of Michael like Shido had done in space. In which case, it would make sense that the two of them were able to remember him.

She had to wonder, then, why the memories of the other girls remained locked. What if they, too, had gotten their memories back, and this was all part of a grand strategy to steal Shido from her…?

“Uh. Um,” Origami said, interrupting Mukuro’s thoughts. She stopped and waved a hand. “This is the place.”

They had apparently arrived at the next date spot (or battlefield) where Mukuro and Tohka would wrestle over Shido.

Mukuro frowned, annoyed, and turned her eyes in the direction Origami was pointing.

“…!”

She gasped.

Thmp. Her heart shrank, and her breathing grew rough. She herself didn’t understand why, but the instant she saw the thing rising up there, a large building in the shape of a steeple, her heart began to race.

“Well, yeah, I guess this is a date spot, but…,” Shido said hesitantly as he looked up at the building Origami had led them to.

Before them now was a steeple rising up as if to pierce the heavens. It was Tengu Tower. This was a mixed-use radio tower newly built after the Great Southern Kanto Spacequake of thirty years earlier. Inside, it was outfitted with an observation deck, and a variety of shops and commercial facilities had been built in its environs. It was a sightseeing spot, and on holidays, it was very busy with couples and families.

“…You know, now that I think about it,” he said, “Tengu sure does have everything, huh?”

“Yeah. It’s because it lost everything in the big spacequake thirty years ago,” Origami replied. “There’s not much left in the way of the old city, but we do have a lot of new things to make up for it.”

“So?” Tohka looked at them, arms crossed, finger tapping her elbow. “What about this tower, then?”

“Oh!” Origami said. “It’s, um, well, the rumor—or maybe it’s an urban legend… Anyway, people say that couples who kiss on the observation deck of this tower live happily ever after. So, I figured it was maybe perfect for this contest.”

“Ridiculous,” Tohka huffed and lifted her face to look up at the tower. “But…fine. The location is a trivial matter in the breaking of this boy’s spirit. Choose where you wish to get down on your hands and knees.”

Shido felt like she still had the wrong idea. He and Origami exchanged a look. He realized that sweat was beading up on both of their faces.

Meanwhile, Tohka was marching off ahead of them, and they were forced to hurry after her. It was simply too dangerous to leave her alone in her current state.

“Mm?” Shido looked back over his shoulder. Mukuro had been walking perfectly in step with him, but now she stopped in her tracks. “Mukuro? Something wrong?”

“…Naught,” she said in a small voice.

“Huh?” he asked in response, tilting his head.

“…Naught. I wish not to go.” She was unusually agitated. “This place… I dislike it.”

“Mukuro?” Shido scrunched up his brow.

Right up until that very moment, she had shown no signs of being upset, not even when Tohka and Origami showed up. Looking at her now, though, he could tell that her carefree expression had changed. He would even go so far as to say she looked scared.

“H-hey, you okay, Mukuro?” He peered into her face. He was worried.

Noticing his absence, Tohka and Origami stopped and turned around.

“What now?” Tohka demanded.

“M-Mukuro?” Origami asked, concern in her voice.

Shido put a hand on her faintly trembling shoulder and looked at Origami and Tohka. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I think Mukuro’s not great with this place. Could you take us somewhere else maybe?”

“She’s not?” Origami said. “Um, so then, we’ll just—”

“In other words,” Tohka interrupted, her voice cold, “you acknowledge your defeat?”

Shido felt Mukuro’s shoulders jump up slightly through the hands he had on them.

“I don’t mind,” Tohka continued. “The contest with you is secondary. You may stand by and watch as I make the boy yield to me.”

“…! Do not…speak such jests!” Mukuro stared daggers and took one slow step after another.

“H-hey, Mukuro?” Shido said anxiously. “You don’t have to force yourself, you know?”

“…Not an issue. I will not release you to that girl.” Even as her face paled, Mukuro moved forward with a firm resolve that would brook no argument.

Shido and Origami exchanged worried looks, but Mukuro seemed unstoppable at this point. They trailed after Tohka alongside her.

They entered the bottom of the tower, bought tickets, got in the elevator, and rode up to the observation deck. Mukuro remained pale the whole time.

What on earth was going on with her?

Before too long, the elevator arrived at their destination. Shido tugged on Mukuro’s hand now that her lighthearted step had become quite heavy as they stepped out of the elevator.

The observation deck was quite large—a glass-enclosed space expanding outward to surround the large elevator. In the center, he could see a souvenir shop, a small café, and even a simple shrine dedicated to a deity of romantic fulfillment. It may have been an observation deck, but it apparently wasn’t simply a place for enjoying the view.

“Ho-ho,” Tohka said quietly, and walked toward the window with the view of the city spreading out below. Origami hurried after her.

Mukuro, in contrast, was gradually growing more withdrawn and subdued.

“You okay?” he asked.

“…Mm. Fine.” She nodded exaggeratedly, deliberately stood taller, and began to walk.

It appeared to be nothing more than empty posturing to Shido.

“Are you afraid of heights?” he asked worriedly. He would have thought acrophobia was not something that afflicted a Spirit who’d spent who knew how long drifting through space, but her heart had been locked up then. Whether the current Mukuro would feel fear of such things was another matter altogether.

She slowly shook her head. “…No. But…while I do not know why, I feel a dislike of this place.”

“A dislike?” he said. “Have you maybe been here before, Mukuro?”

“…! …I know not.” Her shoulders twitched. “I have no memory of it.”

“You don’t…?”

Tohka whirled around from where she was plastered to the window. “I see. It does appear different from when flying through the sky. Hmph.” She turned toward Shido and Mukuro. “Shall we continue? We are still fighting to see who can first take the lips of that boy.”

“Uh. Um, Tohka,” Origami said nervously. “I’m sure you know this, but like I explained before—”

“I understand,” Tohka interrupted. “I must simply cajole him and leave his limbs intact.”

“You don’t understand at all?!” Origami shrieked.

“A joke. Come, key Spirit. I will smash you and your pride to dust,” Tohka said boldly, and used both hands to make the newly learned heart shape. She seemed to have mistaken this for some kind of fighting pose.

“…Acceptable.” Mukuro took a staggering step forward. “There is no space for the likes of thee between Muku and her lord—” She abruptly doubled over, clutching her stomach as though she were overcome by dizziness or nausea.

“M-Mukuro?!”

“Mukuro? Sweetie?!”

Shido and Origami bolted to Mukuro’s side as the tourists around them chattered.

“You’re okay, Mukuro,” Origami said, rubbing her back in the girls’ washroom.

“…Mm,” Mukuro replied lifelessly. Although her head was still pounding and she was assaulted by a nausea akin to an iron ball being dropped onto her stomach every few seconds, she was feeling somewhat better. She straightened up and took several deep breaths.

She herself didn’t understand her strong aversion to this place.

“Have you maybe been here before, Mukuro?”

Shido’s earlier question popped up in her mind.

Mukuro’s memories were still locked, which meant she couldn’t remember much of her past. Perhaps she had visited this place once, and something awful had happened.

Naturally, Michael’s power was absolute, but when Shido had unlocked her heart, it might have caused a tear in her memories. She couldn’t say for sure that it wasn’t simply a body memory she was reacting to.

If she used Michael to unlock her memory, perhaps she could learn what was causing this and how to deal with—

“…”

When she held up her right hand to manifest her Angel, she could only swallow hard. For some reason, she was checked by an intense feeling of rejection. She couldn’t help but feel that if she opened those memories, it could very well destroy her heart. And this anxious dread turned into a powerful sense of taboo, paralyzing Mukuro’s hand.

“…Mukuro?” Origami said, perhaps sensing this dread.

Mukuro took another deep breath. “…What?”

“Uh. Um. Just wondering if you’re okay.”

“No issue… I return to my lord.” Mukuro stood up and staggered away.

“Oh. Okay…” Origami trailed after her with a concerned air.

“…”

Mukuro remembered the feeling of Origami rubbing her back and stopped her feet momentarily.

“…You are called Origami?” she demanded.

“Uh-huh.”

“With locked memories, you are a kinder girl than the one in black.”

“Huh?” Origami said, surprised. “Uh. Um. Thanks…I think?”

“…Mm.” Mukuro snorted faintly and left the washroom, still not facing Origami.

“What is going on with Mukuro anyway?” Shido muttered to himself on the Tengu Tower observation deck, a troubled look on his face.

Mukuro had grown pale the moment they stepped into the tower, then collapsed—a far cry from the engaged, excited girl she had been up to that point.

However dangerous a Spirit she may have been, the fact remained that she was someone to be protected, even if she had locked everyone’s memories away. He couldn’t help but be worried.

“…”

He glanced at Tohka sitting with her arms crossed, looking quite put out.

“What?” Tohka, with her keen eye, noticed this and glared in return.

“…!” He jumped. “O-oh…”

Origami had gone with Mukuro to the washroom, which inevitably led to this configuration. The tension in the air had been something else.

At any rate, perhaps because Tohka understood this to be a contest, she was currently sitting and waiting quietly. If she started to rampage for some reason, he had no way of holding her back. His nervousness was to be expected.

“…”

But when he really thought about it, it was strange to be face-to-face with an inverted Spirit. He had so far encountered only three inverted Spirits, including Tohka. They had all begun attacking indiscriminately the second they inverted, so he’d never had a proper conversation with any of them.

“Oi,” Tohka said abruptly.

He jumped in his seat. “Wh-what?!”

“It’s starting to—no, it’s been bothering me for a while now,” she said, turning cold eyes on him. “This ‘Tohka’ you keep saying, is that my name?”

Shido was seriously surprised at the unexpected question—less for the content of it and more at the fact that she had spoken to him first—but he nodded as he stared back with wide eyes. “Yeah. It is.”

“Did I—no, I mean, did that me pick this name?”

“No… I did,” he replied honestly.

“…”

She stomped on his foot without a word.

“Owww! Wh-where’d that come from?”

“Somewhere.”

“Uh-huh…” Shido lifted his face with a scowl. “Do you have another name?”

“No. So while I don’t care for it, you may call me by this ‘Tohka’ name.”

“Yeah? Okay, then. Tohka,” Shido said, and Tohka once more stomped on his foot.

“Wh-why…?”

“Because.”

“…”

Shido cleared his throat to try and pull himself together. “So, Tohka, what exactly are you? What is this whole inversion thing? And like, what is a Spirit even…”

“Inversion?” She shot him a dubious glance. “So that’s what you call the phenomenon of turning into me from that me.”

“Mm… Well, yeah.”

Tohka sniffed contemptuously. “I don’t care for it. To start with, I am the personification of the Sefirah.”

“Huh? Wh-what do you mean?” he asked, bewildered.

Kotori had given him the rundown on inversion when it happened to Tohka before. But Ratatoskr hadn’t completely grasped the phenomenon, and so that explanation had been a fragmented mix of information and inferences.

Tohka scowled in annoyance. “When the primeval Spirit partitioned her powers and created the Sefirahs, their attributes were in what you would call an inverted state,” she told him. “The primeval Spirit, however, changed them into their current state. In other words, your premise is backward.”

“Wait. What on earth for…?”

She shrugged. “Presumably to make them more compatible with the people of this world. The Sefirahs are not originally of this world. In their original state, they would eat too much into the human body.”

“Huh?” Shido was confused. He got to his feet and grabbed Tohka’s shoulders as he threw out questions like an interrogation. “H-hang on. I don’t follow. The primeval Spirit made them more compatible with humans? Why would she do that?”

Tohka scowled, grabbed his shirt with one hand, and hoisted him up off the floor.

“Ngh… Ah…?!” he cried.

“Mind yourself, human. I did not speak to you because you desired it. It was a mere diversion.” Tohka narrowed her eyes and tightened her grip. “Hmph. So weak. Perhaps I will simply take your lips like this. Curse that girl. This way would indeed be faster.”

She placed her free hand under his chin and slowly brought her face closer.

“Uh. Um. Tohka?!” he yelped.

“Fool.” She sniffed and turned her face away, looking bored. “I would not. It means nothing unless you first yield your heart to me.”

Just then, something flashed in the corner of his eye, and he heard a shriek.

“Aaah!”

Tohka’s grip weakened, and Shido dropped to the floor.

“…! Koff! Koff…!” When he lifted his face, coughing, he saw Mukuro standing there looking serious, the key Angel Michael in one hand.

“What is your intention?” she demanded. “That you would lay a hand on my lord?!”

“…Hmph,” Tohka said, irritated, and turned cruel eyes on Mukuro. “This has nothing to do with you.”

“How dare…?!” Mukuro did not flinch in the face of Tohka’s threat. In fact, rage colored her face, a burning conflagration, and just as Tohka had with Shido moments ago, she grabbed Tohka’s shirt.

“W-wait, Mukuro! I’m okay, so—” Shido tried to stop her.

But Mukuro paid him no mind, her murderous glare fixed on Tohka. “You would purloin my lord? You would whisk away the person Muku loves, the person who loves Muku?”

“That is of no concern to me. How bothersome. Release me.” Tohka scowled grumpily as she held her right hand out straight and made it flash through the air.

A thin cut raced across Mukuro’s cheek, while a lock of her hair was sliced off and danced into the air.

“…”

Mukuro gasped and released Tohka.

This was not because Tohka’s attack had scared her, though.

She didn’t touch her bleeding cheek; she simply stared, stunned, at the golden hair slowly drifting to the ground.

“Aah. Aaah. Ah…” Her voice shook, and her eyes were wide. “How. Dare. Youuu!”

The world in front of Shido suddenly grew bright. Tohka went flying, smashing through the glass of the observation deck, and danced up into the sky.

“…! Wha…?!” He instinctively twisted away from the fragments of flying glass and quickly lifted his face again.

Chaos had descended on the observation deck. The tourists around them screamed and rushed the elevator.

But this was only to be expected after one of the windows had been so spectacularly shattered and a girl blown outside. Not to mention that the girl who had been blown outside and the girl who had sent her flying were now standing with no issue on the outer wall of the observation deck.

“You.”

“I’ll. Kill you. This is…unforgivable. Reprehensible!”

Tohka and Mukuro, who had at some point manifested her Angel Michael, faced each other on the exterior wall of the observation deck, both standing perpendicular to the wall as if they had no use for gravity.

But the girls themselves seemed not to notice the abnormality of this. A dangerous air radiated from them both.

“Muku’s hair… You cut. Muku’s hair,” Mukuro uttered as she glared at Tohka. “The hair that my lord, the hair that my lady…praised.” Particles of light began to cluster on Mukuro’s skin and take on the shape of a glimmering robe.

Her Astral Dress. A Spirit’s absolute armor and bastion.

“…! Mukuro! You have to stop! Tohka didn’t mean to!” Shido cried out in a panic.

Mukuro was not listening. She tightened her grip on Michael and stabbed the tip of her Angel into her own chest.

“Wha—?!”

“Michael. Siffleur!” She twisted the Angel with a klik.

In that instant, her Astral Dress flashed and changed form. The graceful silhouette shrank dramatically, turning into something that reflected her rage.

At the same time, Michael also changed in appearance. The staff-shaped Angel executed a transformation into a form reminiscent of a large Chinese-style polearm.

If her Astral Dress and Angel had, up to that point, been those of a female sage who had renounced the material world, then their current appearance corresponded to a malevolent warrior general.

It was not a Sefirah inversion. But the instant that she executed this transformation, a concentrated Spirit power radiated outward from her, generating enough force to shake the very air around her.

“Wh-what the…?!” Shido cried, racing up behind her.

“Mukuro!” Origami shouted, hot on his heels.

One among their group simply narrowed her eyes with fascination. Tohka.

“Ho-ho? Excellent. The battle for the taking of the lips is over. This way is indeed preferable. More straightforward.” And then with a daring smile, Tohka waved her hand.

Instantly, an Astral Dress the color of night wrapped itself around her, and the Demon King Nahemah appeared in her hand.

“I cannot. This is unacceptable,” Mukuro said, enunciating every word. “I shall return you to the void! I will leave no speck behind!”

“Excellent.” Tohka grinned. “Come, then. I will remove that head from its shoulders.”

Mukuro and Tohka. A Spirit of unfathomable power and an inverted Spirit squared off.

Chapter 10

Key and Sword

The main monitor on the bridge of Fraxinus showed a window of the Tengu Tower observation deck shattering just as an alarm began to blare.

“…?! What is—?”

“Two powerful Spirit signals detected!” Deep Love Minowa shouted. “We’re getting a category E!”

“What did you say?!” Kotori frowned, troubled.

A category E Spirit signal. In other words, an individual whose Spirit power differed from that of a normal Spirit—the sort of power an inverted Spirit displayed.

For once, they had been expecting a signal like this. They knew the inverted Tohka was on the observation deck.

Actually, “on” wasn’t exactly the right word. The main monitor showed two Spirits standing nonchalantly against the glass wall of the tower, long hair dancing in the wind.

“…!”

While Kotori’s attention was focused on the main monitor, another alarm began to sound. This one was a shrill siren with an ominous air.

It was not something she could hear from inside of the airship. It was a spacequake alert, which had been triggered by the intense Spirit power exuded by the two girls standing on the side of Tengu Tower.

Normally, a spacequake alert was issued when fluctuations were observed where a Spirit from the parallel world appeared in this world. It seemed that the country—or more specifically, the AST—had not missed these anomalous Spirit signal values.

People quickly and immediately vanished from the streets of the city. They were all hurrying to evacuate to their closest shelter.

“Ngh…” Catching glimpses of the sub monitor out of the corner of her eye, Kotori grimaced and clenched her hands into fists.

Ratatoskr was an organization with a mission to save the Spirits. She couldn’t simply sit back and watch in an emergency like this. And yet, no specific solutions came to mind.

They may have been able to shut down the rampaging Spirits if they used the weapons or CR units equipped on Fraxinus. But that would make them no different from the AST or DEM. And if the power of the Spirits was not nullified somehow, any such attack would simply be an endless deferment of the issue.

Even Realizers weren’t capable of sealing the powers of the Spirits. In which case, Kotori and her team had thus far…

“Ngh!” Kotori grimaced at the sudden pain stabbing into her head. Something wasn’t adding up. She felt like a single puzzle piece had gone missing. A complicated labyrinth missing a path forward.

As Kotori’s thoughts raced with no end in sight, a crew member called out to her abruptly, “Commander!”

Facing off on the wall of the observation deck, the two Spirits kicked off the ground—or rather, the wall—and closed in on each other instantaneously, the start of a battle in which gravity was very much not involved.

One Spirit was inverted, clad in an Astral Dress the color of night, a single-edged sword in her hands: Tohka.

The other had long, wild golden hair and carried a polearm with a key-shaped end—if Origami was to be believed, this was Mukuro.

They both kicked off the wall, scattering immense Spirit power as sword and polearm clashed. The aftershocks of each blow shattered the observation deck windows one after the other, sending glittering pieces of glass flying.

“…! We can’t just sit here and watch. Keep damage in the area to a—” Kotori abruptly interrupted herself when an alarm began ringing to indicate a transmission on an outside line.

“A transmission?” She frowned. “From where?”

“A normal phone line,” a member of her crew called in response. “It’s Origami Tobiichi’s cell phone!”

“What?!” she yelled. “Put her through!”

After a burst of static, Origami’s voice came over the speakers. “Kotori! It’s Tobiichi!”

“Origami!” she said. “What on earth did you do? Tohka is… And who is that other Spirit?!”

“I’m sorry. I’ll explain later. There’s no time now. Please help us! We can’t get near them like this! Can you please use Fraxinus’s Territory to hold them back a little?”

“I…I think that’s possible, but we won’t be able to completely constrain Spirits as powerful as the two of them. At best, all we can do is make their bodies feel heavier. That alone won’t—”

“I can take it from there!” A voice came over the speakers, interrupting her. Not Origami. The voice of a boy.

“Wha—?” Her eyes grew wide in surprise. Surprise not only at the unexpected voice, but at her own curious sense of relief. “Wh-what are you talking about? And who are—?”

“I don’t have time to explain now, but I’m the only one who can stop them. So please. Will you trust me and help us?” the boy pleaded.

“…”

Kotori was forced into silence for a few moments. She made up her mind. “Deploy a Territory in the area where Tohka and Mukuro are fighting!” she ordered. “Fire Yggdrafolium at the same time! Let’s minimize the damage around them!”

“Commander?!”

Her crew cried out in disbelief. This was only natural. Origami’s cry for help was one thing, but Kotori was now taking at face value the words of a total stranger.

For some reason, though, she couldn’t help but feel that her decision strangely clicked into place. Almost like she’d had this sort of back-and-forth countless times. Like he’d pushed her to extremes over and over again. Like she’d been forced to go along with his recklessness more often than she cared to recall.

Kotori flicked up the stick of her Chupa Chups, flapped the jacket hanging over her shoulders, and called out, “Listen up. We’re doing this. We fight our own way, hmm?”

“Wh-what did she say, Itsuka?” Origami peered at Shido’s face anxiously.

“Mm.” Shido nodded firmly and handed her phone back. “She said they’ll help.”

“Really?! That’s great.”

“Yeah. Really great,” he agreed. “Thanks for being the go-between there, Origami.”

“Uh-uh.” She shook her head vigorously from side to side. “I didn’t do anything. It was your words that reached them, Itsuka.”

“No, Kotori doesn’t remember me right now…”

Origami shook her head again. “She may not remember you, but there’s something else there. Somewhere deep down, she understands you. You’re siblings, after all.”

“Think so?” He gave her a pained smile, took a deep breath to get himself back on track, and slapped his cheeks. “We’re finally at the starting line. We gotta do whatever it takes to stop Mukuro and Tohka. I don’t know what your likability with Mukuro is at. Even if I do manage to kiss Tohka, I don’t know if she’ll go back to her regular self with her memories locked away, but…it’s do-or-die time. I have to try.”

He clenched his hands into fists, turned back to Origami, and looked her square in the eye.

“…I need you, Origami. I can’t take on both of them at once all by myself. Will you help me?”

“Itsuka…” Origami smiled brightly and nodded. “Of course. If I let you go by yourself, I’d end up in a huge fight with myself later.”

She locked her fingers together as she turned her back to him and continued.

“And…I’m glad you’d turn to me. That you’d let me stand beside you. A girl can’t be happy just having someone take care of her, after all.”

“Origami…”

She shot a look at him over her shoulder, smiled mischievously, pulled what looked like silver dog tags out of her pocket, and held them up to her forehead with a chank.

“Acknowledged, Origami Tobiichi. Brunhild deploying.”

The next instant, her body shone faintly, and gold armor with a graceful silhouette appeared around it.

A CR unit. The tactical culmination of the miraculous Realizer technology, and the sole power that allowed humans to fight Spirits.

That wasn’t all. Over and interwoven with the CR unit Brunhild, a snowy white Astral Dress manifested, reminiscent of a bride’s gown.

“You…” Shido stared in disbelief.

“Hee-hee! Falling for me all over again, Itsuka?” Origami joked, then flushed, embarrassed by her own words. “Um. Uh. I didn’t mean…”

“Oh. Ha-ha!” He smiled at her adorable awkwardness before narrowing his eyes sharply. “Here we go, Origami.”

“Right…Itsuka.”

The two of them leaped up toward the battlefield.

A siren blared in the city.

Natsumi watched the waves of people hurrying to shelters and furrowed her brow. “…A spacequake alarm? So then…”

“What if…it’s Tohka and Origami?” Yoshino said, anxiety coloring her tone.

Natsumi bobbed her head up and down. She didn’t really want to think about it, but it was perfectly possible.

Natsumi and Yoshino had been walking around the city looking for Tohka and Origami ever since their sudden personality shifts. Kotori had told them to let her handle it, but none of the Spirits could simply sit back and watch.

Natsumi didn’t know what exactly had happened to Tohka and Origami, but she did know it had to have been something extraordinary.

Origami had become much kinder than normal, which was a marvel all by itself, but the real issue was Tohka. She’d abruptly doubled over in anguish, and the next moment, she lifted her face, radiating a sinister aura.

It was the same inversion phenomenon that she’d seen in Nia. She didn’t know what had caused it, but—

“Yoshiii! Natsuuun!” A voice called out these unique nicknames while Natsumi was deep in thought. It was Nia.

Natsumi turned to find that Nia wasn’t alone. All of the Spirits who had gone out to look for Tohka and Origami were walking alongside her. She guessed that they’d all met up again at some point on their way here.

“What?” Natsumi asked. “You find them?”

“That’s a big nope. I’m hearing talk of a big kaboom over at Tengu Tower, though,” Nia said, pointing in the opposite direction from the flow of people. “Let’s go check it out!”

Natsumi exchanged a look with Yoshino and then nodded.

“Aaah!”

“Impudeeent!”

The key Angel and the sword Demon King clashed and bounced back. Each time, the Spirit power released sent shock waves and flashes of light rippling throughout the area like innumerable tiny explosions.

In the middle of the chaos, the key Angel Michael, transformed from a staff into a polearm, generated microscopic doors at irregular intervals to launch attack after attack in Tohka’s blind spot.

The speed of the battle was divine, imperceivable to the average human eye. Nothing more than a series of blinking lights in the sky. Even the average Spirit would have been hard-pressed to go toe to toe with Tohka on this level, and Tohka was grudgingly impressed by the key Spirit.

Most likely, her Spirit power had been locked by Michael, or her latent abilities had been temporarily opened. It was a beautiful sublimation, like a firmly closed bud blooming. A polearm of mortality, hostility, and pure murderous intent hardened into physical form.

The two Spirits were using the windows of the observation deck as footholds in their battle, and these shattered around them in the aftermath.

Tohka whirled around and moved even further up from the observation deck to the steel tower.

“You intend to set Muku out on her own? You mean to isolate Muku once again?” Mukuro howled, her attack not slackening in the slightest. “I shall kill you. Kill you. I shall kill any who attempt to take Muku’s lord from her!”

“Hmph.” Tohka sniffed disdainfully. “Then gouge my flesh without this blathering, key girl. If you can, that is.”

“You need not ask!” Mukuro readied Michael in front of her.

A strange sensation abruptly came over Tohka. She felt as though she were being swallowed up by a viscous liquid invisible to the eye. Her body grew heavy as lead, and her limbs grew reluctant to move at all.

“…What?” For a moment, she thought it was Mukuro’s doing.

It wasn’t. The other Spirit was also frowning, like she was feeling similarly strange. She turned hard eyes on Tohka. “What did you do?” she demanded.

This was someone else’s doing, then. Those people—the ones called Shido and Origami… Or perhaps their comrades.

This did not change what Tohka needed to do, however. She would slaughter the enemy before her. That was all.

“I shall devour you!” Mukuro had apparently reached the same conclusion as Tohka. She kicked at the air to accelerate and brought Michael down like an early summer rain.

Tohka inhaled sharply and beat back Michael’s handle to repel the attack. And then frowned slightly.

“…Hmm?”

She didn’t doubt that Mukuro’s attack carried with it the weight of her overwhelming power. For some reason, though, her instincts told her Mukuro didn’t mean this to be the killing blow.

Like Tohka, Mukuro’s movement was hindered, and she was quite certain that Mukuro wanted to kill her. It was more like Mukuro was carefully laying the groundwork to reach her true objective.

As Tohka considered this, she saw Mukuro move. She launched the polearm Angel with all her strength to bore a hole in Tohka’s midsection.

But she was reckless. Tohka twisted around and dodged the blow by a hair.

In the next instant, however, Mukuro twisted her Angel.

“Michael. Lataib!”

A door appeared in the space behind Tohka.

“Ngh!” She braced herself for an attack from behind. Instead, the door began to breathe, vacuuming the air out of the area.

Tohka floated up from the steel tower and was thrown into the sky. Most likely, the other side of that door led to a space with a serious air pressure difference.

But Mukuro wasn’t trying to suck Tohka into this door. It was instead a crucial distraction.

“Lataib!” Mukuro called, and a massive door immediately opened above Tohka’s head. Hunks of steel and stone and wood a hundred meters across rained down.

“Tch!” Tohka held Nahemah in a low position and swung it at the debris. It had probably once been a building of some sort.

A flash of light. A line raced across the enormous chunks, and then they split in two, missing Tohka entirely and dropping to the earth.

“Michael. Jerez!” Mukuro shouted again.

Impossibly, a new door opened between Tohka and the building debris skimming the edges of her body as it fell. A polearm in the shape of a key stabbed forward from inside of it.

“…”

She had only just brought her blade down to bisect the rubble falling toward her. She was off-balance. She whirled around to defend herself, but she was a heartbeat too late.

Michael shot through the edge of her Astral Dress and stabbed into a piece of the falling building.

“What…?” Tohka frowned.

The massive chunk of debris and her own Astral Dress vanished. They hadn’t been ripped apart or sucked into the door. They had simply disappeared like mist in the heat of the sun.

She had no time to wonder at this, however. The door grew wider, and Mukuro attacked from inside of it with Michael as her chief weapon.

“Haah!” Mukuro shouted.

“What mysterious—?!” Tohka danced out of range of the attack and used the momentum to get some distance from the other Spirit.

She leaped down to the ground to rematerialize the erased Astral Dress. But it didn’t return as complete as it had been. She may have been a Spirit, but shaping the absolute defense of the Astral Dress required a fair amount of power. And when her Astral Dress disappeared, the Spirit power it contained did not return to her. Her total Spirit power was being chipped away.

“…”

Her guard firmly up, Tohka watched Mukuro while she felt the remains of her Astral Dress clinging to her.

“The Spirit particles that composed my Astral Dress still linger,” she remarked. “Which means it was not erased. I would presume disassembly… You broke the link of molecules and Spirit particles with that key. I see. This was your true objective, then?”

“…”

Mukuro didn’t deign to offer a response. She simply planted her feet on the ground and stared hard at Tohka.

Tohka paid this no mind and readied Nahemah. Her opponent required this focus.

Murderous intent took control of her actions and thoughts, but the part of her that would have been called instinct was coolly assessing her opponent, seeking openings. In a word, she was quietly insane.

“Hmph.” A faint smile rose to Tohka’s face, and she turned the tip of Nahemah toward her dear enemy. “You have the face of a child, yet you are a full-grown warrior.”

Just as they were on the verge of clashing once more, however, voices called out to them.

“Wait! Both of you!”

“Please! You have to calm down!”

Shido and Origami wedged themselves between Tohka and Mukuro.

Tohka clicked her tongue unhappily and readjusted her grip on her sword to refocus her thoughts.

“You would interfere, then? Fine. I was going to beat you all down anyway!” she shouted and swung Nahemah. The inky black flash of her sword took on the form of a crescent moon and stretched out toward the humans standing between her and the other Spirit.

But Origami, clad in golden armor and snow-white limited Astral Dress, spun the lance in her hand around. Dark Spirit power collected at the tip and knocked aside Tohka’s slash.

“…What?” Tohka narrowed her eyes at the unexpected phenomenon.

It wasn’t that she was particularly surprised Origami had dodged this blow. She could feel her own movements being limited by an invisible power, and she hadn’t put her full weight behind the blow.

The Spirit power coiling around the tip of Origami’s lance, however, was clearly the same type as Tohka’s—that of an inverted Spirit. But only power she could sense in Origami right now was normal Spirit power and an artificial strength that tasted like the power enveloping both her and Mukuro.

She had to assume that the lance was able to collect any Spirit power hanging in the air, which made Origami’s intense expenditure of power make sense. After all, the air was full of the concentrated Spirit power of her own disappeared Astral Dress.

“Hmph. I must deal with you, too?” Her gaze sharpened as she brandished Nahemah and leaped into action. “You will at least entertain me, then!”

“…! She’s coming! Itsuka, take Mukuro!” Origami shouted, and stepped up to protect Shido from Tohka’s attack, dark Spirit power curling around the end of her lance.

Tohka, clad in black, clashed against Origami, in white. The two tangled together, leaping up high into the heavens.

“I’ll kill you. Destroy you,” Mukuro muttered to herself, watching this from the ground. “Anyone who tries to take my lord is an enemy. Muku…Muku doesn’t want to be alon—”

“Mukuro!”

“…!”

Mukuro gasped, her eyebrows shooting up. “My lord.”

Before her was none other than Shido Itsuka.

“Aah… You. My lord. You may rest easy. Muku will send that dark girl back to the void. And then—”

“Mukuro!” Shido grabbed her by the shoulders.

His desperation took her by surprise. “What is the matter? You need only leave Muku to handle this.”

“No.” He shook his head firmly. “This isn’t the way, Mukuro! You have to stop this. I don’t want Tohka to go away or Origami to forget all about me! Both of them—no, everyone, all the Spirits are important to me!”

“…!”

Mukuro gasped, nearly convulsing.

Shido paid this no mind. “Why? Why are you doing this? Please tell me, Mukuro,” he begged. “Why would you do all this to try and get rid of them?”

“What reason?” she said, her voice quiet but trembling.

“Huh?” He stared blankly at her.

“What reason would cause you to say such a thing? You…you like Muku, do you not? And Muku likes thee. In which case, is this not well? And yet, why? Why?!” Tears welled up in her eyes, and she shouted, “I hate it. I hate being alone! I will not let you—”

“Tohka! Origami!” a voice called out from somewhere, interrupting her.

“Wh-what are they fighting about?!”

“Eek! This is teeerrible!”

“…”

She looked over to find six girls had appeared on the scene—the Spirits whose memories she had locked. They were all staring up at Tohka and Origami crossing swords in the sky with expressions of disbelief and bewilderment.

“Ah.” Mukuro felt her heart shrink in her chest. “You… Even you. All of you, you all wish to purloin my lord from Muku. I will not allow it. You shall not pass. Enough.”

She felt her head spinning, everything inside of her being crushed. She gripped Michael in both hands and turned the tip downward.

“Michael. Segva!”

She pushed the key into the ground—actually, to be more precise, the Earth—and turned it.

Instantly, a tremendous rumbling began to ripple, almost as if they were standing on top of an industrial machine perpetually in operation. As if the Earth had transformed into an enormous creature with a fixed pulse. A slight but unending earthquake took over the area.

“…?! Wh-whoa?!”

“Wh-what is. This?”

“Panic. Is this…an earthquake?”

Shido and the Spirits cried out in surprise.

A faint smile on her face, Mukuro reached out her hand and gently caressed Shido’s cheek. “We’re safe now. I will not allow any interposition.”

“Mukuro…?” He turned suspicious eyes on her. “What exactly did you do?”

“I applied Segva to the star,” she told him happily. “The target is immense, and thus, it will take some time, but eventually, this planet’s spinning will cease.”

“Huh?” He gaped, astonished.

This didn’t bother Mukuro. Her smile grew even broader. “Now all those who would interfere with us will disappear. You shall live with Muku forever in space. Hee-hee! I so look forward to it.”

“What…are you—?” Shido was bewildered.

She ignored this and lifted her face. Yes. There was still one enemy she had to defeat with her own hands.

“H-hey, Mukuro! Hey!”

With Shido’s voice at her back, Mukuro looked at the dark shadow dancing in the sky and kicked off the shaking ground.

“Eeek! It’s an earthquake! I’m so scaaared!” Miku squealed, using the earthquake as an excuse to wrap her arms around the Spirit beside her. “I’m clinging to Natsumiii!”

“If you can narrate what’s going on, you’re not that scared!” Natsumi shoved Miku’s head away. Still, given the differences in their sizes and arm strength, she did end up captured.

They really did not have the time for games like this. Tohka and Origami were fighting in the sky, the spacequake alarm was going off, and now there was this mysterious earthquake. Natsumi had no idea anymore what to do about any of it.

“Wh-what on. Earth should. We do?”

“Hmm. Not too sure, but it’s gonna be real bad if we don’t stop Tokki and Oriri at least.”

“Assent. If they keep going, the AST and DEM will pick up the scent—”

“Gang!” a loud voice rang out abruptly, and the panicking Spirits turned their faces as one.

“…Huh?” Seeing the person there, their eyes reflexively grew wide.

And of course they did. Standing there before them was the strange boy from the other day.

“Y-you’re that boy…?”

“…Huh? You’re still stalking us even with the whole spacequake alarm ringing? I’m actually impressed. Wait. No, I’m not,” Natsumi said, rolling her eyes.

The boy raced over to them and bowed deeply as they stared suspiciously. “Gang,” he said. “Please. I need your help!”

“…Huh? Uh. What…?”

The Spirits were baffled.

“Um. Did something happen?” Yoshino asked, overcoming her confusion. Kind even to this boy of doubtful origin, she truly was a goddess with a heart full of love.

“Mukuro—the Spirit locked the Earth. If we don’t do something, this is going to get really bad!” he said desperately. “Please. I need all of your…Spirit powers!”

Natsumi frowned. As well she might. First of all, it wasn’t really clear what the boy was talking about. It seemed he knew about the Spirits, which only made him seem more suspicious.

However, after a few moments of hesitation…

“…Understood. If you think I can help,” Yoshino said with a nod.

“Y-Yoshino?” Natsumi turned to her with wide eyes. “Shouldn’t you maybe think this through a little bit? I mean, this is way sketchy.”

“Yes…but he doesn’t seem like a bad person.” Yoshino’s eyes were full of firm resolve. “And…I don’t know how to put it, but. I. Want to. Help him.”

The other Spirits chimed in with their own agreement, one after the other.

“Kah-kah! Aah, excellent. It would seem you have the bare minimum of manners.”

“Assent. I don’t know why, but I feel like something like this has happened before.”

“Mm. Well, if you girls saaay so… A boy is a boy but crop that image a little and his face is cuuute.”

“Aaah, mm. Sure, why not? This kind of plot twist gets me all fired up.”

“You guys…” The boy’s eyes were teary with gratitude.

Natsumi started to feel awkward and sighed heavily. “…What? So now I’m the bad guy here? Fine, okay. I’ll help, too. What exactly are we supposed to do here?”

The boy’s face lit up happily. Then he froze in place. “Um. So…”

Natsumi sighed again. Apparently, he hadn’t thought through the specifics.

“Honestly. What are you doing?” Kotori said from somewhere.

“Kotori?!”

“Huh? Where?”

“I’m sending my voice from Fraxinus via the Territory,” Kotori explained. “It’s just like that guy says: Spirit power’s eating into the ground. We don’t know what kind of effect it’s going to have on the Earth, but we can’t just let it happen. We’re going to send Yggdrafolium to six points right now. You all take up position at each of them and channel your Spirit powers through the Yggdrafolium. We should be able to keep the Spirit power from digging any deeper for the time being.”

“Ho! Sensible,” Kaguya cried. “You do well, Kotori! I shall make you my retainer.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Kotori responded dryly. “That’s about all we can do from here. The fundamental issue’s not going to be resolved until we do something about the Spirit and Angel causing all this chaos. You’re sure you can handle that, Shido Itsuka?”

“Yeah.” The boy nodded firmly. “Thanks. For real, everyone. I’m counting on you.” He turned his back to them and was about to walk away when Natsumi called out to him.

“…Where are you going?”

Without looking back, the boy replied, “To the girl who’s holding my hand.”

“I shall not…release him to you.” Mukuro stood on the trembling earth and glared at the two Spirits locked in fierce combat in the sky above.

Tohka was currently focused on the battle with Origami, and Mukuro would have no trouble coming up on her from behind.

“Michael. Lataib!” she shouted, and twisted Michael in her hand. Instantly, a small door opened, just big enough for Michael’s tip to slip through.

Naturally, the other side of the door opened in Tohka’s blind spot. She would thrust Michael through and turn the key Angel. The finishing move would be Jerez, the most mysterious of Michael’s secrets—material disassembly. Any and every material in this world returned to nothing when confronted with this power. Tohka would be no exception.

“Jerez!” Mukuro watched for the right moment in the battle and thrust the key Angel toward the door in space.

The moment Michael was about to go through the door, however, Shido leaped in front of her and threw his arms out.

“Mukuro, you can’t!”

“…?!”

Mukuro’s eyes flew open, and a jolt ran through her.

It was too late. Although the muscles in her arms had stiffened reflexively and her aim was a little off, the tip of Michael stabbed into Shido’s shoulder.

“Hngh?!” He grimaced in pain, and she hurriedly yanked backward to try and pull the Angel out.

In the next instant, however, a curious sensation overcame her, and she let out a startled cry. “Huh?”

Images poured into her like surging waves through the polearm stabbing Shido. And it wasn’t one-sided; she felt something leaking out of her as well.

She didn’t know what this was. It felt like the interiors of the two individuals that were Shido and Mukuro were being mixed, like two bottles full of different liquids being connected and shaken.

Aah. This was not the first time she’d felt this. Yes. That time. When Shido had inserted his fake Michael into her in space…

“…”

Yes. That time. That cold winter’s day. Something had appeared before her when she was sunk into despair. Something with a strange form, as though blurred by water or pixelated. This something had handed her what looked like a gem that shone with a golden light.

It was that time when she—Mukuro Hoshimiya—became a Spirit.

She was not afraid, though. Actually, it would perhaps have been more appropriate to say her joy overpowered her fear.

She had Michael now. The key Angel could lock objects, but more importantly, intangible things, too—even people’s memories. If she used this power, she was sure that her big sister, her father, and her mother would love only her.

Mukuro quickly got to work in high spirits. She opened a door in space, inserted Michael into all of her family’s acquaintances and friends and locked their memories of Mukuro’s family.

The results were unexpected. The reaction of her family when she went home that day was utter confusion at the discovery that no one knew them anymore. They were so perplexed by the unusual situation that they had no time for Mukuro.

She had believed that if they had no one but her, they would give her all their love. But love and affection were the furthest things from their faces when they found out Mukuro herself was the one who had done this to them. Instead, they looked at her stunned and angry, panicked and upset. There was rejection in their eyes.

Father, mother, and sister feared Mukuro after she obtained this mysterious power. They turned away from her.

She didn’t remember what they had said. Even though she could vividly recall the scene, she could only hear fragments of the dialogue in this mental tableau.

“Monster.” “What did you do?” “Don’t kill me!” “Get out.” “Someone like you.” “Not family.”

Perhaps it wasn’t that she didn’t remember what they had said, it was simply her brain doing a kindness in keeping it from her, knowing her heart could not stand to go through the anguish again line by line.

The pain in her heart, at the very least, was vividly remembered. It hurt. She couldn’t breathe. Such sadness. Such loneliness. These emotions swirled around and around inside of her, and before she knew it, she had stabbed the father, the mother, and the sister with Michael and locked away the memories of herself inside of them.

If she had heard them speak another horrible word, she may have lost her mind.

Just like that, Mukuro was alone once more.

It wasn’t as simple as returning to the life she’d had before. Now she knew the warmth of family. Now, in a way she had never been before, she was truly alone.

When she thought about it, she had never deserved to love anything. She had been dropped into this world without love, so she hadn’t realized how twisted her own understanding of love was.

If she loved, she had to be loved. If she loved, she had to be the only one seen.

So Mukuro had locked her own memories. Her own heart. So that she would no longer remember she’d had a family, the warmth of a family.

So that she would never love anything again.

“Ah!” Shido’s own cry sounded foreign to his ears. Michael stabbed through his shoulder where he stood in front of the door in space. Strangely, it wasn’t exactly painful. Instead, images of a girl flooded into him as if through the Angel.

It was the dream he’d had these last few days. These were most likely Mukuro’s locked memories.

Now that he thought about it, he first started having this dream after he’d stabbed Mukuro with Michael in space to unlock her heart.

He didn’t understand the underlying principle, but the lock on Mukuro’s memories had probably started to break apart and flow into him through the Angel. And now, when they were once again connected by Michael, the lock on those memories had, at last, shattered.

“Mukuro… You… You, too…,” he said, his voice trembling faintly as he tried to reach out to her. A moment later, an intense pain shot through his arm, and he screamed. “Hngah?!”

His arm from the shoulder where Michael had skewered him down to the wrist flew off.

“Hngh… Aaah?!” The devastating pain wrenched new bloodcurdling screams from him.

The sensation was entirely different from his hand being cut off or crushed—it was an annihilation. His arm and his shoulder had rejected their very existence on his body. What little remained from the wrist down dropped to the ground in a sea of blood.

“Gah… Aaaaaaah!”

Instinctively, he activated the sound Angel Gabriel, cloaking his voice in Spirit power to heighten his healing powers, dull the pain, and stop the bleeding.

At the same time, he used Haniel to cover the open wound on his torso, although this was nothing more than a stopgap. It would have been a bad bit of luck if even this power had been sealed by Mukuro, but it seemed she had locked only Haniel’s ability to turn into Michael.

Obviously, this was a drop in the bucket compared to the treatment he really needed, but it had some effect. At the very least, he managed to avoid passing out or going mad from the extreme pain. Camael’s curative flames were smoldering at the wound, but perhaps even the Angel’s power was not enough to heal such a huge loss, or maybe it would simply take time—either way, the flames were ineffective.

Sweat springing up all over his face, he looked toward Mukuro. “Mu…kuro…”

“Ah… Ah. Aaah. No, my lord. I wouldn’t… Muku… Muku would never try to kill you…” She was shaking with terror and staring into space with unfocused eyes. She let Michael fall from her hand, babbling all the while. “No… Don’t leave Muku alone. Ah. Aaah, my lord. My sister. Muku is… Muku is…”

Mukuro grabbed at her head, clearly confused, like dream and memory and reality were all bleeding into each other. Tears fell from her eyes as a stream of somehow muddy-looking Spirit power began to pour from her body.

“Unh… Ah,” she cried. “Aaaaaah!”

“No…!” Shido had seen this phenomenon before.

Inversion.

The fact that she’d dealt Shido a fatal blow with her own hand, and the return of the memories that led her to lock her own heart—these together were indeed more than enough to paint Mukuro’s heart black with despair. Red rips appeared in her elegant, bold Astral Dress and colored it a manifestation of chaos. The tears streaming from her eyes transformed to a dark ink, and Michael on the ground vanished into dust, while, as if in its place, a massive key came into being on her back.

“No… You…can’t… Mukuro!” He managed to stagger forward somehow. If he didn’t do something, she would really invert.

But the whirlwind of concentrated Spirit power around her blocked his way forward and attacked him.

“Hngh!” In his current condition, he was hard-pressed to evade or repel this blow. All he could do was brace himself.

In the next instant, a fierce slicing attack rained down from the distant sky and dispersed the mass of Spirit power closing in on him.

“Huh?” He opened his eyes wide in surprise. For a second, he thought it was backup from Fraxinus, but no. This was Nahemah’s—

“Hmph.”

He heard a voice from above and looked up.

“Don’t get the wrong idea. Such an easy death is simply not suitable for you, not when you have dealt me such humiliation,” Tohka said, vexed, and danced back up into the sky toward Origami.

“Tohka…,” he murmured before turning back to Mukuro.

Tohka no doubt meant exactly what she said. It was an undisputable fact, though, that her blow had opened up a way forward for him. Grateful to her for giving him this chance to reach Mukuro rather than for saving his own life, Shido stepped forward and wrapped his remaining arm tightly around Mukuro.

He couldn’t really get his body to work properly yet, and he was more leaning on her than embracing her, but regardless, he called to her desperately.

“Mukuro! Mukuro! Come back to me! You have to stay. You can’t go to that side!” He hugged her as tightly as he could, using up what little strength remained in his body.

He hadn’t understood why she would go this far to try and expel the others and have him all to herself. Everyone felt jealous and possessive at times. The magnitude of Mukuro’s emotions, however, was far from normal.

Now, though, having shared her memories through Michael, he understood.

“Mukuro… You’re me,” he said, pleading with her as the dark Spirit power colored more and more of her body.

Yes. Mukuro was Shido. To the point where, when he first saw her past in his dream, he’d thought he was remembering his own past.

He, too, had been abandoned by his mother, alone from his earliest memories. He was taken in by the Itsuka family, and he had, for the first time, the warmth of a father, of a mother, of a sibling—of a family. He understood it all.

“Mukuro… You were so anxious, weren’t you?” he said, his voice hoarse, and he felt her shoulders shake just a little bit. “You felt so helpless you could hardly stand it.”

Yes. She had been anxious. Because there was nothing that could have been called love at the origin of her memories. The warmth she had suddenly been given one day felt good—it was dazzling. But somehow, she couldn’t quite grasp it entirely. She wondered if it wasn’t really all a fantasy, if it wouldn’t all disappear the moment she woke up.

She should have been happy, and yet this seed of anxiety was always in her heart. So when her family spoke intimately with anyone other than herself, when they were part of a world that she didn’t know, she felt like her heart was being pulled out of her chest.

After all, she had simply been grafted onto these people’s lives. They no doubt had other things that were more precious to them.

The young Shido had also felt this, although not to the extreme that Mukuro did.

“But look, Mukuro… It’s okay.” His vision was clouding over, so he had to grope around to find Mukuro’s head and stroke her hair as he continued. “You didn’t need to worry. Your dad and your mom and your sister… No matter how far away they are, they’re connected to you. I mean, that’s what family is, after all.”

This was what his dad, his mom, and Kotori had taught him. But if he’d gained the same power as Mukuro before he learned this lesson, he didn’t know what would have happened.

“……!”

He heard Mukuro gasp quietly.

“But…Muku…,” she stammered. “Muku has…no…”

“…Me!” His own voice grew louder in response to Mukuro’s fading into nothing. “I’ll be your family. You don’t have to worry anymore. I’ll never forget you, no matter what happens. No matter what you do, I will never hate you!”

He started to cough violently, blood choking his throat, but he ignored it and continued.

“Aaah… Just that’s…not enough, huh? Mukuro, you need…to promise, too. There’s no point…if it’s one-sided… I mean, we’re… We’re family.”

“…! My lord, Muku is…,” Mukuro said, her voice trembling. In that moment, her tears reverted from dark sludge to clear drops.

But the Spirit power filling the area around them increased in intensity.

Was this the moment? The brink where Mukuro either came back to this side or turned?

“Mukuro.” He didn’t know if she had really understood what he was trying to tell her. But he was out of time and ideas. He mustered up the last of his strength to nudge her face upward.

“Mm!”

“…”

He touched his lips to hers.

A kiss that tasted of the blood in his mouth. A kiss that was literally too bloody to speak of love.

With a prayer, Shido closed his eyes tightly. And finally, through their touching lips, something warm poured into his body. The familiar sensation of sealing, the Spirit power moving from Mukuro and into him.

At the same time, her Astral Dress and the key-shaped Demon King on her back lost their luster and melted into the air.

“…! Mukuro!”

“Ah… Unh…” Now stark naked, Mukuro leaned against him helplessly.

But Shido had also reached his limit. He was a husk leaning on Mukuro, and so he inevitably crumpled to the ground and fell over onto his back.

“Gaff…?!” he cried out pathetically when the hard earth slammed into the back of his head. Although the scream was more because of his bloody shoulder jostling with the fall.

While the combined first aid techniques of Gabriel, Haniel, and Camael had kept him alive in the short term, he had suffered a serious injury that normally would have been fatal. He could have easily died instantly, in fact. He almost wanted praise for merely writhing in pain.

“…”

Perhaps worn out from crying, or perhaps having spent all her energy, Mukuro started to snore gently on his bloody chest. He looked down at her and let out a huge sigh.

“Mukuro… Thanks for believing in me…” He patted her head absently and let his own head fall back toward the sky.

But for some reason, he had a very bad feeling. Even though he’d finished an impossibly huge task, he couldn’t help but feel like he’d forgotten something important.

A response came in the form of something plummeting straight toward him at incredible speed.

“Wha—?!” he cried out in astonishment, his eyes widening.

Just as the missile was on the verge of slamming into the ground, it decelerated dramatically and landed gently next to his head. A skirt of darkness fluttered in the wind across his field of view. Yes. The missile was…

“Hmph. I thought you might have been something, but there you are on the ground, girl.”

…the inverted Spirit Tohka, fresh from her midair contest with Origami.

“Toh…ka…!” Shido gasped and shifted to protect Mukuro sleeping on his chest. “…Thanks. It’s because of you that I was able to…stop Mukuro…”

“Hmph. I don’t care,” she said, turning hard eyes on him as he looked back at her helplessly. “I’m simply going to destroy the both of you.”

There was no way Mukuro had the power to fight back against Tohka now, not after having her power sealed and passing out. But Shido couldn’t have been said to be in top condition, either.

“Ngh. You’re okay?!” Origami called, landing a few seconds after Tohka a little ways off.

But he could see the brutal damage to her Astral Dress and her CR unit. Even Origami was on the ropes in a fight with an inverted Tohka.

“…”

Tohka glanced at Origami, looked around with a sneer, and finally turned her gaze back on Shido and Mukuro.

He felt dampness on his back. This was, of course, to be expected. That earlier blow had been a mere whim for Tohka. If she had been similarly inspired, she could have killed Shido and, more importantly, Mukuro and Origami.

“Ngh…” As gently as he possibly could, he set Mukuro down on the ground and tried to stand up, gritting his teeth against the dizziness and the pain. He was indeed in the worst possible physical condition. If it were between human and zombie, he would have been more zombie by a narrow margin.

But he was the only one who could bring Tohka back. He roused himself with sheer force of will and stood on his knees.

“Hngh… Unh,” he moaned. “Ah…”

“Hmph.” Tohka looked down at him with icy eyes, then bent over to grab his shirt.

“Nngaaah?!” he shrieked.

“Itsuka!” Origami cried out and moved to attack Tohka.

Perhaps checked by Tohka’s icy glare, she stopped, rooted to the spot. There was a good reason for this. The distance between her and Shido was plain to see. If she made a wrong move, he would be flying with the angels before her lance even touched Tohka.

“…”

Heedless of Shido grimacing in pain, Tohka easily yanked him up. And then she glanced at Mukuro lying on the ground and spoke in a cold voice. “You made a warrior into a child.”

“Ngh…” He felt her eyes piercing him.

Then she sighed and continued sadly. “…I tire of this.”

“Huh?” He couldn’t help but stare in surprise. This attitude was very unlike the inverted Tohka.

This surprise was soon overshadowed by an even bigger shock.

She pulled Shido toward her and, without the slightest hesitation, pressed her lips to his.

“Mmm?!”

“Eeek?!”

Equally surprised, Shido and Origami cried out at the same time.

Tohka showed no signs of being flustered as she released her grip on his shirt.

“…Ow!” He hit the ground hard on his backside. The same jolt of pain shot through him. Even as he grimaced, though, he couldn’t take his eyes off Tohka.

Her Astral Dress flashed and flickered as it turned into particles of shining light, which were blown away by the wind. She looked down at him with the same cool eyes, which somehow contained an air of mystery now. “Don’t…,” she muttered.

“Huh?” He gaped up at her.

“Don’t make ‘Tohka’ too sad,” she said, and crumpled to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut.

“T-Tohka?!” He hurriedly looked over at her lying on the ground.

The hard edges melted away from her face, and a peaceful expression took their place. “Mm… Mwah…,” she said in her sleep. The structure of her face itself was not so different, but the aura radiating from it had returned to that of the Tohka that Shido knew too well.

Breathing a sigh of relief, he rested his head on his upright knees.

“Itsuka, are you all right?!” Origami raced over to him, and he gave her a wan smile, then waved a wobbly hand.

“More or less… Actually, no. Maybe not?”

“R-right! With this injury…” She looked him over in horror. “We need to get you to a medical Realizer right away!”

“Yeah.” He nodded slowly. “I guess. Wonder if Kotori and they have their memories back? And we can’t leave Mukuro and Tohka here naked. Fraxinus needs to—”

There, Shido stopped himself. Actually, he was forced to stop.

Mukuro had abruptly sat up and covered his lips.

“Pfft! M-Mukuro?!” He stared in surprise.

“…Hmm. Carelessness is the enemy, my lord.” Mukuro smiled audaciously, her head wobbling.

“Wh-what on earth…”

“You kissed Tohka.”

“Uh…” His eyebrows shot up. He’d assumed that she had been persuaded by his arguments. She couldn’t actually be saying she wanted to monopolize him—

“Rest assured.” She smiled like she could read his mind. “I am…fine. Whatever you might do, Shido, Muku will no longer be anxious. Whatever else…we are family.” Her cheeks colored as though she were slightly embarrassed.

Seeing this, his own face relaxed into a smile, and he exhaled the breath he’d been holding. “Mukuro…”

“Now, then,” she said, as if to cut him off, and ran a finger across the lips that had only just touched his. She smiled mischievously. “This level of contact is nothing, yes? We are family, after all.”

“…Um.”

…What did “family” mean, exactly? Suddenly, Shido felt a pang of anxiety as to whether he could live up to his promise.

Epilogue

Reunion

They say the night sky feels so close you could reach out and touch the stars. As someone who had in fact swum through space and been caught up in a pseudo-meteor shower, though, Shido didn’t even want to think about reaching out to touch them, not even by accident.

The stars were beautiful because they were so far away. He let out a long sigh as he looked up at the crowded night sky.

A few days after he’d sealed Mukuro’s Spirit powers, he was stargazing from the roof of the apartment building rising up next to the Itsuka house. It was a request of the girl lying beside him.

“Mukuro.” He called her name quietly, and she turned her gaze toward him, pushing her longs bangs aside with a finger.

“Mm. What is it, my lord?”

“Are you sure about this? Kotori said she could find someplace even better for you to look up at the night sky, if that’s what you want.”

“This is excellent. Muku is to live in this place from now on, yes? In which case, this is good.”

“Yeah?” The corners of his mouth softened, and he turned his eyes once more to the night sky. As he stared at the twinkling stars, he stretched out his right hand and opened and closed it several times.

He wasn’t trying to grab any stars. He was simply checking that his right hand would move. His right arm had popped right off, but it had been regenerated the same as it had been. Although in order to restore a lost part on such a large scale, he’d needed not only the power of Camael but also that of a Realizer.

That said, however, the treatment, the containment of Mukuro, and the cover-up of the incident had been carried out as quickly as possible. And suddenly, the people whose memories of Shido had been locked away remembered him all at once and helped him out in all kinds of ways. To the point where he’d had to do a bit of work consoling the Spirits, who blamed themselves for what happened, wondering, when they saw Shido’s injury, if it was because they had forgotten his existence.

As if her previous possessive aggression had been nothing but a dream, Mukuro was shockingly docile. She did exactly as Kotori and Reine told her to and underwent all kinds of tests.

And today, when both Shido’s treatment and Mukuro’s tests were finished, and they were seeing each other again for the first time in a while, Mukuro had said that she wanted to look at the stars with him.

“Before.” Mukuro said this one word to break her silence, and Shido turned his gaze toward her.

“Huh?” he asked.

“I used to look up at the stars like this with my sister,” she told him softly. “Muku loved those times with all her heart.”

“Yeah… I guess you would have,” he replied quietly.

He knew this story. He’d dreamed about it when Michael performed the role of pseudo-path between her and him and their memories had mixed together.

He’d felt a peace and joy from the bottom of his heart when he had that dream. That had to have been what Mukuro felt at that time.

“Why did Muku not realize it then?” she wondered. “That I didn’t have to worry, that my sister, my father, my mother, they all loved me.”

“…Mukuro.” Shido shook his head slightly before continuing. “You can’t blame yourself. I mean, no one wants to be all alone. It’s only natural you’d try and protect your place. I get it. My way of doing it was just a little different is all.”

“My lord…” Mukuro glanced at him and then slowly lowered her eyes. “I see… I understand now. You, too, are the same as Muku. So then perhaps that’s why…I felt safe with you.” Her cheeks softened into a smile.

Now that she mentioned it, she must have also shared his memories in dreams, just like he had experienced Mukuro’s past in his sleep. He grew a little embarrassed and scratched at his cheek.

“Hmm,” she said. “I recall now that there were some things in my dreams that I did not fully understand.”

“Huh?” He glanced at her. “Like what?”

“For some reason, when you were at home alone, you placed your hands on your hips and shouted, ‘Secret Attack Instant Flash Bomb’ and—”

“Aaah, that was totally not me,” he said, as if to cut her off. “Must have been an actual dream you were having.”

“Hm-hmm?” Mukuro cocked her head to one side curiously. “Is that the case? Well, acceptable.”

She nodded and turned her face back to the sky. For a while, they stared wordlessly at the stars once more.

“Say, my lord?” Mukuro said quietly after some time.

“Hmm?” He looked over at her. “What?”

“You said…you would cut my hair.”

“Huh?” His eyes flew open.

It was true that he had said that on their first date, but…Mukuro had very firmly rejected the idea. In fact, the direct cause of her battle with the inverted Tohka was the fact that Tohka had cut a lock of her hair off.

“Do you want that, Mukuro?” he asked tentatively.

“…Mm-hmm. I wish to…feel a little refreshed.” Mukuro smiled, somehow sadly, and twirled her long hair around a finger. “You will cut it for me, of course? I do not wish to allow anyone other than family to touch my hair.”

Her tone was joking, and for a second, Shido was taken aback.

But he quickly nodded firmly.

“Yeah,” he said, gently stroking Mukuro’s hair. “You just leave that to me.”

The familiar chimes echoed through the school building. The students in the hallways of Raizen High said goodbye to their friends and stretched on their way to lessons that were about to start as they entered their classrooms.

“Whoops! Already time for homeroom? We’re just in time.” Flying through the school gates in the nick of time, Shido sighed in relief as he took the scarf wrapped around his neck and fanned himself.

The road to school was as cold as ever, but because he’d started running along the way, he was sweating lightly.

“Mm. That was close,” Tohka said, crossing her arms. “I mean, it’s because you went and tried to get inside Shido’s coat on the way here, Origami.”

“I have reflected on that matter sincerely. I have no words to express my shame. If there is a hole, I want to get inside of it.” For once, Origami admirably bowed in contrition.

But in the next instant, she dropped down low and stuck her head under the hem of Shido’s coat.

“Eeaaah?!” he shrieked.

“H-hey! You didn’t reflect on anything at all!” Tohka yelled accusingly.

“There was a hole, so I simply attempted to enter it,” Origami said. “There is no issue here.”

“There’s nothing but issues!”

Tohka and Origami began to bicker once again, and Shido sighed.

About a month after everything with Mukuro, the damage from the battle had been completely recovered, and normal everyday life had returned to the city of Tengu. Even Tohka, who had inverted, and Origami were stable now.

Naturally, having lost its base, Ratatoskr was still working to rebuild its organization, and DEM was still after the Spirits, the same as ever.

But the city had regained a peaceful enough face that they could enjoy carefree days like this one.

Mukuro had been worried about fitting in with everyone, but thanks to her initial baptism by Miku—“Aaaw! She’s so cute, cute, cuuute! So teensy and plush! A totally new tyyype!”—she had found her place with the other Spirits even sooner than Shido had expected. Or rather, they sympathized with her… The empathy of the victim, perhaps. Well, Mukuro did seem to be a little on guard against Miku.

“Come on, simmer down,” Tohka insisted. “We gotta get to class. We just barely made it. You don’t want to make us late, do you?”

“Mm,” Origami agreed. “Fine. I won’t cause trouble for you, Shido.”

“Roger that.”

When Shido stepped in between them, Tohka and Origami obediently sheathed their swords.

The truth was, although they argued about every little thing, they actually got along pretty well. In fact, there was a part of both of them that accepted and deeply respected the other.

It was a pleasant turn of events that he could never have imagined back when Tohka appeared with a spacequake and Origami tried to beat her back in the AST.

Surely, Mukuro—or really, any Spirit should have been able to understand and get along with the others. As he looked at Tohka and Origami, this dreamy yet certain thought sprouted in his heart.

“Mm?” Tohka asked, her brow furrowed. “What’s wrong, Shido?”

“You’re not going inside?” Origami said.

“Huh?” He shook his head and flashed them a smile. “Oh, no, it’s nothing. We better hurry.” Winding up the scarf in his hand, he opened the door to the classroom of Grade Eleven Class Four.

“…Huh?” He stopped abruptly.

The air inside of the classroom felt somehow different from usual. Everyone seemed restless, unable to settle down as they turned their attention to something new and unexpected.

Shido learned why soon enough.

A girl was sitting at his desk.

“Wha—?” He gasped, and, as if noticing his presence there, the girl looked at him with delight.

Inky black hair like it had been painted with darkness itself. Porcelain skin nearly transparent. Her immense beauty could send shivers down people’s spines.

“You’re—,” Shido said, his voice trembling, and the girl turned cherry-colored lips up in the shape of a smile.

“Hee-hee-hee!” she giggled. “How have you been, Shido? It has been positively ages.”

“Wha—!”

“Shido.”

Tohka and Origami reacted immediately and stepped forward to protect him.

The girl didn’t react to this; she simply smiled happily. “Oh my, oh dear,” she said. “Whatever is the matter? You must realize that homeroom is about to start, yes?”

“Shut your mouth!” Tohka snarled. “What do you want?!”

“Why are you here?” Origami demanded, glaring at the girl cautiously.

The girl stared at Shido as she gestured bewitchingly with a hand. “Hee-hee-hee. As of today, I am making my return to school. I’m looking forward to being a part of your class again, Tohka, Origami. Shido.” A gentle, slightly mad smile appeared on her face as she spoke. The most evil Spirit of all, Kurumi Tokisaki.