Chapter 4

Many Orders from the Tobiichi House

“This is it?” Shido let out a pained sigh as he looked up at the condo before him, a bag of snacks in his left hand and a piece of paper with a map on it in his right. He patted his chest to check his nerves and took a deep breath. “This is my job. Beyond my control.”

But even so…

“Why do I have to go in like I’m robbing the place?” he grumbled.

“No other options. I mean, you’re basically the only one who can get an invite to Tobiichi’s,” Kotori told him through the earpiece he wore.

Yes. He was about to pay a visit to the condo where Origami Tobiichi lived.

After carefully combing through the video from when Yoshino was Lost, they’d discovered that Origami had picked up the puppet on her way back to base. To try and get it back, he’d asked her a few days earlier if he could come hang out sometime and gotten her to invite him over.

“…But, like, did I even need to get her to ask me over? To take a single puppet, I mean, Ratatoskr could just—”

“…We tried already.” Kotori sighed.

“Huh?” He frowned.

“I’m saying we attempted to sneak in three times a few days ago but failed on each go. She’s got infrared rays set up throughout the place; our team got sprayed with tear gas; there’s even a sentry gun positioned in the key location. Six members of our organization were sent to the hospital. What the hell is she fighting against?”

“Uh-huh…”

“If we’re talking sheer numbers, we could force our way in and take it. But getting an invite from the girl herself, well, that pretty much takes the cake, doesn’t it?”

“…Understood.” Given that Shido was essentially a beginner in this field, he was extremely reluctant to do this job, but he couldn’t sit back and do nothing after seeing how anxious Yoshino was. Plus, he had something he wanted to talk to Origami about himself.

There was one other thing bugging him, so he posed the question to Kotori. “That reminds me… How’s Tohka?”

“Same old. She’s locked up in her room.”

“…Oh.” He rubbed his cheek, troubled.

Tohka had been weird ever since she came home the other day and saw that he’d invited Yoshino to the house. She was attending school, so it wasn’t like she’d locked herself up in her room like before, but he couldn’t help feeling that she was avoiding him.

After groaning to himself, he switched gears. That was an issue that gave him stomach troubles, but he was here now.

“…Wohkay.” He took a deep breath and stepped into the condominium, slipping through the automatic doors. He entered Origami’s apartment number in the device set up in the entryway.

“Who is it?” Origami said immediately.

“O-oh…it’s me. Shido Itsuka.”

“Come in.” She had no sooner spoken than the automatic doors on the other side of the entryway were sliding open.

He went inside, got on an elevator, rode up to the sixth floor, and at last arrived in front of the specified door number.

“Okay, just like we planned,” he said.

“Mm-hmm. It’s up to you now,” Kotori replied.

Super-small cameras operated by Ratatoskr were buzzing around him like flies. They would search the apartment while he had Origami’s attention.

“…Fwoo.” He took another deep breath and then rang the bell.

Immediately—so fast that he wondered if Origami had been standing on the other side waiting for him—the door opened.

“H-hey, Tobiichi. Sorry for just inviting myself over today—,” he started to say, raising a hand in greeting, and then dropped the bag of baked goods he’d been carrying in his left hand. It made a splat, like ruined cakes that the staff would have to enjoy later.

The reason was simple: Origami’s outfit.

Well, this was her house. She was free to wear whatever she wanted. It wasn’t the kind of thing that Shido could lodge a complaint about. But this was unexpected. A dark blue dress with a frilly apron. A cute accessory on her head. Yes, she was dressed head to toe in perfect maid style. The school’s top genius of all people. The ice princess Origami “Cocytus” Tobiichi.

“Uh… Uhhh… Tobiichi?” he managed to say, sweat all over his face.

“What?” She cocked her head questioningly to one side, her face expressionless as a doll’s, like always.

It was really her. He’d had a fleeting hope that she would do or say something to make this make sense, like, “Actually, I’m Irogami, Origami’s twin sister who loves cosplay!” But that hope was quickly dashed.

“O-oh… Your outfit’s really something,” he finally said.

Origami dropped her gaze down to her own clothes, puzzled, before tilting her head to one side again. “Not to your liking?”

“Uh. No, that’s not it…” Not only did he not hate it, he found it irresistible, but he couldn’t exactly say that. He looked anywhere but at Origami, his face turning red.

“Come in.” She appeared not to notice his confusion as she invited him inside the apartment.

“Th-thanks…” He picked up the paper bag he’d dropped and then grabbed the doorknob with a trembling hand and pulled it closed before taking off his shoes and stepping up into the apartment.

And then frowned. He was suddenly getting static from his earpiece. He tapped it to signal Kotori. He could faintly hear her voice in reply mixed in with the static.

“Ngh! Can’t be—jamming—Shi—get through—you ha—”

Then the signal was cut off entirely, and he could no longer hear anything.

“…?! H-hey…,” he said to his earpiece.

“What’s wrong?” Origami looked back at him.

“Oh!” he yelped. “N-no…it’s nothing.”

“Okay.” She faced forward again, and he let out his breath.

He didn’t know why, but apparently, he couldn’t transmit here. Which meant the cameras might also have been knocked out of operation. But even if they were still working, if he couldn’t communicate with Fraxinus, they might as well have been dead, too. Meaning he now had to complete this mission on his own.

“…Come on, seriously?” he muttered quietly so Origami wouldn’t hear him, and ran a hand through his hair.

He wasn’t going to get anywhere complaining, though. He swallowed hard to steady himself and followed Origami into the living room.

“…Hmm? This smell…” He caught a whiff of something sweet the moment he stepped into the room. It didn’t smell like food, though. If he had to say, it was…

“Tobiichi? Are you burning incense?”

“Yes.”

“O-oh.” This was a little surprising. He’d gotten the impression that Origami Tobiichi wasn’t too interested in that sort of thing, although he didn’t actually know her that well. He was a little embarrassed at seeing a different side of his classmate.

It was strange, though. He felt sort of spaced-out with this incense burning, like his mind would float off somewhere if he let his guard down the tiniest bit. Clearly, whatever scent it was, it seemed to induce relaxation.

“Sit,” she instructed.

“Th-thanks.” He sat down at the low table in the center of the living room.

“…” Once he was seated, she also sat. Right beside him.

“Huh…?” Normally, people seated themselves on the opposite side of the table, but maybe this was normal in the Tobiichi house. Looking at her expressionless face, he started to feel a little uncertain of his understanding of common sense.

“Umm…”

“…”

“Uh…”

“…”

After a minute, Shido nodded to himself. Right, of course. This is standard in the Tobiichi house. No reason to break out into a sweat. This is normal.

He was actually uncomfortable, and he tried to start a conversation to make the situation less weird. “T-Tobiichi?”

“What?”

“Oh, maybe this is a dumb question, but…do you live by yourself?”

Origami nodded.

“…Y-you do?” He’d had an idea that she did, but now that he knew for sure, his heart started to pound. He was visiting the home of a girl who lived alone. “S-since when have you lived on your own?”

“After my parents died five years ago, I lived with my aunt for a while, but when I started high school, I moved here by myself,” she explained.

“So you’ve been living alone since you started high school,” he said. “That must be hard.”

“Not really,” she replied, moving the muscles in her face the bare minimum required while staring hard at his face.

We’re just having a conversation, but I feel this weird vibe.

To mask the confusion in his heart, he ruffled his hair in an exaggerated gesture. “Oh. Ha-ha. Ha… Actually, that’s pretty amazing. I’ll probably be living on my own soon enough, but when it’s just me, I’m sure I’ll get lazy with cooking and cleaning and stuff.”

“Not a problem,” she declared.

“Huh?” He turned a curious face toward her.

“I’ll do it.”

“…?!” He froze for an instant. “Um… Does that mean…?”

She got to her feet in a smooth motion without waiting for his reply.

“Um…?” he asked.

“Wait here.” On silent feet, she paced toward the kitchen. She was apparently going to brew tea.

Shido stared absently at her back as she stood in the kitchen and then shook his head with a gasp. “Right, the puppet.” He looked around the room.

Simple furniture in a light, nondescript color. Not only was there nothing particularly feminine, but the place didn’t feel lived-in at all. It was like a showroom.

“…Hmm.” At first glance, he couldn’t spot anything puppetlike. There weren’t a lot of things out on display, but there was lots of storage, so it looked like he was going to have to do some actual digging to find it. Plus, there was the issue of how to distract Origami. He figured the best thing would be to look for the puppet when she was in the bathroom or something. Maybe the opposite would work, too. He could pretend to go to the bathroom.

Origami came back into the room with a tray laden with two teacups and two saucers, sugar and milk. Without a word, she laid them out on the table.

“Enjoy,” she said and sat down next to him again. For some reason, he felt like she was closer than before.

“O-oh, thanks.” The scent of her shampoo tickled his nose, separate from the scent of the incense. He wiped away the beads of perspiration from his forehead before reaching out for a teacup. And then frowned.

“…?!”

The contents of his cup and Origami’s were clearly different. Her tea was a clear and vibrant reddish-brown. His, in contrast, was a dirty liquid so full of sediment, he couldn’t see the bottom of the cup. For a second, he thought it was coffee…but the moment he brought the cup closer to his face to try and understand the true nature of the liquid, his nostrils were assaulted with a violent odor on par with a biological weapon.

“Enh?!” He reeled backward.

“What’s wrong?”

“Wh-what’s wrong…? What on earth is this?!”

“Tea. Foreign.”

“Wh-which peculiar country drinks this…?!” Scrunching up his face and pinching his nose shut, he peered into the cup once more. The color was such that his animal instincts firmly rejected the idea of ingesting it. Maybe it’s one of those things, like, if you can swallow it, you’re a real adult.

“Oh… Tobiichi? I’m flattered you’d make me something so valuable, but I’m actually not too good with this kind of thing.” He tried to refuse the cup of whatever it was.

Origami pushed the teacup on him.

“Uh… Tobiichi?”

“Enjoy.”

“Wait, it’s not so much ‘enjoy’ here as…”

“Enjoy.”

“Um. So.”

“Enjoy.”

“…Thank you so much.”

He hated himself. Unable to flat-out refuse her, Shido turned toward the cup.

“…” He flinched at the idea of drinking it as is. To make the flavor even slightly less offensive, he picked up one of the creamers on the table and poured the liquid into his cup.

It did not dissolve. The fat completely separated from the milk and floated up to the surface of the liquid, like an oil spill in the ocean. He felt like he’d actually made the situation worse.

“…Aah, to hell with it!” He lifted the cup and poured the liquid down his throat. “Ohbahoo…?!”

The flavor that violated his brain proved just as intense as the scent. It made him wonder if this was what aqua regia tasted like, although he was sure he’d never taste that poison in his lifetime and have the chance to find out. It wasn’t so much bitter or spicy as it was painful.

“W-water…!” he cried, but there was no water nearby.

“…!” In a wild panic, he ripped open the package of snacks he’d brought and stuffed the crushed person-shaped baked good (a Tengu specialty) into his mouth. He tasted a soothingly gentle sweetness and fell backward lifelessly.

“Haah…! Haah…!” he panted and then pressed on his chest. “Uh…?”

For some reason, he felt like his body was weirdly hot or maybe burning. Was his temperature that high today?

“…” Silently, Origami placed a hand on the side of his head as he lay on his back and then straddled him, covering him like she was trying to start a wrestling match.

“…?! T-Tobiichi?!” he yelped.

“What?” she replied evenly, sounding as though he was the one being weird.

“U-uh, what are you…?”

“Can’t I?”

“N-no…I think,” he managed to say, somehow keeping his head as his brains threatened to boil over. The comfortable weight of her, that lovely scent particular to girls, the soft sensation, the rustling of the maid uniform—all of it mixed together put him in real danger. If he let his guard down even just a little, he was very likely to pounce on top of her himself.

“Oh.” Origami blinked. “Then a condition.”

“Huh…?” he asked.

“In exchange for getting off you, I want you to accept one request from me unconditionally.”

“Wh-what is it…?” He swallowed hard.

She paused in a moment of unusual hesitation and then said in a small voice, “You call Tohka Yatogami ‘Tohka.’”

“Huh…? Ohhh. Y-yeah, I guess I do,” he agreed.

She was right. He’d been the one to give her the name Tohka to start with, so that was only natural. Reine had given her the surname when she forged her documents.

“But you call me Tobiichi.”

“Uh-uh-huh…”

“That’s extremely unfair.” Origami turned her face away.

“Uh…? Oh, um…” He figured out what she was driving at. “So then? You want me to call Tohka ‘Yatogami’? I dunno if I can get used to that.”

“…” Without a word, she pressed her weight against his stomach. It was merely the mass of one girl. No real weight, but that wasn’t the issue. He was certain steam was going to jet out of his ears at any moment.

“S-so then, what do you want me to do…?!” he cried.

She shifted back to her original position and turned her face away slightly. “I want you to call me Origami.”

“Uh…mm.”

“Won’t you?” she asked. It was the same inflectionless voice as always, but he felt like there was the slightest note of worry hiding in it.

“Oh. It’s not impossible…I think.”

“Oh.”

“…”

“…”

Silence fell once more.

Even Shido understood what that was about. He cleared his throat. “Umm… O-Origami.”

“…”

When he spoke her name, she lifted herself from his stomach without a word and stood up. And then, still no sign of expression on her face, she hopped once on the spot.

“Huh…?” Shido sat up, eyes round at the surreal sight.

Origami seemed to pay him no mind as she parted her lips. “Shido.”

“…!” He gasped. Now that he was thinking about it, that might have been the first time she had called him by his first name. He felt like she always referred to him by his full name, Shido Itsuka.

“H-hey,” he replied, a strange feeling in his chest.

She jumped up again. Naturally, not a single muscle in her face moved.

…Could she be…happy?

She lowered her eyes as though soaking up the echoes of his voice for a few seconds before exhaling shortly. “Wait here.” She turned on her heel abruptly.

“H-hey, Tobi—”

“…”

“…Origami. Where are you going?”

“To take a shower.” She glanced at him before walking out of the room.

“Huh…?” Suddenly alone, Shido was stunned for a moment before he finally grasped the situation and let out a sigh. Then he flopped back down onto the floor. “Aah…”

He placed a hand on his chest. His heart was pounding. He couldn’t stay like this forever. After a few seconds, he shot up into a sitting position.

“Right…! This is my chance to look for the puppet!” He’d forgotten in the weird series of shocking experiences since he’d arrived, but that was his ultimate goal. And a completely unanticipated, one-in-a-million chance had fallen into his lap.

“But why’d she suddenly go take a shower?” He shook his head, not completely understanding. Maybe she’d sweated a lot?

Still, she was a little too trusting, wasn’t she? If he had a little more nerve, he could go peep at her. Based on the impression he’d gotten from everything else she’d done, Origami seemed not to care too much about that sort of thing.

“…Well, either way, this works for me.” Shido got to his feet and examined the living room more carefully than before. “Nothing really jumps out at me.”

He went to check the contents of her shelves on stealthy feet. The truth was his search would have been more efficient if he’d knocked everything to the floor like in a robbery or police search, but he couldn’t exactly tear up Origami’s apartment. His final objective was to recover Yoshino’s puppet, but it was also critical that he didn’t draw her attention to this mission if he could.

“Everything is super neat; it makes it hard to look through anything.”

Even the interiors of her storage spaces were perfectly arranged. He was sure she’d notice if he moved anything even the slightest bit. If he focused on that, however, he’d be paralyzed. He forced himself to proceed with the search, setting things back in their places as best as he could.

“Doesn’t look like it’s in the living room. So then…” He turned his eyes toward the kitchen on the other side of the dining table. He figured chances in there were slim, but there was still the nonzero possibility that she was using the puppet as an oven mitt. He should probably take a quick look at least.

“Let’s see…” He moved into the kitchen and checked the cupboards and below the sink.

“Hmm… What’s this?” He arched an eyebrow at several small empty bottles littered in the garbage can at the far end of the kitchen. “What the…?”

Frowning, he picked them up. RED SNAKE ATTACK, PINOCCHIO: INCREASE YOUR DRIVE, OYSTER GOLD 1000, MACA MAGIC, etc., etc., etc.… A parade of expensive aphrodisiacs, a waste of several thousand yen each. Whatever they were, they were definitely not what a teenage girl should be downing instead of nutritional drinks.

He scratched at his cheek.

Okay, there’s no way anyone would do this, but if you did put them all into a pot and simmer them, I bet that new drink would have a seriously potent flavor. And if you gave it to a guy to drink, it’d make him super driven, his whole body shine golden, and one part of his lower body burn a bright red.

“W-well, it’s not polite to pry into people’s preferences.” Which wasn’t particularly convincing coming from Shido, who was doing the most impolite of things, searching a girl’s home. “So it’s not in the kitchen. Next.”

He returned the empty drink bottles to the garbage and moved forward, turning his eyes to the living room doorway. He was pretty sure there’d been another door in the hallway leading from the front door to the living room. Origami had left for her shower fifteen minutes ago already. He quickened his pace and walked toward the last door.

“…” His feet stopped. Immediately opposite the last door was the door to the changing room and from there, he could hear the sound of the shower. His pulse, which had slowed a bit, sped up once again.

“…Calm down; calm yourself.” He did all the old superstitions that were supposed to relax you and counted prime numbers as he imagined Origami with a potato head.

To be honest, none of this really settled his nerves. For some reason, his brain was ready to rampage like a berserker that day. He honestly wondered why. He was so worked up, it was as if he’d consumed several bottles of expensive aphrodisiacs.

If he stayed where he was, he was likely to commit a very serious mistake. He put his hand on the knob of the last door in a panic and pushed it open.

“…This is…her bedroom.”

There was a bed and a Western-style wardrobe in the small space.

“…Hmm?” He frowned dubiously and narrowed his eyes. Something was off somehow. The room was so small? No…

“…She sleeps in a huge bed.”

Yes. For some reason, she had a double bed, which made her bedroom look strangely small. Even more curious, the bed was newer than the other furniture. Like brand-new. Like the-plastic-had-only-come-off-that-day new.

“Did she get it recently…? No, but even still…,” he said as he moved to the head of the bed and tilted his head to the side once more.

There were two pillows side by side on top of neat sheets stretched out in perfect hotel style. And on the cover, the words No problem were embroidered in a fun font.

“…” Without a word, he turned one pillow over. On the back, it said As you please. There was no room for choice.

“…”

He stood silent for what seemed like a long time.

“W-wohkay…” He couldn’t understand even if he wanted to, so he gave up on thinking about it. “Where’s that puppet…?”

He lifted his face and cried out, “Oh!”

On top of a tall dresser on one side of the room, he caught a peek of a familiar silhouette. A rabbit puppet with a silly design. There was no mistake—it was Yoshino’s.

“So you were up there, huh…?” Shido let out a sigh of relief. Now he could help Yoshino.

“…Tch.” When he stepped toward the dresser, he heard a chak from outside the bedroom. It wasn’t the sound of a regular door. That was probably the sound of the bathroom door being opened. It seemed that Origami had finished her shower.

“Crap…” He snatched the puppet off the top of the dresser and stuffed it into his pocket before sneaking back to the living room on silent feet. He let out a sigh of relief. He’d made it.

Now all he had to do was get home with the puppet. Why did he have a feeling that was going to be the biggest hurdle yet? He desperately wanted to believe it was all in his mind.

“Oh. Right,” he muttered to himself. He’d managed to achieve his most important objective in visiting Origami’s house. He had one other personal objective, however.

Ever since she’d invited him inside, Origami had set the pace, so he hadn’t been able to segue into the conversation. He wouldn’t get too many chances like this. He wanted to talk with her for real just once about the Spirits.

As if to interrupt his thoughts, the living room door opened.

He gulped and turned his face that way. “H-hey, Origami. I wanted to ask—”

However…

“Y—?!” When he saw her, he froze in place.

The Origami that came into the living room was not wearing the earlier maid uniform. Instead, she had nothing but a towel wrapped around her naked body. It clung to her so that the lines of her body were clearly visible, perhaps because of the water left on her from the shower. Her beauty was captivating.

“Wh-wh-wh-wh—?”

She might have been in her own home, but coming out dressed in a towel when you had a guest who was a boy your age was definitely not normal.

“What?” She spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Suddenly, he was unsure about why he was so confused. “…O-ohhh! Did you forget a change of clothes? Ha. Ha-ha-ha… Pretty silly, huh?” He choked out a pained laugh and turned his head in the opposite direction, his neck creaking like a machine that hadn’t been oiled.

“…” She said nothing and silently walked over to him before bending her knees to sit in a position where he could feel not only her breath but even the warmth of her body. And then she pressed herself up against him.

“—?!” His shoulders jolted, and he leaped back to put some distance between them.

“…?” Her head leaned to one side. “What’s wrong?”

“Wh-what’s wrong…?” he repeated.

She inched closer to him.

“O-Origami!” he cried desperately. “Um. I—I wanted to ask you something!”

“What?” She stopped where she was.

“Oh. Uh, right…” He tapped the earpiece to check it. He heard nothing, no sound. The signal was completely cut off. Whatever he said now wouldn’t make it to Kotori and her crew. He took a deep breath and opened his mouth. “Um. Origami, you hate…the Spirits, right?”

“…”

Instantly, he felt her mood change.

She tilted her head, as though questioning why he would bring that up. “Why?” she asked, looking straight into his eyes.

That was only natural. The question was truly out of the blue. If he had been connected to Fraxinus, he was sure they would have gotten mad and told him not to spill any secrets or put Origami unnecessarily on guard. But he couldn’t not ask her.

Origami. The girl who’d lost both parents to the Spirits, who now turned her sword on those Spirits.

“Oh, it’s. Um, right. I was just thinking like maybe there are…good Spirits, too.”

“Not possible.” She curtly shot the idea down. “Just by appearing, the Spirits destroy the world. Just by existing there, they kill the world. That’s harm. That’s catastrophe. The enemy of everything that lives.”

“Th-that’s kind of—”

“I refuse to forget”—she cut him off; her expression and her tone hadn’t changed at all, but for some reason, he felt an intimidation that chilled his core—“the Spirit that took my parents from me five years ago.”

“Five years…ago,” he repeated, stunned.

She nodded. “Five years ago, there was a large-scale disaster in the residential district of Nanko in Tengu.”

“Huh…” He frowned. He had lived in that area himself before. He’d moved into the house where he lived now because his old house had burned down in the disaster.

“It’s not public knowledge, but that disaster was the work of a Spirit.”

“Wha—?” His eyes snapped open in surprise.

“A Spirit clad in red flames. It took everything from me. I can never let that go. I will defeat every Spirit. I won’t let them make anyone else live through what I did,” she told him in a voice that was quiet and decisive as she clenched her hands into fists. “And naturally, Tohka Yatogami is no exception.”

“Huh…” His eyes grew wide at the sudden mention of Tohka.

“She’s not recognized as a Spirit now. But I can’t allow her to exist.”

“…B-but Tohka doesn’t make spacequakes happen now; she doesn’t run wild,” he protested. “So she’s no different from a regular girl, right?”

Origami shook her head without even a hint of hesitation or thought. “It’s true the Spirit signal has disappeared from her, but the cause of that is unknown. It’s only natural to prepare for the worst case.”

“…Th-that’s…,” he stammered. She wasn’t wrong. After all, she didn’t know Tohka’s power had been sealed by his own ability. “But…the spacequakes don’t happen because they want them to, you know? And you’d still—”

“—?” She looked at him curiously. “How would you know that?”

“Oh, it’s…” He’d said too much. He searched for a way out of this and sent his eyes racing around the room.

She continued in a monotone. “This is the perfect opportunity. I also have something I want to ask you.”

“Wh-what…?” he replied.

“April twenty-first. I saw you in the middle of a mission.”

“…” A chill ran up his spine. That was the day Tohka had appeared silently in this world. The day he had sealed her powers with a kiss.

“Who exactly are you?” she asked, looking at him with quiet eyes.

“Oh. Um, the thing is…” He hemmed and hawed. He couldn’t really say anything about Ratatoskr. “…” He bit his lower lip and tried to calm his breathing. “Tobiichi. You might not believe me, but would you at least listen to me?”

She nodded without the slightest hesitation.

“Mm. So, right. I can’t tell you the details, but…I’ve actually met Spirits a few times and talked with them. Not just Tohka. With Yoshino, too.”

“Yoshino?”

“Ohhh, Hermit,” he clarified.

Origami’s face didn’t so much as twitch, but he felt like she inhaled a little quicker than usual. “Very dangerous. You should stop,” she warned him in her monotone.

Shido shook his head from side to side. “Tobiichi. Have you ever talked with Yoshino, even once? No, I guess not. I mean, you didn’t even know her name.” He turned his whole body toward her and continued. “Please. Just for a minute—even a second. The next time Yoshino appears, try talking with her. There might be evil Spirits like you say. But Tohka and Yoshino—I don’t know how to put it exactly. They’re great! They’re nice, in a way that most people aren’t even!”

“…” Origami said nothing but simply stared at him, the picture of composure. The look she gave him was strange, quiet, but he oddly didn’t sense any coldness in it.

“…” Aah, right. Shido finally realized why he was talking to her like this. He knew she didn’t have the power to influence AST’s decisions. There was a reason he was deliberately risking leaking information, the reason he had to do it. Naturally, the desire to save Yoshino was the biggest factor, but it wasn’t the only one. He felt like he finally understood it in a real way, with his heart.

“Right. I…” He looked at her again. “I…want to do whatever I can to help Yoshino. And I want you to accept Tohka. But I want just as much for you, Tobiichi—I don’t want you to kill such good kids!”

“…” She wordlessly stared at him.

“I mean, you’re amazing! You’re only in high school, but you’re fighting to protect the world. That’s not something just anyone could do. I have serious respect for you.”

He had no right to say that she was wrong. This girl had lost her parents because of Spirits five years earlier, and she had taken up arms to protect people because she didn’t want anyone else to go through the same fate. There was no way he could sully her mission with cheap words.

“Why…? Why does it have to be this way? There are no bad guys here. Tohka, Yoshino, you—you’re all so nice.”

“That’s—,” Origami started and then cleared her throat. “That’s just how it has to be.”

“…” He looked at her with wide eyes.

“Assume what you’re saying is true and Hermit doesn’t want to fight us. But as long as she’s a Spirit, there will always be the danger of the spacequakes. We can’t allow this one girl to put human lives in danger.”

An extremely reasonable assertion. Kotori had said something similar. If anyone was wrong, it was probably Shido.

He slid the hand on his forehead down over his eyes, as if to hide the look on his face, while he gritted his teeth. His head understood what she was saying. But his heart could not accept it.

“Tell me one last thing,” he said. Origami looked at him with a tilted head. “When you can’t detect Spirit power anymore like with Tohka, you don’t attack that Spirit, right?”

His argument was idealistic, to be sure. It was really over-the-top. But he could still find the hole in this terrible logic.

“…” For a while, she said nothing. “That’s not what I want. Even if the signal’s gone, it’s too dangerous to leave a Spirit be.”

“…That’s—,” he started.

“However,” she continued. “As policy from above, we are forced to accept the Spirits as human when we are unable to confirm a Spirit signal. I can’t attack at my own discretion.”

“M-meaning?”

“I’m expressing assent to that question,” Origami said, still utterly composed.

Shido swallowed hard and clenched his hands. “Thanks. That’s all I need to hear right now.”

“Oh,” she replied briefly. “Was that your objective when you asked to come over today?” Her gaze dropped the tiniest bit, the merest hint. Even though there was no change in her usual monotone, he got the impression that she was unhappy.

“No. That’s not it at all. I came over today to talk with you, Tobiichi…” He definitely couldn’t say anything about the puppet, but he wouldn’t lie, either. Although he had ended up doing the search because his earpiece had died, his original objective had been to chat with Origami so she wouldn’t get suspicious while the cameras looked for the puppet.

The slightly thorny air that had grown up around her evaporated instantly. And she inched closer to him again.

Vwnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnmmmmm.

The spacequake alarm rang outside.

“I-is there a spacequake?” he gasped.

“…” Origami was silent for a few seconds before sighing and standing up.

“Origami?” he asked.

“I’m being dispatched. You hurry to a shelter.” She stepped out into the hallway.

He gaped for a minute or two. “…It can’t be Yoshino, can it?” He squeezed the puppet in his pocket, frowning at the alarm echoing in his ears.