Chapter 3: Your Name…
Chapter 3
Your Name…
“Ha! Suck it!” Controller in his left hand, Shido made a fist with his right and punched at the air.
It had been ten days since he’d started Kotori and Reine’s after-school enrichment training program, and Shido had finally made it to the game’s happy ending.
Although I don’t want to count how many old wounds got reopened along the way.
“…Mm, well, it took a bit of time,” Reine said. “But we’ll say you’ve cleared the first hurdle.”
“Well, you did get all the cut scenes, so maybe that’s a passing mark. But at best, that’s still just with a girl on a screen.”
Kotori sighed, watching the end credits.
“So then next up is…a real girl—flesh and blood. We’re pressed for time here,” she remarked.
“…Hmm, I wonder if he’ll be okay,” Reine mused.
“It’s fine. Even if he fails, the only thing that’s lost is his social reputation.”
“Wait. How could you be so nonchalant about that?” Shido interjected, annoyed.
“Ugh. Were you eavesdropping? In poor taste, as always. You voyeur. You Peeping Tom.” Kotori frowned and put a hand to her mouth.
Two insults that transcended decades.
“You’re talking right in front of me,” he cried. “How is that eavesdropping?!”
“Now, now.” Kotori spread out her hands placatingly. She made him feel like he was the weird one. “So then, Shido. About the next part of your training.”
He sighed. “I’m reluctant to ask, but what is it?”
“Right,” she said. “Who would be good?”
“Uh?” Next to him, Reine started plugging away at the console before her. Video feeds from within the school appeared on the displays lined up on the desk.
“…Let’s see. How about her for an easy start?” Reine pointed at Tama, the teacher on the right edge of a screen.
Kotori raised her eyebrows, and an evil smile quickly crept across her face. “Ohhh, I get it. Sounds good. Let’s go with her.”
“…Shin. We’ve decided on what you’ll be doing next.”
“Wh-what is it?” Shido asked, trying to ward off the anxiety that welled up in his heart.
“…When you’re out in the field for real when a Spirit appears,” Reine told him, “we’ll give you an earpiece, and you’ll follow our instructions. And right now, we’re going to do some training to simulate what you’ll experience during an actual mission.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“…Seduce Tamae Okamine,” she replied immediately.
“Huh?!” he shouted.
“You got a problem with that?” Kotori grinned, as though enjoying his reaction.
“A huge problem!” he yelled. “I—! I can’t do that!”
“You’ll have to tackle something even more difficult on the big day, y’know.”
“W-well, yeah, maybe, but…!”
Reine mussed her hair. “…I think she’s ideal for your first target. If you tell her you’re in love with her and ask her out, I’m guessing she’ll turn you down. And she won’t go blabbing it all over the place… Well, if you’re totally against her, we can go with one of the students.”
“Unh…!”
A wretched scene flooded in Shido’s mind. A girl calling over her clique when she returned to the classroom after her conversation with Shido:
“Get a load of this! Itsuka just asked me out.”
“What? Really? He always looks like he doesn’t have any interest in girls, but I guess he gets out there, huh?!”
“But he’s a total no-go.”
“Oh yeah, no way. He seems like he’s got a dirty mind.”
“Oh, totally! Ha-ha-ha-ha!”
And so, Shido would have a new trauma to catalog in his collection.
He didn’t even get a single hint of that happening with Tamae. She might look incredibly young, but she was an adult woman. Her student’s nonsense would go in one ear and out the other.
“So what’ll it be?” Kotori snapped. “Since failure on the big day means certain death, we’re going to make you do a practice run at least once, either way.”
“…The teacher, please,” he replied, sweat trickling down his back.
“…Wohkay.” Reine pulled a small device out of a desk drawer and handed it to him. Then she set what looked to be a communication device with a mic and headphone on the desk.
“What’s this?”
“…Put it in your ear.”
He stuffed it in his right ear as instructed.
“…How’s this sound?” Reine picked up the mic and murmured, “Can you hear me?”
“Whoa?!”
When her voice suddenly rang in his head, Shido jerked his shoulders upward and jumped back.
“…Good. Am I coming through loud and clear? Is the volume all right?”
“Y-yeah… Well, I guess…”
Reine immediately picked up the headset from the desk and placed it over her ears. “…Hmm. Mm. No problem here, either. I’m picking you up.”
“Huh? You’re getting my voice now? This thing doesn’t look like it has a mic, though…”
“…The earpiece is equipped with a highly sensitive parabolic mic,” she told him. “It automatically eliminates noise and only sends me the necessary audio. Real quality machine.”
“Uh-huh…” Shido nodded in admiration.
Kotori picked up another small device from the desk and flicked it with a finger. Ping! It buzzed up into the air like an insect.
“Wh-what is that?”
“…Watch,” Reine instructed and pulled up a video feed on the screen in front of her.
He saw the physics prep room where they were sitting. “This…”
“…Super-small, super-sensitive camera,” she said. “We’ll follow you with it. Don’t mistake it for a bug and squash it.”
“Huh… That’s amazing.”
Bam! He got a kick in the butt.
“It doesn’t matter,” Kotori said. “Just hurry up and go, you soft-shelled turtle. Target’s in the third-floor hallway of the east building. Close by.”
“…Fine,” Shido assented helplessly, realizing it was pointless to say anything further.
If he dawdled, they might end up choosing another girl to be his target. Pushing himself to his feet, he somehow managed to get himself out of the physics prep room.
He went down the stairs, looked both ways, and saw Tamae’s back to him in the hallway.
“Miss—” He cut himself off. She was close enough that she would hear him if he called out, but he wanted to avoid drawing the attention of any other students and teachers still at school. “…Ugh. Fine.”
Shido trotted after her. He’d gone a few meters when she apparently heard his footsteps behind her and turned around.
“Oh! Itsuka? Is something the matter?”
“…Uh. Um,” he stammered. Even though he saw her face almost every day, the fact that it had suddenly become a target for seduction made him extremely nervous.
“Calm down.” Kotori’s voice echoed in his ear. “This is training. You won’t die if you mess up.”
“You say that, but,” he half groaned.
“Hmm? What was that?”
“Oh! Nothing…”
“Pathetic.” The voice came through his earpiece again, perhaps because Kotori was impatient with Shido and his inability to move the conversation along. “Anyway, compliment her. That’s safe.”
He examined Tamae from head to toe, looking for something to compliment.
But wait. He felt like that how-to book he’d been forced to read the other day had said something about how directly complimenting a woman’s appearance seemed to suggest an ulterior motive. It was better to compliment her clothing or accessories and acknowledge her fashion choices. Resolving himself, he opened his mouth.
“B-by the way, your outfit…is very cute.”
“Huh…? I-it is? Ha-ha, now I’m blushing.” Tamae’s cheeks flushed with happiness, and she scratched the back of her head as she flashed him a smile.
Hmm? This might be a good reaction. Shido clenched his hand slightly. “Yes, it really looks great on you!”
“Hee-hee, thank you. It’s a favorite of mine.”
“Your hairstyle is also really great!”
“What? Really?”
“Yes. And those glasses, too!”
“Oh. Ha-ha-ha-ha…”
“That attendance ledger is also supercool!”
“Um… Itsuka?” The smile on Tamae’s face gradually became pained and then bewildered.
“You went too far, idiot. You moron.”
He heard Kotori’s exasperated voice in his ear, but he didn’t know what to say after the compliments. He paused for a moment.
“Umm… Can I help you?” Tamae looked at him curiously.
“…You’re out of options here. Just say exactly what I tell you.”
The words came sleepily. No doubt, Reine and Kotori thought Shido didn’t have much time left.
This was a relief. Shido tilted his head forward slightly to indicate his agreement. And then without thinking at all, he parroted all the words he heard in his ear.
“Um, Ms. Okamine?”
“What is it?”
“I really love coming to school lately.”
“Oh, you do? Well, that’s great.”
“Yes… Because you’re my homeroom teacher.”
“What…?” Tamae opened her eyes wide in surprise, although it was clear from her face that she was not displeased. “What are you talking about? Oh, you! Where’s this coming from all of a sudden?”
He continued to speak Reine’s words. “The truth is, for a while now, I’ve liked—”
“Oh no… That’s not okay. I appreciate your feelings, but I’m your teacher.” Tamae smiled, pained, waving the attendance ledger.
She was indeed a teacher and a grown woman, and she was intent on making this very clear.
“…Hmm. How to attack here.” Reine sighed, after continuously murmuring a script for Shido to follow. “I’m pretty sure she’s twenty-nine this year. Shin, try saying this.” She fed him his next line.
“I’m serious.” Shido moved his mouth without really thinking at all. “I seriously want—”
“Umm, I wish you wouldn’t.”
“I seriously want to marry you!”
Tamae’s face tightened slightly at the word marry. Then after a brief silence, she squeaked out, “Really?”
“Uh…! Y-yes… Well.” He faltered at the sudden change in his teacher’s mood.
She abruptly took a step forward and grabbed his sleeve. “Really? Once you’re old enough to get married, Itsuka, I’ll already be over thirty. Is that all right? Will you come meet my parents? Would you be okay taking my last name? Will you take over my family business once you graduate from high school?”
Tamae closed in on him, breathing raggedly, her eyes shining like she was an entirely different person.
“Uh… Um, Ms. Okamine?” Shido said tentatively.
“…Hmm, worked a little too well,” Reine observed.
“Wh-what do you mean?” he whispered in reply, quietly so that Tamae couldn’t hear him.
“…Oh, marriage is like a magic spell for a single, twenty-nine-year-old woman. She’s getting anxious, with all her friends starting families, her parents are hassling her, and she’s about to cross over into her thirties, which she never thought would happen… Even so, this is a little extreme,” Reine observed, an unusual note of uncertainty bleeding into her voice.
“Th-that’s all fine and good, but what am I supposed to do?!”
“Say, Itsuka, are you free right now?” Tamae asked, sidling up to him. “You’re not old enough to apply for a marriage license, so how about we do a blood oath? We’ll borrow a chisel from the art room. It’s all right. I’ll do it so it doesn’t hurt.”
Shido shrieked.
“Aah, this is starting to get annoying. No need to get involved any further,” Reine told him. “You completed the objective, so just apologize and get out of there.”
Shido gulped hard and opened his mouth. “I-I’m sorry! I’m not actually prepared to go that far! Just forget this ever happened…!” he shouted as he ran away.
“Ah! I-Itsuka?!”
He heard Tamae’s voice calling out from behind him as he fled.
“Aah, she’s a pretty quirky teacher, huh?” Kotori laughed, sounding relaxed.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” Shido cried, still moving his feet. “How can you just—?”
“…!”
Too focused on his conversation with the earpiece, he slammed into a student walking around the corner and fell over backward.
“Owww!” he said, sitting up. “S-sorry! You okay?”
And then he felt his heart constrict in his chest. “Uh…?!”
Because of course, the student on the floor in front of him was none other than Miss Origami Tobiichi. That wasn’t all. When she had fallen, she landed on her butt, and her legs were splayed out in Shido’s direction.
…She was wearing white ones.
He unconsciously averted his eyes. Origami wasn’t flustered in the slightest.
“I’m fine,” she said, standing up. “What’s wrong?”
She didn’t seem to be asking about the fact that he was running down the hallway. If he had to say, her question was in reference to how he was hanging his head and pressing a finger to his temple.
“Oh, it’s nothing to worry about,” he told her. “It’s just the shock of encountering a situation I was convinced could never actually happen.”
His last stronghold crumbled. Ratatoskr’s simulation abilities were terrifying. Maybe they had actually done a great job with all that stuff in the game.
“Yeah?” she asked and started walking down the hall.
“This is perfect, Shido.” Kotori’s voice echoed in his ear. “Let’s practice with her, too.”
“H-huh…?!”
“I actually would like data from someone in your age group and not just a teacher. Not quite a Spirit, but she is AST personnel. This could be a great reference. And as far as I can see, she doesn’t seem to be the type to kiss and tell.”
“You… You have to be joking!”
“You want to talk to a Spirit, right?”
“…Ugh.” Shido gasped and bit his lower lip and then took several deep breaths before calling out to Origami. “T-Tobiichi!”
“What?” She turned around as though she had been waiting for this.
He was a little surprised, but he took another deep breath to calm himself. His heart wasn’t pounding as wildly because of his earlier experience with Tamae. Right. As long as he didn’t overdo it, he was fine. As long as he didn’t overdo it.
“That outfit’s cute.”
“My uniform,” she replied flatly.
“…I guess so.”
“Why would you pick her uniform, you antlion?!”
How could the name of an insect make him feel like he was being cursed out? Strange!
He shook his head slightly. It worked with Tama…!
“…Want some help?” Reine once again offered him a lifeline, growing impatient.
He still had some reservations about this, but he wasn’t sure he could continue the conversation on his own. He nodded the tiniest bit.
“So, like, Tobiichi,” he recited the words he heard in his ear.
“What?”
“The truth is…I’ve known who you are for a while now.”
“You have.” Her tone was still curt, but incredibly, Origami continued, “I’ve known who you are, too.”
“—!”
He was stunned, but his surprise didn’t leak into his voice. He felt like this whole thing would fall apart like a house of cards if he deviated from the lines Reine was feeding him.
“You have? I’m glad to hear it,” he replied. “I’m really happy we’re in the same class this year. This whole week, I’ve been watching you during class.”
Gah! Even I think that’s creepy. I’m not a stalker, Shido thought as he spoke the line.
“You have,” she said and looked straight at him. “I’ve been watching you, too.”
“…” He swallowed hard.
The truth was he’d felt awkward, unable to look in her direction in class. To shake off the violent pounding of his heart, he let the words flood into his ear and come out of his mouth.
“Really? Oh, but that’s not all. I also hang around after class to sniff your gym clothes and stuff.”
“You do.”
He was sure she’d reel in disgust at that, but the look on her face didn’t change at all. In fact…
“I do that, too.”
Do…what?! You mean you sniff your own gym clothes, right?! Please, say you sniff your own! Rivers of sweat poured down Shido’s face. And, like, Kotori, Reine! These lines are getting weird!
Given the way Shido’s head was spinning, it was impossible for him to speak in his own words now. “Oh yeah? Seems like we’re kindred spirits, huh?”
“Kindred,” she agreed.
“So then maybe, if you want, would you go out with me? …Wait! This is too sudden! Pump the brakes!” He looked back and shouted, outraged. He didn’t care about the training anymore.
From Origami’s perspective, he was a strange man who had voluntarily asked her out and then grandly called his own self out.
“…Aah, I can’t believe you’d actually just go and say it,” Reine said.
“You told me to say it!” Shido shouted resentfully and then gasped and turned back to Origami.
She was there with the same expression on her face, but it looked like her eyes were just the tiniest bit wider. Although he could have just imagined it.
“Oh! Um, that was… Sorry. Just now—”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
“…Huh?!” he yelped idiotically. His eyes almost popped out of his head. His mouth dropped open helplessly, all the strength nearly left his limbs—basically, his entire body was slack.
Wait, I don’t understand. What did this girl just say?
“Wh-what?” he stammered.
“I said, I wouldn’t mind.”
“I wouldn’t mind if we went out.”
Sweat exploded out of every pore on his face. He placed a gentle hand on either side of his head and told himself, Calm down, dude! Just calm down.
It was unthinkable. If you thought about it normally, this was impossible. After all, how could there be a girl in this world who would say yes to a guy pushing her to go out with him when she could count on one hand the number of times they’ve spoken?
No, well, maybe it’s not that there are none, but I totally never dreamed that I’d get a response like that from Origami.
Wait. Shido’s eyebrows shot up. What if she got the wrong idea?
“Uh, oh,” he started. “You mean ‘go out’ like go somewhere together, right?”
“…?” She cocked her head slightly to one side. “Was that what you meant?”
“Huh? Oh! No.” He shook his head. “Umm, what did you think I meant, Tobiichi?”
“I thought you meant boyfriend-girlfriend.”
“…!”
His entire body shook as though lightning had struck him on the top of his head. Somehow, the words boyfriend-girlfriend sounded totally immoral coming from Origami’s mouth.
“Was I wrong?”
“N-no…you aren’t wrong…but…”
“Okay,” she assented, as though nothing had happened.
In the next instant, he was flooded with regret. Why?! Why did I say “you aren’t wrong”?! I mean—! Just now, only now, I could’ve passed it off as a mistake!!
Wee-woooooooo…
“Ngh?!”
A siren pierced through the silence.
Origami lifted her face slightly.
“I have to go. Bye.” And with that, she turned on her heel and ran down the hallway.
“H-hey—”
This time, she didn’t stop when Shido called out to her.
“Wh-what am I supposed to do now?”
Before long, he heard a voice through his earpiece. “Shido, spacequake. We’re moving to Fraxinus. Come back.”
“S-so it’s a Spirit then?”
“Yes… And its predicted location of appearance is…here.”
The time was 5:20 PM.
Avoiding the eyes of the students as they evacuated, Shido, Kotori, and Reine had moved to Fraxinus, which hung in the sky above the city. They were now looking at the various bits of information displayed on the large monitor on the bridge.
Having changed into their military uniforms, Kotori and Reine nodded meaningfully from time to time as they exchanged words, but to be honest, Shido didn’t really understand what the numbers shown on-screen meant. About the only thing he got was that the display on the right side was a map of the town with his high school at the center.
“I see, hmm.” Sitting in the captain’s chair, Kotori slightly smiled as she spoke with the crew, sucking on her Chupa Chups. “Shido.”
“What?”
“You’ll be getting to work straightaway,” she told him. “Get ready.”
“…” He froze in place.
He had expected this, though, so he should have been prepared to hear that order. Still, when the time actually came, he doubted he’d be able to hide his nerves.
“Is he being sent into actual battle already, Commander?” Kannazuki asked abruptly, standing next to the captain’s chair, eyes on the screen. “His opponent is a Spirit. If he fails, that means death. Has his training been suffi—? Shoof!”
Kotori plunged a fist into Kannazuki’s gut. “Disagreeing with my judgment? You’re awfully full of yourself, hmm, Kannazuki? As punishment, speak like a pig until I say you can stop.”
“O-oink,” he replied, as though this happened every day.
Shido wiped away the sweat from his face. “Actually, Kotori, I think what Kannazuki said is pretty on the nose.”
“Oh my!” Kotori gasped. “You can understand pig, Shido? I guess you really are one.”
“D-don’t underestimate pigs!” he shouted. “They’re surprisingly amazing creatures!”
“I know. They like to be clean, and they’re strong. Some say they possess an intelligence greater than dogs. So I call my capable subordinate Kannazuki and the older brother I so cherish pig with the utmost respect. You pig.”
“…Hngh!” he groaned.
It didn’t sound much like a title of honor coming from her mouth.
Kotori seemed to understand that Kannazuki was not wrong in his doubt nor Shido in his unease. Flicking the lollipop stick upward, she gestured at the screen. “Shido, you’re pretty lucky.”
“Huh?” Following her gaze, he turned his eyes toward the screen.
The incomprehensible numbers still flashed there, but he could see a change on the map to the right. There was a red icon on his school with several little yellow icons displayed around it.
“The red’s the Spirit, yellow are the AST,” she told him.
“…And what’s so lucky?”
“Look at the AST. They haven’t moved, right?”
“Ohhh… Yeah.”
“They’re waiting for the Spirit to go outside.”
“What? Why? They’re not charging in?”
She shrugged dramatically. “Think for a second before you speak. It’s embarrassing. Honestly, a slime mold is more intelligent than you.”
“Wh-what?! Come on!”
“The CR units weren’t made to fight in confined spaces. They might have that Territory, but their mobility drops with all the obstacles and narrow hallways inside a building. Their field of view is obstructed.” Kotori snapped her fingers, and in response, the screen switched to a video feed of the school.
There was a shallow crater in the courtyard. The roads around it and part of the academy had been neatly erased. It was just like what Shido had seen the other day.
“It looks like she slipped into the half-destroyed school after appearing in the yard,” she told him. “We almost never have this kind of luck. Now we can make contact with the Spirit without the AST getting in the way.”
“…Got it.”
Her logic made sense. But something she said nagged at him, and he abruptly narrowed his eyes.
“…If the Spirit had appeared outside as usual, exactly how were you going to have me contact her?”
“Wait until the AST was annihilated or just toss you into the fray,” she replied immediately.
“…” He understood now exactly how fortunate this situation was.
“Mm. So let’s get going then,” she said. “Shido, you still have the earpiece in?”
“Y-yeah.” He touched his right ear. The earpiece he’d been using was indeed still there.
“Excellent. I’ll send you with the camera, too, so if you’re having trouble, tap the earpiece twice as a sign.”
“Mm… Roger. But, like…” He half glared at Kotori and then Reine, who was in her own seat on the lower deck of the bridge.
From what he had learned of their advice during training, they weren’t exactly the most promising people to have on his support team.
“Relax, Shido.” Kotori grinned boldly, perhaps guessing at his general train of thought from the look on his face. “The Fraxinus crew is full of solid, capable people.”
“I-it is?” he asked in return, wearing a doubtful expression.
“For example.” She stood up, her coat flapping, and snapped a finger out at a crew member on the lower deck. “The master of romance with five marriages under his belt! Bad Marriage Kawagoe!”
“But that means four divorces!”
“Extremely popular with Filipinas working in nightlife! Boss Mikimoto!”
“They’re clearly charmed by his money!”
“Her rivals in love meet misfortune, one after the other! The woman haunting the night, Nailknocker Shiizaki!”
“She’s definitely putting curses on them!”
“The man with a hundred wives! Dimension Breaker Nakatsugawa!”
“Are these wives three-dimensional?!”
“A woman who can no longer legally go within five hundred meters of the man she loves because her affection knows no bounds! Restraining Order—I mean, Deep Love Minowa!”
“Why are they all like this?!” Shido shrieked.
“…As a crew, they’re tried and true,” Reine whispered from the deck below.
“S-sure, you say that, but—”
“You’re fine,” Kotori snapped. “Hurry up and go. Once the Spirit goes outside, the AST will swarm her.” She kicked him hard in the butt.
“…Ow! Y-you jerk…”
“There’s no need to worry,” she assured him. “You’ll be fine. If you die, you can just start a new game.”
“Cut it out! I’m not a certain plumber, okay?!”
“Mamma mia!” she teased. “A big brother who doesn’t believe his little sister will only know misfortune.”
“I don’t need a little sister who doesn’t listen to her big brother telling me that,” Shido said with a sigh, but he obediently turned toward the bridge door.
“Good luck.” Kotori popped a thumb up at him.
He waved his hand listlessly. “Yeah.”
His heart was still pounding, but he couldn’t let this chance slip away. He wasn’t thinking of anything so grand as to defeat her, make her love him, or save the world.
He just wanted to talk with that girl one more time.
The transfer device, which used a Realizer set into the lower part of Fraxinus, could instantly send and recover items as long as there were no line-of-sight obstructions. At first, it had made him feel a little unpleasant, like motion sickness, but he had more or less gotten used to it now after using it a few times.
In an instant, his field of view switched from Fraxinus to the dim rear side of the school, and he shook his head.
“Okay, first inside the school—,” he started to say and then stopped…because the wall of the academy before him had been whisked away, allowing him to peek inside.
“Seeing the actual building makes it really set in…”
“Well, this is perfect. Go in through there.” He heard Kotori’s voice through his earpiece.
“…Roger,” he muttered, scratching his cheek as he entered the school building. If he dawdled too long, the Spirit might leave, and the AST might spot him before he found her and take him into custody to “protect” him.
“Now, let’s hurry. I’ll guide you. The Spirit is three floors up, fourth classroom ahead of you.”
“Roger…!” Shido took a deep breath and then raced up the nearby stairs.
In less than a minute, he was standing in front of the classroom Kotori had specified. Given that the door wasn’t open, he couldn’t see what was going on inside, but his heart pounded when he thought about the fact that a Spirit was in there.
“Wait.” He frowned. “This is Year Two, Class Four. It’s my classroom.”
“Oh my! Is it?” Kotori said. “Perfect. I won’t go so far as to say it’s an advantageous position, but it’s better than some place you don’t know at all.”
He didn’t actually know the classroom all that well, given that he’d only recently advanced to his second year of high school. At any rate, he had to make contact before the Spirit played any tricks. He swallowed hard.
“Hey, hello, what’re you doing in a place like this?” He repeated what he was going to say first several times in a quiet voice before taking a deep breath and opening the door.
“—”
The classroom was red in the evening sun.
“Ah,” he gasped, the flimsy words he’d prepared in his mind completely blown away.
A girl with black hair in a bizarre dress was sitting with one knee up on the desk fourth from the front, second row from the window—Shido’s desk. A fantastical radiance shone in her eyes, which were languidly half-open as she stared blankly at the blackboard, upper body illuminated by the evening sun. She was so divine as to instantly rob any viewer of the power of thought.
This near-perfect scene quickly crumbled.
“Hmm?” The girl noticed Shido’s entry and opened her eyes wide.
“…H-hey—” He raised a hand as he tried to calm himself down somehow.
Fyoom!
He thought the girl was casually waving at him when a black beam of light scraped his cheek and flew past him. A second later, the door where his hand was resting and the windows in the hall behind it shattered with a tremendous roar.
“Eep…?!”
It was all so sudden that he froze in place for a moment. When he touched his cheek, his fingers came back wet with blood. But he couldn’t just stand there stunned.
“Shido!” Kotori screamed, loud enough to make his ear hurt.
A melancholy look on her face, the girl swung her arm up high. In her palm, a sphere of inky-black light pulsed.
“Hey—”
Before he could even cry out, he was scrambling to hide himself behind the wall.
A moment later, a stream of light burst past where he had just been standing and easily ripped through the school’s exterior wall, exploding outside. This was followed by a series of umbral rays surging past him.
“S-stop! I don’t want to fight you!” he called from the now extremely well-ventilated hallway.
Perhaps his words reached her; no more black beams shot past him.
“…I-is it okay if I go inside?” he muttered to himself.
“From what I can tell, she’s not preparing to fire on you,” Kotori replied. “If she was going to, it’d be easy for her to send you flying with your makeshift barricade. But it would be bad if you waited too long and her mood soured. Let’s go.”
The camera following him must have already gone into the classroom.
Gulping, he stood up in front of the doorless entrance.
The young woman stared at him. She wasn’t attacking at least, but she eyed him with suspicion.
“A-anyway, calm d—” Holding up both hands to show that he meant her no harm, he stepped into the classroom.
However.
“Stop.” The girl’s clear voice rang out, and a beam of light scorched the floor at his feet. He immediately froze in place. She looked him over from head to toe contemptuously. “Who are you?”
“Ohhh, I’m—,” Shido started.
Kotori put the brakes on. “Stop right there.”
On the main bridge of the Fraxinus, the monitor showed a close-up shot of a Spirit girl clad in a dress of light. Her face was lovely and her eyes were sharp as she glared to the right of the camera—toward Shido.
A variety of parameters, such as affection, had been placed around her. This display showed her mental state, as analyzed numerically by Reine with a Realizer. Fraxinus’s AI turned the conversation into text in real time and displayed it on the lower part of the screen.
At first glance, the screen looked exactly the same as that of the dating sim Shido had used for training.
The handpicked crew turned their faces up toward the extra-large monitor, looking intense and serious. The whole scene was somehow surreal.
Kotori’s eyebrow twitched.
“Who are you?”
The instant the Spirit turned to Shido and spoke those words, the screen flickered, and a siren began to wail on the bridge.
“Th-this is—,” someone on the crew cried out, bewildered, as a window popped up in the center of the screen.
(1) “I’M SHIDO ITSUKA. I’VE COME TO RESCUE YOU!”
(2) “STOP. I’M JUST PASSING BY. PLEASE DON’T KILL ME.”
(3) “YOU SHOULD GIVE YOUR OWN NAME BEFORE ASKING FOR SOMEONE ELSE’S.”
“Choices!” Kotori flicked the stick of her lollipop up.
The Fraxinus AI worked together with Reine’s analysis Realizer to observe the changes in the Spirit’s pulse, brain waves, and other parameters, then instantly displayed possible responses. This display only came up at times when the Spirit’s mental state was unstable. Meaning that if a person responded correctly, they could curry favor with the Spirit. But if they made a mistake…
Kotori immediately pulled the mic to her mouth and checked Shido as he was about to reply. “Stop right there.”
“—?”
She heard him gasp through the speakers. He must have had no idea why she’d instructed him not to speak. They couldn’t keep the Spirit waiting forever. Kotori turned to her crew.
“Choose the best option! In under five seconds!”
The subordinates immediately turned to their consoles, and the results were soon displayed on Kotori’s personal monitor.
Most of the votes were for…(3).
“Seems like you’re all in agreement with me then,” she said, and the crew nodded. “The first choice seems like the right approach on first glance, but she thinks we’re an enemy. If we say that one now, she’ll think it’s suspicious. And it’s kind of a bit much.”
“The second choice is out of the question,” Kannazuki said, standing at attention. “Even if he did manage to make it out of there, that would be the end of it.”
“True,” came Reine’s voice from the lower deck of the bridge. “On that point, three makes sense. And if we do it right, we might be able to steer the conversation.”
Kotori nodded and brought her mic in close again.
“…H-hey? What’s going on…?” Shido stood stock-still in the unpleasant atmosphere, prevented from speaking under the sharp eyes of the girl before him.
“…I’ll ask one more time,” the young woman snarled, sounding irritated, and narrowed her eyes further. “Who are you?”
“Shido.” He finally heard Kotori’s voice in his ear. “Can you hear me? Answer exactly as I tell you to.”
“Y-yeah.”
“You should give your own name before asking for someone else’s.”
“You should give your own name before asking for someone else’s.” Shido’s face drained of color. “Wh-what are you making me say…?!”
But it was already too late. The girl’s face twisted up into a scowl, and this time, she brought both hands up to create a ball of light.
“Eep…!” Shido hurriedly launched himself off the floor and ducked to the right.
An instant later, a sphere of black light shot through the place where he had been standing. It tore a massive hole in the floor and continued to rip through the second and first floors.
The shock wave blew him backward, and he tumbled toward the edge of the classroom, desks and chairs flying into the air around him.
“…Hngh…”
“Huh? Weird,” Kotori said, as if she found the whole interaction deeply mysterious.
“What do you mean ‘weird’?! Are you trying to get me killed?!” he cried as he sat up, holding his head.
“I’ll ask you one last time,” the girl said from the top of his desk. “If you don’t feel like answering, I’ll assume you’re an enemy.”
“I-I’m Shido Itsuka! A student here! I’m not an enemy!”
“…”
He raised both his hands.
“Stay there.” The Spirit jumped down, eyeing him suspiciously. “Right now, you’re within range of my attack.”
“…” He bobbed his head up and down without moving from where he sat to show that he had understood.
“…Hmm?” The girl approached him slowly and then bent at the waist to stare into his face for a while before seemingly recognizing him. “We met once before, haven’t we?”
“Oh…! Yeah. Earlier this month. Pretty sure it was on the tenth. In town.”
“Ohhh.” She clapped her hands together before resuming her previous stance. “I remember. You’re the one who was saying that weird stuff.”
Seeing that the suspicion had faded the tiniest bit from her eyes, Shido relaxed momentarily.
However.
“Nkeee…?!” he squealed as she grabbed his bangs and yanked his face up.
She tilted her head to one side so that she could peer into his eyes. “You said you didn’t want to kill me, right? Hmm. An obvious ploy. Spill it. What are you plotting here? You trying to get me off guard and attack from behind?!”
“…Ngh.”
Shido gritted his teeth. Rather than fear the girl, he felt so sad that he could hardly stand it. She couldn’t even believe for a second that he hadn’t come to kill her. The world around her had taught her not to trust others.
“People!” he shouted, without thinking. “Not all of them…are trying to kill you!”
“…” The Spirit’s eyes grew wide, and she let go of his hair. She stared at him for a brief moment before speaking. “They’re not?”
“That’s right.”
“All the people I’ve met said I had to die,” she told him.
“They’re…wrong…”
“…” The girl said nothing but reached behind her.
Eyes narrowed, lips pursed—her face said that she still didn’t entirely believe what he was saying. “…So tell me. If you’re not planning to kill me, what exactly are you here for?”
“Well, I—”
“Shido.” Kotori’s voice echoed in his ear.
“Another choice, hmm?” Kotori licked her lips and stared at the options displayed in the middle of the screen.
(1) “TO SEE YOU, OF COURSE.”
(2) “WHO CARES.”
(3) “IT’S JUST A COINCIDENCE. THAT’S ALL.”
Her crew’s opinions were immediately collected on her monitor.
“Option two? Well, judging from her earlier reaction, that’s probably a no-go. Shido, go ahead and tell her the safe choice, that you came to see her,” Kotori said into the mic.
Shido opened his mouth as he stood up on-screen. “I came to see you.”
“…?” The girl looked stunned. “Me? For what?”
The moment the question left her lips, a new set of choices popped up on-screen.
(1) “I FIND YOU INTERESTING.”
(2) “TO LOVE YOU.”
(3) “THERE’S SOMETHING I WANTED TO ASK YOU.”
“Hmm, what have we here?” Kotori stroked her chin as the collective response was shown on her monitor. Option two was the popular choice.
“We’d best go straight in on this one, Commander,” a crew member said from the lower deck. “We must show her a chivalrous spirit!”
“She’s the kind of girl where you have to be up-front!” another chimed in.
Kotori paused thoughtfully and recrossed her legs. “Well, I guess that’s fine. And with options one and three, we’ll get questions in response again. Shido. Say ‘I’m here to love you.’”
Shido shivered.
“Ohhh… Th-that’s, uh…,” Shido stammered, eyes darting around the room.
“What? You can’t tell me? You mean you just showed up here for no reason? Or—”
Her eyes started to glitter dangerously once again.
“I-I’m here,” he interrupted her, waving his hands, “to…love you?”
The girl swept her hand out to the side, and a blade of wind slashed the space above his head, slicing through the classroom wall, which flew off outside. Several of his hairs were trimmed off and danced away in the breeze.
“Wha…?!”
“I’m not in the mood for jokes,” she muttered, looking extremely sullen.
He swallowed hard. The terror he’d felt a moment ago faded, and his heart pounded loud in his ears.
Yeah. That face.
It was that face Shido absolutely hated. A look that despaired of the world, like she didn’t believe for a second that she could be loved.
“I…!” he started, unthinking. “I came here…to talk to you!”
She looked at him as though he were speaking a foreign language. “What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. I wanted to talk to you. About anything. If you don’t like it, you can ignore me. But understand just one thing. I—”
“Shido, calm down,” Kotori instructed in rebuke.
But he didn’t stop. After all, not a single person had ever reached a hand out to this girl. Even though a single word could change everything, there had been no person to deliver this line to her.
Shido had his father, his mother, Kotori. But this young woman had no one. So then he would have to be the one to say it.
“I…I will not reject you.” He enunciated each word slowly and stamped a foot down.
“…” The girl twisted her expression and looked away from him. After a brief silence, she opened her mouth. “…Shido. It was Shido, right?”
“Uh-huh.” He nodded.
“You really won’t reject me?”
“I really won’t.”
“Really, really?”
“Really, really.”
“Really, really, really?”
“Really, really, really,” Shido replied without a moment’s hesitation.
The Spirit scratched her head and made a sniffling sound before turning back to him.
“Hmm.” She crossed her arms and wore a slight frown. “You think you can fool me like that? You’re a dummy—a real dummy.”
“I’m telling you—”
“But, well, you know,” she continued, the look on her face complicated. “I don’t know what your real motives are, but you are the first person to try and actually talk to me. I could use you to get some information about this world.”
She stuck her nose in the air.
“H-huh?”
“I’m saying I wouldn’t not talk to you. Right. To get information. Mm-hmm, that’s important. Information’s super important.”
He felt like her face softened just the tiniest bit.
“Y-yeah?” he replied, baffled, as he scratched at his cheek.
Could he assume he’d succeeded at first contact?
“Nice work.” Kotori’s voice echoed in his ear. “Keep going.”
“Uh, uh-huh…”
The girl began to pace around the classroom. “But just try doing anything weird. I’ll rip open a wind hole in your body.”
“…Okay, roger that.”
Her slow footfalls echoed in the empty classroom. “Shido.”
“Wh-what?”
“Question. What exactly is this place? I’ve never seen anything like it before.” She patted the desks that were still standing as she walked.
“Huh? …Ohhh, it’s a school—a classroom. Um, it’s a place where people my age come to study. We sit in these chairs. Like this.”
“What?” The girl’s eyes opened wide in surprise. “All of these are filled with people? Don’t joke around. There’s nearly forty of them.”
“It’s true,” he said, scratching his head.
When the Spirit had appeared, the city had given the order to evacuate. About the only people she’d ever seen were likely the AST, which wasn’t very many.
“So you—” He was about to call her by name and then cut himself off.
“Hmm?” The girl frowned and put her hand to her chin as though in thought. “Oh, you need a name if you’re talking to someone, huh?” She nodded and stepped over the desk in front of her. “Shido. What do you want to call me?”
“Huh?” he asked in return, not understanding what she was trying to say.
“Give me a name,” she told him imperiously.
That’s too much, too soon! he screamed in his heart.
“M-me?!” he cried out loud.
“Yes. I’ve got no plans to converse with anyone else. So it’s fine.”
“Whoa! We got another bombshell here.” Kotori scratched her head in her captain’s chair.
“…Mm, what to do…?” Reine groaned from the lower deck.
Although the siren was wailing on the bridge, no choices appeared on the screen. There were simply too many permutations for the AI to choose a name randomly.
“Keep calm, Shido. Don’t go panicking and giving her a weird name,” Kotori said and stood up to call out to her crew. “People! Send your name proposals to my terminal right now!”
She dropped her gaze to her display. Names were already coming in from several crew members. “Let’s see. Kawagoe!” she barked. “Misako’s your ex-wife’s name, isn’t it?!”
“I-I’m sorry, I couldn’t think of anything.” A man’s apologetic voice came from the lower part of the command room.
“Honestly… What else…? Ku-ra-ra-be-ru? Mikimoto, how do you pronounce this string of letters?”
“Clarabell, ma’am!”
“Horrid name. You are prohibited from ever having children.” She thrust a finger out at the man who’d spoken.
“Apologies! My oldest child is already in elementary school!”
“Your oldest?”
“Yes, ma’am! I have three children!”
“And what are their names?” Kotori asked suspiciously.
“Oldest to youngest: Beau-apple, Fullmonty, and Seraphim!”
“Change their names within the week and move to a new school district,” she commanded.
“Are they that bad?!”
“Think for a sec about how it would feel to be a kid with a weird name, you goby fish!”
“It’s all right!” he replied. “Lately, everyone has a weird name!”
Thunk! Thunk! A muffled sound echoed through the bridge, probably Shido tapping on his earpiece.
When Kotori looked up, the girl on-screen still had her arms crossed, drumming a finger on an elbow like she was getting tired of waiting. Kotori looked back down at her display. All the options listed there were terrible. She heaved a heavy sigh and shook her head in exasperation. Her subordinates had absolutely no taste at all.
She looked at the girl, how beautiful she was. Something traditional, something elegant would suit her well. For instance…
“Tome.”
“Tome! Your name is Tome!”
Eeenh! Eeeenh! A shrill alarm pierced the air, and a red lamp flashed in the command room.
“Code Blue! She’s unhappy!” a member of the crew called in a panic.
The affection meter displayed on the main screen plummeted, and tiny spheres of light rained down at Shido’s feet on-screen with a machine-gun patter.
“Ngaaaaaah?!”
“…Kotori?” Reine asked dubiously.
“Huh? Weird.” Kotori shook her head. “I thought it was a nice traditional name.”
“…I don’t know why, but I get the feeling you’re making fun of me,” the girl said, a vein throbbing in anger on her forehead.
“…S-sorry! …Hang on a sec!”
When he thought about it, she definitely wasn’t a Tome. He cursed his own foolishness as he shrank in fear in front of the smoking floor before him. Apologies to all the older ladies of the land, but Tome wasn’t the sort of name you gave a girl nowadays.
The idea that the Spirit would ask him to name her hadn’t ever crossed his mind. He managed to somehow get his heartbeat back under control as he let his eyes and his thoughts wander. But it wasn’t like a girl’s name was going to pop up in the back of his mind suddenly.
Hmm… A good name… The names of girls he knew flashed through his head, but he didn’t have enough time to really consider them all. The Spirit’s face was growing increasingly sour.
“…T-Tohka.” Shido uttered a name, at his wit’s end.
“Hmm?” She frowned.
“H-how…about it?”
“…” The girl was silent for a while before finally saying, “Hmm, okay. Better than Tome.”
He smiled in relief as he scratched the back of his head. But then a regret greater than his alleviation came down to crush him. After all, he had given the young woman this stupidly easy name because he’d first met her on April tenth—tohka, the tenth day.
“…What am I even doing…?”
“You say something?” the Spirit asked.
“Oh! No, nothing…” He hurriedly waved his hand.
She looked at him curiously for a second but didn’t pursue it further. Instead, she came over to stand next to him. “So, Tohka. How do you spell it?”
“Oh, it’s…” Shido walked toward the blackboard, picked up some chalk, and wrote the characters on the board.
“Hmm.” The Spirit hummed thoughtfully and traced the blackboard with a fingertip, imitating him.
“Oh. Uh, you have to use chalk or it won’t—,” he started to say and then stopped. Her finger had etched the two characters clumsily into the chalkboard itself.
“What?”
“…Oh, nothing.”
“Yeah?” she said and stared at the characters of her own name for a while before nodding slightly. “Shido.”
“Wh-what?”
“Tohka.”
“Tohka. That’s my name. Pretty, huh?”
“Y-yeah.” Shido felt kind of…awkward. In all sorts of ways. He picked at his cheek and averted his eyes.
But the girl—Tohka spoke once more in the same way. “Shido.”
Even he understood what she was getting at. “T-Tohka…”
The corners of her mouth jerked up with satisfaction at the sound of her name coming from his mouth.
“…Ngh.” His heart skipped a beat. Now that he was thinking about it, this was the first time he’d seen her smile.
“…Huh…?”
He heard an explosive roar, and then the school itself was rocked back and forth. He immediately put a hand on the blackboard to brace himself. “Wh-what the…?!”
“Shido, get down.” Kotori’s voice echoed in his ear.
“Huh…?”
“Just do it.”
Not knowing which way was up, he did as he was told and threw himself down on the floor.
In the next instant, an earsplitting drilling filled the air, and the windows of the classroom shattered all at once. Bullets gouged holes in the wall on the other side of the room, like something straight out of a mafia war.
“Wh-what’s going on…?!” he shouted.
“Looks like they’re attacking from outside. Maybe to draw the Spirit out,” Kotori told him. “Ohhh, or maybe they’re going to take the whole school down and get rid of any hiding places.”
“Wh—? They can’t just—!”
“We have the disaster relief corps of wizards now, after all. They can get everything back to normal in no time flat, so it’s fine if the AST destroy the school. Still, this is unprecedented. Never thought they’d take such a drastic measure.”
Shido lifted his head. The look on Tohka’s face now as she gazed out through the shattered windows was totally different from her expression a moment ago. Naturally, she hadn’t been touched by so much as a shard of glass, much less a bullet, but her face was twisted up in pain.
“Tohka!” he unconsciously called out to her.
“…” With a gasp, she turned to look at him.
The terrible roar of gunfire came again, but the assault on the classroom had stopped for the moment.
He pulled himself up, wary of what was going on outside.
“Get out of here, Shido.” Tohka lowered her eyes sadly. “If you’re with me, you’ll get shot by your compatriots.”
“…” He swallowed hard, unable to speak. He really did need to get out of there. But…
“You have two options,” Kotori told him. “Run or stay.”
He hesitated briefly before saying in a strained voice, “…How can I run away, in this situation…?”
“Idiot.”
“…Fine, I’m an idiot.”
“That was a compliment. Let me give you a bit of advice. If you don’t want to die, stay as close as you can to the Spirit.”
“…Okay.” He pressed his lips together tightly and sat down at Tohka’s feet.
“Huh?” Her eyes flew open. “What are you doing? Hurry up and—”
“As if I could leave…!” he interrupted. “Right now is our time to chat. They’re nothing. They don’t bother me. You want information about this world, right? I’ll tell you everything I know.”
“…!”
For a moment, Tohka stared down in surprise and then she took a seat on the floor across from him.
“—”
Wearing her wiring suit, Origami clutched a massive Gatling gun in both hands. She checked the sight, pulled the trigger, and sprayed the school with bullets. The weapon was large, the type normally equipped on warships, but because her Territory was deployed, she felt almost no weight or recoil. She watched coolly as the hail of bullets whipped through the school, reducing it to a myriad of holes.
Still, her Realizer was not anti-Spirit. It was simply to destroy the building and flush the Spirit out.
“So? Is it coming out?” Ryouko’s voice came to her through the comm in Origami’s headset. The older girl was standing right next to Origami, but her actual voice couldn’t reach her over the gunfire.
“No confirmation yet,” Origami replied without stopping her attack. She opened her eyes wide and stared hard at the crumbling structure.
She was far enough away that she normally wouldn’t notice the pages posted on the bulletin board off to one side of the school, but with her Territory deployed, she could read each word on every post. She narrowed her eyes slightly.
Year 2, Class 4. Her own classroom. The exterior wall had wholly fallen away thanks to their attack, and she could see the target Spirit inside. But…
“Hmm? Is that…?” Ryouko said uncertainly.
Her apprehension was not unfounded. There was someone else in the classroom with the Spirit—a boy, from the look of it. Maybe a student who didn’t evacuate in time.
“Wh-what’s that? Is he being attacked by the Spirit?” Ryouko asked.
Origami ignored Ryouko and stared into the classroom. She felt like she’d seen that young man before.
“—!”
And then her eyes widened. It was her classmate—Shido Itsuka.
“Origami?” Ryouko asked from the side.
Instead of answering her captain, Origami started giving silent orders—orders to the Realizer surrounding her to produce the fastest mobility possible.
“Hey, Origami?!” Ryouko cried.
“It’s too dangerous. Please avoid acting on your own,” came a transmission from headquarters.
However, she didn’t stop. She threw down the Gatling gun, drew the close-combat anti-Spirit laser blade—called No Pain—on her hip, and headed for the school.
As bullets whizzed past them, Shido sat facing a girl in his classroom and talked to her. This was obviously the first time he’d ever done this in his life.
The projectiles seemed to avoid them as they ripped through the school, likely thanks to Tohka’s power. That said, having a bullet pass before your eyes was not something you got to experience in everyday life. He felt like if he flinched even the tiniest bit, one of them would hit him, so he tried to lock his body in place as they spoke.
The details of the conversation itself were nothing special.
Tohka asked the questions she hadn’t been able to ask anyone else, and Shido answered them. Her smile betrayed her satisfaction with the exchange.
He didn’t know how long they’d been talking when he heard Kotori’s voice in his ear.
“The numbers are stable. Try asking her a question yourself. We want information on the Spirits.”
His head churned for a moment before he said, “Hey, Tohka?”
“What?”
“So, like…what exactly are you?”
“Hmm?” She furrowed her brow at his question. “Dunno.”
“‘Dunno’…?” he parroted.
“That’s the truth. Just how it is. I don’t know how long ago it was, but suddenly I sprouted there. That’s all. My memory’s fuzzy, distorted. I have no idea what I am.”
“Y-you don’t…?” he asked, scratching his cheek.
“I don’t.” She sighed as she crossed her arms. “I was suddenly born into this world one day, and before I could even gather my thoughts, the mech-heads were already dancing around me in the sky.”
“Those people making all the noise—pew, pew, pew.”
The AST. Shido grinned.
Then he heard a bright buzzer over his earpiece, the kind that sounded when you got the right answer on a quiz show.
“…! This is your chance, Shido,” Kotori said.
“Huh…? For what?”
“The Spirit’s mood meter is over seventy. If you’re going to make a move, it’s gotta be now.”
“Make a move? …What should I do?”
“Hmm, right… How about you ask her out on a date?”
“What…?!” he yelped loudly.
“Hmm? What’s wrong, Shido?” Tohka frowned as she looked at him.
“Oh, it’s nothing. Forget it.”
He tried to smooth it over, but she continued to stare at him with suspicious eyes.
“…”
“Just ask her,” Kotori insisted. “You gotta just go there to boost your intimacy level.”
“Okay, but, like, the second she shows up, the AST will…”
“All the more reason. Ask her to run into a large building the next time she appears. Aquarium, movie theater, department store, anything. Even better if there’s underground facilities. That way, the AST won’t be able to enter directly.”
“…M-mph,” he groaned.
“Why do you keep muttering to yourself? …You are conspiring to kill me, aren’t you?!”
“N-no! No! That’s not it!” He hurried to protest the accusation.
Tohka’s gaze grew sharper, and a light sphere materialized on one of her fingertips.
“Then spill it,” she demanded. “What were you saying?”
“Hngh…” Sweat beaded on his forehead.
“See?” a jeering voice echoed in his ear. “Give up. Date! Date!”
She had clearly gotten the whole crew to join her in this chant. He heard the call to date on the other side of the earpiece like distant thunder.
“Date!”
“Date!”
“Date!”
“Ugh! Fine! I get it!” Shido cried, giving up.
What Kotori was saying did make a kind of sense to him, and he knew it was important to lay the groundwork for the next steps. Still, it was a little awkward.
“So, um, Tohka?”
“Hmm? What?”
“Uh, um,” he stammered. “Would you, uh.”
“Mm.”
“L-like to go…on a date with me sometime?”
Tohka looked stunned. “What’s a date?”
“S-so it’s like…” He grew increasingly embarrassed and averted his eyes as he rubbed his cheeks.
“Shido!” Kotori’s voice came in a little on the loud side. “The AST are moving!”
“Huh…?!” he cried, even though Tohka would hear him and wonder.
In the blink of an eye, Origami popped up from outside the now-airy classroom.
Tohka’s face instantly grew stern, and she opened her palm in the direction of the intruder.
A heartbeat later, Origami charged Tohka, having materialized a blade of light from a rough device in her hand.
Everything was filled with sparking fireworks like a welding workshop.
“Hngh…!” Origami groaned.
“Boor!” Tohka barked as she caught the blade of light in her hand and knocked it and Origami aside.
“…Ngh!” Origami was sent flying backward, and she gritted her teeth slightly. However, she immediately straightened up and landed neatly on the bullet-hole-ridden floor.
“Tch! You again?” Tohka said disdainfully, as she lightly waved the hand that had stopped the blade of light.
Origami glanced at Shido and then let out a sigh, as though relieved. She quickly readied the strange weapon once more and turned cold eyes on Tohka.
Seeing this, Tohka also glanced at Shido before thrusting her heels into the floor below her feet. “Sandalphon—Massacre Ruler!”
A bulge pushed up from the floor of the classroom, and a throne appeared.
“Wh…?” He gasped.
“Shido, withdraw!” Kotori shouted. “We’ll pick you up with Fraxinus. Get as far away from them as you can!”
“Easy for you to say, but how…?!” he shouted.
Tohka drew a sword from the back of the throne and swung it at Origami. The ensuing shock wave easily knocked Shido out of the school.
“Whaaaaaa—?!”
“Nice!”
His body became strangely buoyant, enveloped in zero gravity as he was collected by Fraxinus.