Chapter 4

Surprise Date

“…Well, I guess…it makes sense that school would be canceled.”

Shido went down the hill that stretched out in front of the academy, twiddling with his hair sheepishly.

The day after he’d named the Spirit Tohka, he went to school like always, only to find the gates firmly closed and the building transformed into rubble. He had actually been on the scene when the structure was destroyed, and if he’d thought about it for two seconds, he would have pieced together that school would be canceled.

Maybe he cut the entire scene from his memory, given how unrealistic and far from the normality of his everyday life it was. Plus, his thought-processing power might have been down due to a lack of sleep, because he’d been forced to take part in a review meeting and had spent the night watching the video of his conversation with Tohka.

“Aah… Maybe I’ll go shopping or something.”

He started moving in a different direction from home. He was pretty sure they were out of eggs and milk anyway, and it felt weird somehow to go back the way he’d just come.

A minute later, he stopped once more. A sign in the road told him that entry was prohibited.

“Oh. I guess this road’s closed…?” he muttered to himself.

Even without the sign, however, he could easily tell that it wasn’t serviceable. The asphalt surface had been dug up, the brick walls had crumbled, and even the mixed-use buildings had collapsed. It looked like there’d been a war.

“Aah, this was…”

He remembered this place. It was the location of the spacequake where he’d first met Tohka. The relief corps hadn’t dealt with it yet, so the carnage of ten days earlier remained as it had been.

“…”

An image of the girl popped up in his mind. Tohka. The Spirit who hadn’t had a name until the previous day—the girl called catastrophe.

Yesterday, he had spoken with her for far longer than the last time, and his hunch had turned to certainty. She did indeed have powers that would normally be unthinkable, so much so that he had to agree with the government institutions that considered her a threat. The terrible sight before him was proof of that. They definitely couldn’t just leave this phenomenon to run wild.

“…do.”

But at the same time, he couldn’t believe she was a monster without thought or mercy, someone who was wielding their great power maliciously.

“…y…do.”

He hated the melancholy expression she wore. He couldn’t allow it to persist.

“Hey, Shido.”

With all these thoughts in his brain, he wasn’t really focusing on the world around him. He ended up walking back to the school gates.

“…Don’t just ignore me!”

“Huh?”

He scratched his head in confusion. He was sure he heard someone from the other side of the no-entry area where the road was closed.

It was a beautiful voice, crisply cutting through the wind. A voice he had heard somewhere—specifically at school the day before. A voice he shouldn’t have been able to hear now and in this place.

“Uh, um.” As he compared the tone in his memory with the one he heard now, he turned his gaze in the direction it came from.

He froze in place.

Up ahead, a girl was crouched down on top of a mountain of rubble, clad in a dress that was clearly not the sort of thing anyone wore to hang out in town.

“…T-Tohka?!”

Unless something had gone terribly wrong with his eyes or brain, the young woman before him was the Spirit he had seen at school the day before.

“Finally noticed me? Dummy dum-dum.”

Her face was so beautiful that it made him straighten up. It was colored with dissatisfaction as the girl kicked at the rubble, jumped down to a patch of asphalt that just barely retained its original shape, and started moving in his direction.

“Hup!”

Tohka kicked down the no-entry sign to come stand in front of Shido. It must have impeded her passage.

“Wh-what are you doing, Tohka…?” Shido asked finally.

“…Hmm? What do you mean, ‘what’?”

“I mean, what are you doing here…?!” he shouted as he looked around.

He could see some housewives standing and chatting, a neighborhood resident walking a dog. No one was evacuating to the shelters, which meant that the spacequake alarm hadn’t gone off. That meant neither Ratatoskr nor the AST had detected the foreshocks that heralded a Spirit’s appearance.

“Why are you asking me?” The girl herself seemed completely unconcerned with this abnormal situation. She crossed her arms, looking very much like she did not understand why he’d raised his voice. “You invited me, Shido. To a date or whatever.”

“Wha—?!” He gasped, shoulders jolting. “Y-you remembered…?”

“Hmm? What? Are you calling me stupid?”

“No, that’s not what I meant…”

“Hmph, well, whatever. Anyway, Shido, hurry with the date. Date-date-date-date.”

Her tone as she chanted the word date was somehow odd.

“O-okay!” he cried. “I get it, so please stop saying the word!”

“Hmm? Why? Oh! You didn’t actually teach me some filthy obscenity because you knew I wouldn’t know any better, did you?”

Her cheeks reddened suddenly.

“I—I didn’t! No! The word is the height of wholesomeness!” He insisted and then scratched his cheek. That was a bit of a lie.

A date might lead to a situation that was at the pinnacle of lewdness—depending on the person. He squirmed under her dubious gaze.

The neighborhood housewives grinned at them, as if the whole scene was adorable. He felt like at least a couple of their gazes were more curious about Tohka’s strange appearance.

“…Mm?” Tohka had apparently noticed the onlookers. Her gaze sharpened as she hid behind Shido. “…Hey, what’s with them? Enemies? Should I kill them?”

“H-huh…?!” He shuddered. “No, no, no! Why’s that the first thing you suggest? They’re just a bunch of ladies.”

“What are you talking about, Shido?” she demanded. “Those fiery eyes! They’re the same as you’d find on birds of prey. I can only assume they’re gunning for me. If I just leave them be, they’re bound to turn into a hassle later. I think it’d be better to take them out fast.”

Well, their eyes were shining, but…that was only because they’d found a new subject to gossip about.

“Relax,” he reassured her. “I told you, there aren’t that many people who want to attack you.”

“…Mph.” She still seemed alarmed, but at least she didn’t look like she was going to go flying at them that very second. “Well, fine. So then this date thing—”

“H-hey, how about we go somewhere else? Okay?” he proposed and started walking briskly.

“Mm. Hey, Shido! Where are you going?!” she called unhappily and quickly trotted after him.

He only let his breath out when they stepped into a deserted alleyway.

“So you finally calmed down? You’re a total weirdo,” Tohka remarked, with an air of exasperation. “What exactly was wrong with that place?”

“Tohka… What happened to you after everything that went down yesterday?”

He had all kinds of questions for her, but this was the first one that made it out of his mouth.

“Nothing much. Just the usual,” Tohka said, looking a little dejected. “They swung swords that can’t pass through me, fired bullets that can’t hit me. In the end, I disappeared naturally.”

“…Disappeared?”

Now that she mentioned it, he felt like Kotori and her gang had used an expression like that, but to be honest, he didn’t really understand what it meant.

“I just shift to a different space than this world.”

“I-is that even a thing…? What kind of place is it?”

“I don’t really know.”

“…Huh?”

“The instant I shift over there, I enter a dormant state. The only thing I can just barely remember is this feeling like I’m drifting along in a dark space. For me, it’s like falling asleep.”

“So then you come to this world when you wake up?”

“Not quite.” Tohka shook her head and continued. “Usually, I don’t have any control over any of it. Every so often, a presence pulls me to this world and keeps me here. It feels like being forcefully yanked awake.”

“…” Shido gasped.

He knew that when a Spirit appeared, a spacequake occurred. However, if what she was saying were true, her arrivals here had nothing to do with her wishes. Did that make the spacequakes accidents? It was absurd to pin the blame for this on Tohka—on the Spirits.

Then another question materialized in his mind. “…’Usually’? Is today different?”

“…Hmph.” Her face stiffened, her mouth turned down at the corners, and she looked away from him. “H-how would I know?”

He kept prodding, however. “C’mon, answer me. This might be really important.”

That was true. If she’d come to this world today of her own will, then maybe that meant her appearance itself wasn’t the cause of the spacequakes.

For some reason, her eyes hardened as her cheeks were dyed the faintest cherry pink. “You don’t give up. We’re done talking about that.”

“No, but—,” Shido started to say, and Tohka stomped on the ground. The asphalt where her foot landed flashed, and beams of light radiated out from the source.

“Whoa…?!”

Sparks shot into the air when the light touched his shoes.

“Forget it. Hurry up and tell me what this date thing is.”

“…Hmph.”

She clearly wasn’t going to take no for an answer, so he had no choice but to shut up. If he pushed her any further, she might let loose with the beams of light like she had yesterday.

“…A boy and a girl go out together and do stuff,” he said, after hemming and hawing briefly. “I think.”

“That’s it?” She looked a little deflated.

“Y-yeah…” He was kind of out of his depth here. After all, he’d never been on a date himself. He knew the concept of dating from manga and TV, but that was the extent of his knowledge.

Tohka pouted and crossed her arms. “…So then yesterday, you were saying you wanted to hang out with me, Shido?”

“W-well…I guess…that’s what it…means?” He grew 20 percent more embarrassed at having his own words explained to him like this.

“Oh yeah?” Her face grew a little brighter, and she strode energetically toward the entrance to the alley.

“T-Tohka!”

“What, Shido? We’re gonna go hang out, right?”

“…! A-are you sure…?” he asked, surprised.

“You’re the one who said you wanted to.”

“Oh… Well, that’s true, but—”

“So then hurry up,” she said and started advancing once more. “Before I change my mind.”

“T-Tohka!” he cried out to stop her, realizing that this plan had one fatal flaw. “You can’t wear that!”

“What?” She opened her eyes wide, as though this were entirely unexpected. “What’s wrong with my Astral Dress? It’s my armor and domain. I won’t allow you to insult it.”

“You stand out too much in that outfit…!” he cried. “I mean, the AST’ll sniff you out!”

“Mm.” She grimaced, perhaps realizing that would indeed be annoying. “So then what am I supposed to do?”

“Well, you’ll have to change into something else, but…”

A trail of sweat ran down his cheek. It wasn’t like he had a girl’s change of clothes on him, and it would turn into a whole thing if he took her to a shop. Plus, his wallet was woefully thin.

“What kind of clothes would be good?” she asked impatiently. “Just tell me.”

“Huh? Uh…” He wasn’t sure how to answer her at first, but then a figure in a familiar uniform cut across the edge of his field of vision. “Oh…”

A sleepy-looking student he didn’t know was walking down the road. She had probably also missed the news that the school was closed.

“Tohka, there.” He pointed at the high school girl. “You’ll be fine if you’re wearing something like that.”

“Mm?” She looked in the direction he indicated and put a hand to her chin. “Hmm, I see. So that would be okay.” She flipped her index and middle fingers up to generate a black ball of light on her fingertips and turned toward the girl.

“Um, what are you going to do?!” Shido knocked her hand down, almost foaming at the mouth.

The ball of light was launched from her fingers, grazed the girl’s hair, and hit the bricks behind her with a dull thud. Tiny fragments broke off the wall and scattered on the ground.

“Eeep…?!” The girl jumped into the air and whirled her head around. After a second, she tilted her head to one side curiously and started walking again, perhaps determining she was actually just half-asleep.

“What’re you doing?” Tohka demanded. “I missed.”

“What am I doing?! I should be asking you that!”

“I was just going to knock her unconscious and take her clothes.” She then gave him a blank look as if to say, “So?”

“Listen, Tohka.” Shido let out a sigh from the depths of his soul and put a hand to his forehead. “You can’t attack people. It’s not allowed.”

“Why not?”

“…Well, you feel bad when the AST attacks you, right?” asked Shido. “Listen. It’s not okay to do things to other people that you don’t like people doing to you.”

“…Hmm.” She pursed her lips in dissatisfaction. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand what he was saying but more that she was unhappy with the way he spoke to her as if she were a child. “…Fine. I’ll keep that in mind.”

She lifted her face as though an idea had just occurred to her. “No choice then. I guess I’ll do something about my outfit first,” she said and snapped her fingers.

Instantly, the dress she was wearing melted into the air. As if to replace the strange outfit, particles of light clustered around her body to form a different silhouette.

A few seconds later, Tohka was standing in front of him wearing the same Raizen High uniform as the girl who had been walking down the street earlier.

“Huh? Wh-what the—?”

“I released the Astral Dress and made new clothes,” she stated, crossing her arms. “I only had the visual information, so the details might be different, but well, that shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Okay, but if you can do this, then why not do it right from the start?!”

Tohka flapped a hand at him, like she didn’t need his nagging. “Anyway, where are we going?”

“Th-that’s…” He put a hand to his right ear, as if seeking advice.

Then, a moment too late, he realized he wasn’t wearing the earpiece.

Naturally, there was also no camera buzzing around them…because Kotori and the rest of the crew on Fraxinus didn’t know Tohka was here.

In other words, they were completely alone.

He felt slightly dizzy, and his stomach started to churn from the pressure. Even if they only gave awful advice, it still felt very different when he had them behind him and when he didn’t.

“What’s wrong, Shido?” Tohka asked.

“…It’s nothing.” He took several deep breaths and began to walk awkwardly.

After a second or two, Tohka called to him, “Shido, you’re walking too fast! Ease up a little.”

“O-oh, sorry…” He slowed down a bit. They had different stride lengths, so it was only natural that he would end up pulling ahead, but it was a strange feeling somehow.

He was walking alongside a girl.

For Shido, who had basically never gone anywhere with a girl before, it was a new sensation. (Kotori bounced along and went ahead of him, so she was not much of a reference point.)

He glanced at Tohka beside him. She looked like a totally normal girl, far from some kind of monster who could destroy heaven and earth with the swing of a sword.

When the pair left the alley and went onto the main road, lined with shops, Tohka frowned and whirled her head around, taking it all in.

“…Wh-what’s with all the people? Is this war?!” she asked, suddenly alert to everything in all directions.

She was apparently surprised by the number of cars and people, an order of magnitude greater than anything she’d likely seen before. Small balls of light materialized on every finger of both hands.

“No, I told you, it’s not like that!” Shido hurried to put the brakes on. “No one here is after your life!”

“…Really?”

“Really,” he assured, and she extinguished the luminous spheres, although her guard remained up.

“…Hmm?” Abruptly, her face relaxed. “Hey, Shido. What’s that smell?”

“…Smell?” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Just as she said, there was something fragrant wafting through the air. “Oh, it’s probably from there.” He pointed to a bakery to the right.

“Oh-ho,” she said and stared hard at the establishment.

“…Tohka?”

“Mm? What?”

“You want to go inside?”

“…”

The corners of her mouth turned down, and her fingers twitched. With impeccable timing, her stomach rumbled loudly. Apparently, Spirits got hungry, too.

“If you want to go in, Shido,” she said, finally, “I wouldn’t not go in with you.”

“…I want to go in. I reeeeally want to go inside.”

“Yeah? I guess that settles it!” she declared, swinging her arms and seeming very happy, and then she opened the bakery door.

“…”

Hiding behind the wall, Origami let out a tiny sigh as she stared at the boy and girl chatting in front of the bakery, the expression on her face not changing in the slightest.

When she arrived at school, it was closed, so she was about to head back home when she spotted Itsuka walking with this young woman. This was alarming enough in and of itself. In true girlfriend fashion, she calmly began tailing them.

Soon, she realized she had an even bigger problem. Origami had seen this girl’s face before.

“Spirit,” she muttered.

That was right. Monster. Anomaly. World-killing catastrophe. This extraordinary person who Origami and her team were supposed to eradicate was wearing a high school uniform and walking casually next to Shido.

However, when she thought about it, this was impossible. There was a powerful and unmistakable foreshock when a Spirit appeared. There was no way the AST measurement team would have missed it. The spacequake alarm should have gone off like it had yesterday, and a messenger should have come running for Origami.

She took her cell phone out of her bag and opened it. There were no new messages.

Was the girl not actually a Spirit, just someone who was the spitting image of her?

“…There’s no way,” she said quietly. She wouldn’t have forgotten the Spirit’s face. She pushed a button on her phone, selected a number from her address book, and pressed the CALL button.

“AST, Master Sergeant Origami Tobiichi. A-0613.” She gave her affiliation and identification code before getting into the main topic. “Do a measurement.”

“Oh, Reine. Give it to me if you don’t want it.”

“…Mm. Sure. You can have it.”

Kotori reached out with her fork and stabbed into a raspberry on the plate in front of Reine. She brought it to her mouth and enjoyed its tart sweetness. “Mmm, yum. Why don’t you like them?”

“…Because they’re so sour,” Reine said and took a sip of apple tea with a heap of sugar in it.

They were at a café on the main street of Tengu. Kotori was in her white ribbons and junior high uniform, while Reine wore a faded knit shirt and jeans.

Kotori had gone to classes as she always did, but it seemed that her school had also taken damage in the aftershocks of the previous day’s spacequake, so lessons had been canceled. The idea of simply going straight back home peeved her, though, so she called Reine, and now they were feasting on desserts together.

“…Oh right,” Reine said, as though she’d just remembered something. “This is the perfect chance for me to ask you.”

“Whaaat?”

“…I know this is pretty basic—sorry—but why was he picked to negotiate with the Spirits?”

“Hmm… Promise you won’t tell anyone?”

“…I promise,” Reine agreed in a hushed voice.

Kotori nodded. Reine Murasame was a woman who kept her word. “The truth is, I’m not related to my big brother. It’s the most clichéd dating-sim trope there is.”

“…Oh?” Reine’s expression was neutral, neither interested nor surprised. She simply digested Kotori’s words and looked about to ask how these two things were related.

“That’s why I like you, Reine.”

“…?” The older woman looked at her curiously.

“Forget it,” Kotori told her. “So anyway. I don’t really remember how old he was when this happened, but Shido was abandoned by his real mom, and my family took him in. This was when I was really little, so I don’t remember much. But I guess it was pretty rough going when he first moved in. Like, he was on the verge of killing himself or something.”

“…” For some reason, Reine raised an eyebrow.

“What’s wrong?” Kotori asked.

“…Nothing. Go on.”

“Hmm. Well, I guess that was inevitable, y’know? For a kid who’s still in the single digits age-wise, your mother is like a god, and I think Shido felt like his own existence had been rejected when she abandoned him. Everything settled down after a year or so, though.” She sighed and then continued. “Maybe that’s why he’s weirdly sensitive when other people are in despair.”

“…Despair?”

“Mmm.” Kotori nodded. “Like when everyone completely rejects you. You start to think no one loves you—which was basically what he was like back then. If he sees anyone with a gloomy face, he’ll inject himself into their situation without a moment’s hesitation, even if it’s a total stranger. So I thought just maybe.” She paused. “He was about the only person I could think of who would happily face the Spirit.”

“…I see.” Reine lowered her eyes. “…But I wasn’t asking about that kind of emotional reason.”

“…” Kotori studied her for a moment. “Meaning?”

“…I wish you wouldn’t feign innocence here. I know you know. What exactly is he?”

Reine was Ratatoskr’s top analyst. Using a custom Realizer, she measured the composition of objects, temperature distributions, and brain waves—generally capturing even the subtleties of a person’s emotions, abilities, and special traits.

Kotori sighed. “Well, I figured it would come to this when I gave him to you.”

“…Yeah, sorry, but I did a little analysis… I thought it was weird you’d involve a civilian in this mission without a clear reason.”

“Mm, I don’t mind. Everyone’ll find out at some point anyway.”

Klak! The door opened, and the waitress called out a greeting. “Welcome!”

Kotori took the straw in the cup in front of her and put it in her mouth to suck up the last of her blueberry juice.

“Pwaaaaaaah?!”

She spurted out all the liquid in her mouth when she saw a couple come in and sit down at the table behind Reine.

“…”

The boy and girl didn’t notice, but Reine took serious damage—in other words, she was soaked.

“Sorry, Reine,” Kotori apologized in a hushed voice.

“…Mm.” Reine took a handkerchief out of her pocket and wiped her face like nothing had happened. “…What was that about, Kotori?”

“…I thought I saw something irrational and unrealistic.”

“…And what was that?”

Kotori pointed wordlessly.

“…?” Reine turned her head and instantly froze in place.

A few seconds later, she slowly turned back around and brought her apple tea to her lips…and then pffft! She spurted tea at Kotori.

“…Well, I’ll be.” For some reason, she spoke with a completely different accent, perhaps shocked in her own way.

And why wouldn’t she be?

After all, Kotori’s older brother, Shido Itsuka, was sitting behind her with a girl.

On top of that, the young woman in question was the very same one Kotori and her crew called a catastrophe, a Spirit.

“Uhhhh… What is that?” Kotori quietly asked as she wiped her face with the handkerchief Reine had given her, which had an image of a bear in the center. Now stained with blueberry juice and apple tea, it looked like the TV superhero Kikaida—half-red, half-blue.

Kotori fished her cell phone out of her pocket and looked at it. There were no new messages from Ratatoskr, which meant no one had detected the shaking of space that accompanied the materialization of a Spirit.

The problem was, the Spirit Tohka was definitely sitting at that café table. There was no way there was another girl that beautiful in this world.

“Does this mean there’s a way for the Spirits to appear here without being detected by us?” Kotori mused.

“…Is there a chance she’s a doppelgänger?” Reine suggested.

Kotori thought a moment but then quickly shook her head. “If that were the case, that would mean my big brother is on a date with a regular girl. And if I had to say which was more unrealistic, that or the silent appearance of a Spirit…it’s the former by a narrow margin.”

“…I see.” This was fairly damning, but Reine assented to it readily. “…But this is serious then. Can Shin handle a Spirit all by himself?”

“Hmm.”

They both put hands to mouths and groaned, grappling with the problem. They could hear the conversation going on behind Reine.

“Oh! So I just pick what I want to eat from this book?”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“Where’s the kinako bun? Don’t they have those?”

“Ah, actually, they don’t. And didn’t you already have your fill at the first bakery?”

“I want more. What exactly is that powder? It’s a powerfully addictive substance… If they’re not careful about how they release that into the world, you’ll have real problems. People will be shaking from withdrawal. They’ll go to war over this kinako, make no mistake.”

“Yeah, no.”

“Mm, well, fine. I suppose I’ll break ground on a new flavor.”

“Yeah, yeah. I don’t have any money, though, so keep it under three thousand yen.”

“Mm? What’s that?”

“I’m telling you I don’t have any more money because you’re going around eating everything in sight!”

“Mph, life is tough. I guess I’ve got no choice. Just wait a second. I shall procure some currency.”

“W-wait! What are you planning to do?!”

Kotori sighed and pulled the black ribbons out of her pocket to tie up her hair. It was her own way of changing her mindset. With this, she transitioned from Shido’s adorable little sister to commander mode.

She opened her phone and connected with the Ratatoskr line. “Mm, it’s me. We’ve got a situation on our hands. Mission code F-08, Operation Tengu Holiday. Take emergency positions.”

Reine’s face twitched, but she waited until Kotori was done with her call before speaking. “…You’re raring to go?”

“Yes.” Kotori nodded. “In this situation, we can’t give him any instructions. We’ve got no other options.”

“…I suppose. Given this situation…I guess it would be Route C? Hmm, well then, I’ll get moving. I’ll go and talk to the shop owner right now.”

“Please.” Kotori pulled a Chupa Chups out of her pocket and popped it into her mouth.

“…”

Shido let out a sigh as he looked back and forth between the number on the piece of paper in his hand and the contents of his wallet. He had just barely enough to cover the bill.

“C’mon, let’s go, Tohka.”

“Hmm? Already?” Tohka asked, her eyes wide.

Shido stood up to encourage her. If they stayed any longer, the only paths left open to them would be washing dishes to pay back the overcharge or dining and dashing.

He walked over to the register, with Tohka trailing behind him. She wasn’t radiating her earlier hostility toward the other customers. She seemed to have gotten used to being in a town full of people. That was a relief, at any rate. At the register, he handed over the check and the three bills that made up 90 percent of his cash on hand.

“Can you ring us up?” Shido asked the clerk standing behind the counter. He then frowned hard as he took a step back.

That was because the clerk…

“…Certainly, right away.”

…was an excessively sleepy-looking woman with dark circles under her eyes who he had seen before.

“Wh—?! Wh-wh-wh-wh-wha…?”

“Hmm? What’s wrong, Shido? An enemy?!” Tohka turned a battle-ready face toward him when she saw he was obviously confused.

“No, not an enemy…,” he told her lifelessly.

In a sickly cute uniform with a bear on her shoulder, Reine’s sleepy eyes shone sharply as she stared at Shido. For a second, he thought her look said, “If you tell anyone I’m working here, I’ll kill you,” but he quickly realized that wasn’t it.

“…Here’s your change and your receipt.”

While he stood there shocked, Reine deftly finished the transaction and passed over the receipt, tapping on the paper.

At the bottom of the receipt were the words We’ve got your back. Continue your date as naturally as you can.

So the look she had just given him was not to let Tohka know that they knew each other, but rather to tell him to keep going with the date.

“O-oh, it’s nothing,” Shido said to Tohka before stuffing the receipt in his pocket.

Reine’s sharpened gaze returned to her usual spaced-out look. She took a piece of colorful paper out from under the cash register and handed it to him.

“…This is a ticket for the shopping district lottery. They’re drawing lots nearby. Turn right when you head outside and then continue straight. Please try your luck if you’d like.”

She told him the specifics of the location and overemphasized the last part of her sentence.

Shido scratched his head. “If you’d like” clearly meant “go there.”

However, it might have been better if she hadn’t pushed it quite so hard.

“Shido, what’s that?” Tohka was staring at the lottery ticket with interest.

“You want to go check it out?” he asked.

“Do you want to go, Shido?”

“…Yeah, I can hardly wait to go.”

“Then let’s go.” Tohka bounded out of the café cheerily.

After bowing slightly to Reine, Shido followed her.

“Nice work, Reine.” Kotori stood up from where she was hiding behind the counter after confirming that the pair had left the shop.

“…I’ll never get used to this,” Reine said in a monotone, holding up the hem of the excessively frilly uniform.

This was mission code F-08, Operation Tengu Holiday.

In the event that a Spirit slipped past their sensors and made contact with Shido, the crew of Ratatoskr would mix in with the residents of the neighborhood and provide backup from behind the scenes. They had considered each and every possibility and broken them up into detailed subgroups, leading to over one thousand mission codes. For this purpose, every crew member had taken at least a month of acting lessons.

“Looks good on you, though. Very cute,” Kotori said, sucking on a lollipop, and then opened her phone and made a call.

“Mm, it’s me. They left the café… Yes, as naturally as possible. I’ll flay you if you fail.” She clearly communicated her business and the penalty and then hung up. “Looks like team two are on standby. Now, let’s get back to Fraxinus. Even if we can’t hear them talking, we have to keep watch on the video.”

“…Right, let’s go.”

Kotori grinned. “Let’s get our date started—and let the war commence.”

“Umm, the lottery… Is that it?”

When Shido and Tohka left the café and walked down the street, they saw a large lottery machine set up on top of a table covered in a red cloth. A man in a happi coat was standing at the machine, while another was at the prize area. Behind them were prizes like a bicycle and bags of rice. There were already a few people in line in front of the table.

“…” Shido scratched his cheek.

He vaguely remembered all of them. He was sure the men in the happi coats were people he’d seen inside of Fraxinus, but so were the customers.

“Oh!”

Tohka was unaware of any of this. Her eyes shone as she clutched the lottery ticket she’d gotten from Shido (or rather, that he’d asked her to hang on to because she kept eyeing it).

“C’mon, let’s line up.”

“Mm.” Tohka nodded, and they joined the end of the line. She bobbed her head up, down, and around to the sides to get a better look at the customers ahead of them as they turned the handle of the lottery machine.

Soon, it was their turn. Copying the person ahead of her, Tohka handed their ticket to the clerk and placed her hand on the lottery machine.

Looking closely, Shido saw that the clerk was Bad Marriage Kawagoe.

“So I just have to turn this?” she asked and made the machine spin around, the balls inside clattering. A few seconds later, a red ball popped out—a loser.

“That’s too bad. Red means a pack of tiss—,” Shido started to say, but Kawagoe swung the bell in his hand back and forth, making it clang loudly.

“We’ve got a winner!” he shouted.

“Oh!” Tohka cried.

“H-huh…?” Shido frowned, but then he saw the clerk behind Kawagoe coloring over the gold ball in the “No. 1” position on the prize board with a red marker.

“Congratulations!” Kawagoe cried. “Number one means a pair of free tickets for Dreamland!”

“Ooh!” Tohka accepted the tickets, eyes sparkling. “What’s that, Shido?!”

“A theme park, maybe? I’ve never heard that name, though…”

Kawagoe leaned in quite close. “There’s a map on the back of the tickets. So please enjoy yourselves! You can go as early as…now!”

“…S-sure.” Shido stepped back, slightly overwhelmed, and turned a ticket over in his hand. There was indeed a map there. Apparently, this Dreamland was right nearby.

“Was there a theme park there before…?” He was having trouble making sense of the current scenario, but well, it was an order from Ratatoskr. He wondered what they’d find there.

“You want to go check it out, Tohka?”

“Mm-hmm!”

She seemed on board, so he decided to head in that direction.

The place was really close. Down an alley from the lottery and a few hundred meters away. There were still mixed-use buildings on either side, so he found it very hard to believe that they would find a theme park anywhere near here.

However.

“Ooh! Shido! There’s a castle!” Tohka pointed ahead, more excited than ever. “Are we going there?!”

Ridiculous, he thought, looking up from the back of the ticket.

He froze in place.

Although it was small, he did indeed see a Western-style castle ahead of them. The sign even read DREAMLAND. Below that were the words: REST FOR 2 HOURS STARTING AT 4,000 YEN. STAY THE NIGHT FOR 8,000 YEN.

Basically, it was a love hotel. Adults only.

“L-let’s go back, Tohka…!” he said. “I’m a total doofus. I took us down the wrong road!”

“Hmm?” She frowned. “That’s not it?”

“Uh-huh. C-c’mon! Let’s hurry back.”

“We’re not going to stop in there? I want to go inside.”

“…N-no, no, no. Not today! Okay?!”

“Mmph… I see,” Tohka said regretfully.

He felt bad, but there was absolutely no way they could go inside a love hotel.

He glared up at Kotori, certain she was watching the whole thing play out from the sky, before turning back the way they had come.

“Honestly! He gets all the way there and then pulls back?” Kotori shrugged with a sigh, seated in the captain’s chair on Fraxinus. “Frankly, he’s such a wuss, even if he is my brother.”

“…Well, it was inevitable. That was a tough one to handle,” Reine said, seated on the deck below as she threw up the numbers from her analysis on-screen, which indicated much more stable values than the previous day.

Even if they weren’t quite lovers, the data indicated that Tohka considered Shido a friend.

That was exactly why Kotori had gone and tried the full-court press.

“Even if they didn’t go all the way, if we could’ve gotten a kiss at least, that would’ve been checkmate,” she said, flicking the stick of her lollipop back and forth.

“…What’ll we do next?” Reine asked.

“Hmm, right. How about we go with Linking and Maze?”

“Haah… Haah.”

Although he hadn’t been running, Shido was strangely out of breath. Once they came out onto the street lined with its many shops, he slackened his pace.

“Are you feeling sick, Shido?”

“Not exactly…”

“Then what’s wrong?” Tohka asked, cocking her head to one side.

“…I was just thinking about my little sister up in the heavens for a second.”

“Up in the heavens?” Tohka looked somewhat surprised at this new information.

“Yeah, she was my adorable little sister.”

I never dreamed she had this dual personality, he lamented.

“Oh yeah…?” Tohka looked serious for some reason.

Shido realized with a gasp that he’d accidentally made it sound like Kotori was dead. “Oh, uh, you’ve got the wrong idea, Tohka. She’s—”

“Have some tissues!” A woman was suddenly in front of them, shoving a packet at him.

He automatically reached out to accept them, and the woman bowed slightly and walked off somewhere.

“Shido? What’s that?”

“Oh, they’re pocket tissues—,” he started and then stopped.

Normally, people gave out free tissues on the streets to advertise various companies. On this package, there was only an illustration of a boy and a girl holding hands, with the phrase If you’re happy, hold hands. Was it for some kind of religious group?

He heard a familiar voice from the electronics shop to his right.

A strange program was playing on the TVs at the front of the store.

“Wha…?!” Shido cried, frowning.

Several pundit-ish sort of people were on-screen sitting at what looked like the set of an afternoon talk show, but they were all faces he’d seen on Fraxinus.

“You know, I really hate it when you don’t even get to hold hands on the first date!”

“Yes, exactly. If you’re a man, you’ve got to get in there and go for it.”

“…” Shido was silent.

Suddenly, it seemed couples were all around them. It was almost weird that there were so many of them, all holding hands fondly and cooing clearly scripted lines like, “Holding hands is great!” and “It’s like our hearts are communicating!”

He felt like he was experiencing a dizzy spell and brought a hand to his forehead. This must be their doing again.

With a long sigh, he put the tissues in his pocket and looked at Tohka as he tried to calm the pounding of his heart. “H-hey, Tohka…?”

“Mm? What?”

“Uh, do you want to…hold hands?” He swallowed hard before extending a hand.

“Hold hands? Why?” she asked, almost disgusted. He could practically see a big question mark floating near her head.

This was more embarrassing than just getting rejected.

“…Right. I wonder why.”

It wasn’t something he could actually explain. Looking anywhere but at her, he pulled his hand—

“Mm.”

Well, he was about to pull his hand back when Tohka took it in her own.

“…!” He looked at her, stunned.

“Mm? What’s with that look? You said you wanted to hold hands.”

“Y-yeah.” He shook his head slightly, and they started to walk.

“Mm. It’s not too bad, this hand-holding thing,” she observed, smiling, and gripped his hand a tiny bit more tightly.

“…N-not bad at all.”

Her hand was small, soft, and a little cooler than his, slightly chilly to the touch. He felt his face turning red and tried to think of something else to keep himself from focusing too much on this sensation.

After they’d been walking for a bit, he saw a black-and-yellow sign indicating that there was construction up ahead. Men in helmets were hard at work.

“Oops. I guess we can’t go through here. We’ll just have to…” Shido turned to the right, and now there was a sign prohibiting entry to that road as well. “Uh?”

He found this strange, but he had no other choice than to go back down the way they’d come. Except that now a sign blocked the road that they had just been walking down.

“…”

This was simply too unnatural. Shido narrowed his eyes and stared at the faces of the workers.

Just as he’d suspected, he knew several of them. The crew of Fraxinus.

Without a word, Shido turned his eyes to the road stretching out to their left, which led to higher ground. This was the only one that was open.

“…So you’re saying to go this way, huh?”

“Hmm? What’s the matter, Shido?”

“Oh, nothing… Anyway, how about we go this way?”

“Mm. Sure,” she assented, looking like she was having fun just walking. “Okay, let’s go!”

“Y-yeah…” He started to walk with her awkwardly down the road to the left.