Chapter 7

Today was Sunday, but Tatsuya still had to go to school. Not for remedial classes—but because the Thesis Competition was in a week, and naturally, he had to prepare for it.

But right now, he was on his jumbo electric bicycle, heading in an entirely different direction from the school. His sister, wearing a matching bike outfit, had her slender arms around his waist, and her soft chest pressed against his back.

They weren’t on a date. Nor were they on a leisurely Sunday ride.

They were headed for the Four Leaves Technology lab to return the Relic sample at Yakumo’s advice. Of course, they weren’t returning it to the main office’s lab but to R & D Section 3, where he worked under the moniker Taurus Silver. He’d planned to include them in the analysis work, but he’d gotten an agreement out of Sayuri when she gave him the Relic, so there was no problem (probably).

They didn’t use public transportation because they were being cautious of another attack. It took about an hour at full speed to get to the lab. Using public transportation would send them on a significantly roundabout route, so this way was far shorter. It wasn’t a long-enough ride for Tatsuya, who was physically trained, or Miyuki, who could always use inertial control, to need a break. Nevertheless, when they left the urban areas, Tatsuya stopped his bike at a café that was open early.

He gestured for the dubious Miyuki to enter, and they sat down at a window-side table and ordered only drinks (they’d just eaten breakfast at home) before Tatsuya finally answered his sister’s unspoken question.

Tatsuya put his elbows on the table, folded his hands in front of his mouth, and quietly said, “We’re being tailed.”

“What?!” replied Miyuki, barely managing to keep her volume under control. “I didn’t realize… A car? Or a motorcycle like ours?” she whispered, leaning forward.

The waitress blushed and looked away, her eyes still fixed on the siblings. She was pretending not to see, but Miyuki didn’t have the time to be prying into her reasons. (In fact, she didn’t even notice the suspicious behavior in the first place.)

“A raven.”

Miyuki’s eyes popped open at the simple answer, and it took a moment for her to understand. “…A familiar…?”

“Yeah. A compound one, too.”

Of the surveillance systems that used disguised animals or birds were bird- or animal-shaped robots, machines implanted in birds or animals, old-style spells applied to birds or animals, and compound-form birds and animals.

A compound form was a temporary substantiation of spiritual energy.

That only applied to their appearance, though; their forms were constructed on a foundation of psionic particles underneath light reflection–controlling illusion magic. By using weighting, acceleration, and movement magic—or fields that granted the same effects—one could make them seem like physical creatures.

Creating a compound form sounded like more trouble than it was worth, but it had its advantages. Constructing a medium for the spell to act on, then making it visible and touchable, let the caster more easily visualize commands to alter the spell’s operation.

“…Then the magician isn’t from Japan. Where could they be from?”

Spells to create compound forms only appeared in old magic. The nickname “compound form” was something modern magic scientists had given it upon analyzing the old spells.

And, as Miyuki said, techniques using compound-form familiars were a thing of the past in Japan. And what familiars the old-style casters did use commonly lacked actual form—practically all of them, in fact.

The waitress brought them coffee and milk tea. Tatsuya didn’t speak until she walked away. That waiting time ended up with him silently staring at Miyuki, further inflating the employee’s misunderstanding, but he was neither aware enough to notice it nor sensitive enough to let it bother him.

“I don’t know that much,” he finally said. “Mikihiko might have been able to say.”

Tatsuya moved their cups to the side and took his sister’s hands in his.

That caused a quiet commotion around them, and he finally realized that others were looking at them. Still, pulling his hands back out of embarrassment felt like losing, and he had to hold them anyway. As his sister made a face that would cause a misunderstanding for anyone, Tatsuya endeavored to keep his own expression serious—though that had the exact opposite effect on the rubbernecks—and whispered to her.

“We can’t lead it to the lab,” he said.

“…”

“Miyuki?”

“Huh? I, umm, right, yes, you’re right.”

As her eyes glazed over even more, Tatsuya wanted to hold his head in his hands, but he forced the impulse away with willpower. “This is the compound form’s position.”

Tatsuya converted the position of the compound form he’d “seen” into psionic signals, and sent them through their touching palms and into Miyuki, deep into her mind, where her magic-calculation region resided in her unconsciousness.

When executing magic, a magician inputted the alteration target’s coordinates into his or her magic-calculation region as a variable. This variable was an encoded image that each individual magician created in his or her own mind, so normally, magicians couldn’t share them. As a result of the Yotsuba’s unique magic technology, however, Tatsuya and Miyuki could exchange these psionically encoded images through physical contact.

“Miyuki, shoot it down.”

A short command.

That, of course, was enough to tighten Miyuki’s expression.

“…I understand,” she nodded after a brief moment of hesitation.

She’d never had the option of disobeying an order from Tatsuya. Still, hesitation came anyway, since magical sniping was her brother’s field of expertise, and she wasn’t confident she could do it as well as he could.

“I don’t want to expose my power in this situation. And with an emulator, it would escape while we set up the CAD. Miyuki, it’s up to you.”

“Roger!”

Excitement crept into her face. Her brother was relying on her, and she couldn’t help but be in high spirits.

With the fingers of her right hand still entwined in Tatsuya’s left, Miyuki gently sat back and looked down (the fact that it worked as camouflage, looking like a girl being embarrassed, was likely ironic for the siblings) as her left hand, out of sight of the waitress, secretly and quickly took out her CAD.

Her magic activation had no time lag.

Tatsuya’s “sight” showed the familiar’s body instantly freezing, while at the same time, the spell maintaining the temporary form froze, causing the psions making up the compound form to scatter in all directions and vanish.

It just seems like they’re not trying…”

“Huh? What do you mean?” asked Miyuki from the tandem seat. Her posture was, as always, her arms around her brother’s waist, with her chest and face pressed against his back.

Having brilliantly destroyed the familiar tailing them at the café and getting all the praise she wanted from her brother, she was effervescent, and her voice being decoded through the close-range wireless was just as bubbly.

Her attitude was objectively indiscreet given the situation, but nobody was around to criticize her anyway. The one listening to her didn’t; he just answered her question. “Only one thing to tail us, and with a remote spell… They attacked Sayuri before, and today they were watching me. Somebody is obviously after the Ni no Magatama. Some of the ones who have been sniffing around recently are probably after the Relic, too. But I can’t help feeling like they’re not being very persistent about stealing it.”

“Is it not just because your guard is so strong, Tatsuya? Making you an enemy over a second-rate Relic would be too risky.”

Miyuki’s usual brother-complex filter had automatically acted on her answer, which was reflexive and based on a strong self-conviction.

I see. Risk and return…

Nevertheless, her casual response made Tatsuya feel like he might have just gotten hold of a part of what was really going on here.

When Chen received the report that their shadow had been destroyed, he scowled. From the start, he hadn’t thought highly of their conservative plan, watching from somewhere out of reach—not only from the one they were shadowing but from themselves—with a long-distance spell. He couldn’t help a feeling of displeasure over the spell being spotted and broken within merely fifteen minutes.

Now all we’ve done is put him on his guard!

He knew angry yelling would only needlessly dispirit his subordinates, so he took the prudent option and didn’t say it. Still, the charged air wasn’t hidden.

“Did we figure out where Tatsuya Shiba was going?”

“He seems to be on his way to Four Leaves Technology’s R & D Section 3 lab.”

The subordinate who answered him also looked tenser than he needed to be. Chen got the impression he was only giving the bare minimum—and also not disagreeable—information so he wouldn’t incur his superior’s displeasure.

“ETA?”

“Approximately forty minutes.”

That was why Chen needed to ask the important parts himself. “Forty minutes from now, I want the cyber team to attack that FLT lab,” he ordered, giving up on his considerate responses.

That morning, the lab of R & D Section 3—called by engineers at FLT’s main office “Captain Silver and his merry crew” in a way that was difficult to judge whether it was contemptuous or jealous—was filled with a different clamor than usual.

“Quit worrying and cut the damn line! Backups? We don’t need newer ones!”

“Rack ten fully disconnected. Reconnecting now.”

“Idiot! Why the hell would you reconnect when we’re still being hacked?!”

“Great, I found how they got in!”

“I’ll start up a counter-program!”

Listening to the yells flying back and forth in the operation room gave Tatsuya a good idea of what was happening.

“Ah, Prince Shiba!”

Tatsuya’s good partner, Ushiyama, finally noticed the siblings after a solid minute of them standing there. (In terms of how good a partner he was—he’d built the flight device’s hardware according to Tatsuya’s specifications and in just two weeks, and he’d made the Mini-Communicator in half a day and sent it to him. To Tatsuya, the man was very friendly.)

Maybe it happened in other places, but this was the first time Tatsuya had to wait more than ten seconds for someone here. That went to show how urgent the emergency was.

“My apologies! Didn’t notice you walking in… Hey! Which one of you dimwits didn’t tell me the prince was here?!” shouted Ushiyama more loudly than before. Despite his slender frame, he had a voice like a cracked bell.

Half the people in the room battling with their terminals cowered.

When Tatsuya saw it, his face darkened. “Don’t stop working! Keep monitoring!” he yelled, giving a dressing-down with at least as much punch as Ushiyama’s.

“Y-yes, sir!” came the reply.

After being relieved at the staff going back to their desperate-looking battles, he turned back and saw Ushiyama now shrinking back for some reason.

“We’re being hacked?” asked Tatsuya. He didn’t understand exactly what went through Ushiyama’s mind, but he felt—and Ushiyama more so—that bringing it up wouldn’t be pleasant. He’d cut out any prefaces to avoid that.

“Well, yes…” Ushiyama hesitated in giving his response, but at least Tatsuya’s intrusion didn’t seem to have irritated him. Tatsuya wondered what the issue could possibly be, but it didn’t take long for Ushiyama to explain.

“It is a hacking attempt, but…it’s a strange one,” he said. “The hacking techniques themselves are quite powerful, but we have no idea what it is the hackers want to know. They don’t seem to be narrowing their search at all. It’s like they’re grabbing anything they can get their hands on.”

“A real hacker, then—the curious type?”

“It doesn’t seem like this is one person. The tricks they’re using would need quite a few people working in concert to pull off. I wouldn’t doubt you if you told me it was a government organization.”

“And yet their goal isn’t clear… Do you have a list of what data you expect to leak?”

Tatsuya’s question implied a possible regularity hiding in the hackers’ chaotic methods.

“No, there hasn’t been any data leaked yet.”

But Ushiyama’s answer made him fall into thought. “…How long has the attempt been going on for?”

“About ten minutes.”

In other words, it started right before Tatsuya got here—almost like it had been timed. In that time, all they’d done was break into the server. The situation appeared incredibly unnatural to him.

“Unauthorized access has stopped!”

“Don’t let up! I want you monitoring this all day! …Right, excuse me. In any case, what did you come here for today?”

Tatsuya explained the events, the company’s goals, and his own goals regarding the Relic, all the while organizing the string of attempted information thefts happening around him recently in a different area of his mind.

“Counterattack from FLT!”

“Cut the line as planned!”

At Chen’s order, a man physically severed the line they used for hacking. As he watched the process, he spoke to his aide waiting next to him, Ganghu Lu.

“What do you think he’ll do?”

“…I do not know.”

It was difficult to call Lu’s attitude toward his superior officer appropriate, but Chen continued anyway in a low voice. “They couldn’t stop a hacking attempt for over ten minutes. Tatsuya Shiba must be having doubts about the lab’s security.”

“Indeed.”

Chen wasn’t looking for decorum or bootlicking from his aide but rather level-headed judgment and strength a match for thousands. He didn’t need eloquence. “Even if Tatsuya Shiba is related to FLT, I find it hard to believe he would give the Relic orb to a laboratory with unreliable security.”

“Logically speaking, that’s correct.”

“I know what you want to say. Tatsuya Shiba is still in high school. It’s perfectly possible he’ll avoid keeping something he knows we’re after in his own hands. In that case, we just have to think about how we’re going to get the data from the lab again.”

Lu silently expressed his agreement.

“I’ll probably need you to go out.”

“Leave it to me.”

Chen nodded deeply to his trustworthy aide’s response. Then, his expression changed, as though he’d just thought of something. “Come to think of it, Zhou was going to check on that girl today.”

His voice couldn’t be called very friendly. He felt this vague sense that he wasn’t being taken seriously. And this was with him restraining his emotions. It wasn’t hard to guess how Chen really felt about Zhou.

Still, Lu didn’t say anything to curry favor with him. His eyes moved as he waited for his next command.

“Get rid of her before he does.”

That should have been an order Lu wasn’t expecting. If he completed the task, Zhou would lose all face, and Chen could lose a valuable collaborator.

“Shì.”

But Ganghu Lu simply accepted the order, neither his face nor his mouth questioning it.

Despite it being a Sunday, they were going to school, so they couldn’t stay in their personal clothes. Some “civilian” high schools allowed students to attend school in plain clothing, but they were a minority even among nonmagic schools. Regardless of whether you had classes, you had to come to school in your uniform.

The Shiba siblings stopped back at the house to change.

When they did, there was a message on their house phone—a message set not to transfer. Restricting a message from being sent to a portable terminal was a way of preventing others peeking at it. If it was packaged like that, it meant the sender was treating it as highly secret.

“Tatsuya, is something the matter?”

Miyuki, having finished changing a few moments after Tatsuya, walked over to him as he stood in front of the phone.

She peered at the display. “A message? Who is it…? Wait, Hirakawa?!”

Naturally, she was aware of the attempted sabotage incident. The part that stood out most when he told her was her utter lack of sympathy for the Hirakawa sisters.

The answer was already out, so Tatsuya decided to say what the message was. “Looks like she wants me to call her back,” he explained, pushing the Reply button before Miyuki could say anything.

The call connected in one ring.

“Hello? Is this Shiba? I’m sorry for calling you like this…”

Of the members of First High’s Nine School Competition team, Koharu Hirakawa had been one of those friendly toward Tatsuya from the start. He’d never directly interacted with her, though. She didn’t like confrontation, so she was always worrying about others—a standout timidity different from, say, Azusa’s. From a different perspective, though, her hesitance could be taken as kindness and tolerance. In fact, maybe that viewpoint was the majority.

“No, I’m sorry for getting back to you so late. The house was empty for a short while this morning.”

Considering when they usually left for school, it was a little late right now. It wasn’t strange that she was at home, since it was a day off, but she’d probably been waiting for Tatsuya’s call the entire time, evidenced by how she’d picked up in one ring.

The video feed was turned off. Videophones were commonplace now, but it was only a technological change. Human feelings hadn’t changed—nobody was about to nonchalantly expose themselves in their houses to the eyes of others or unhesitatingly show their indoor clothes to anyone who called. Some houses had built-in phone rooms, but most homes with a phone in the living room would detect the incoming phone number and switch the feed on or off. Here, too, Koharu’s face wasn’t on the display; the screen remained blank.

“No, I’m the one who asked you to call, so…” Still, just listening to her voice brought a dark, downcast face to mind. “About the other day, well…I’m sorry my sister caused you trouble.”

Or perhaps it wasn’t a dark face but a pale one.

“It didn’t come to anything, so please don’t worry about it. I’m not.”

He didn’t say that out of consideration for her—that was exactly how he felt.

“But a lot still happened… They already caused you trouble by suddenly making you a representative, too. I’ve just been acting so cowardly that she got the wrong idea… Just the fact that she disturbed you during such an important time means it didn’t come to nothing. All I can do is apologize, so…I’m really sorry.”

Koharu was doubtlessly bowing deeply to him on the other side of the unconnected camera. Her voice easily brought the image to mind.

However, Tatsuya wasn’t sure what to do about the apology. He hadn’t wanted one, and listening to her worn-out words of self-torture actually just made him feel gloomy. From the bottom of his heart, he didn’t care about what Chiaki had done—or, more accurately, tried to do.

Not one bit.

“I understand,” he replied. “Out of consideration for you, Hirakawa, I’ll wipe the slate clean.”

Therefore, intent on ending the call quickly, he offered an insincere consolation (?).

“…Thanks. I knew you’d say that, Shiba.”

If she’d actually seen his true intent, then that was extraordinary. But her words were probably built on a big, convenient misunderstanding.

“Don’t mention it… Good-bye then.”

“Oh, wait!”

Seeing that Hirakawa was satisfied, Tatsuya had tried to hang up, but it was a little premature. “What is it?”

In many ways, he wasn’t free. Or maybe “had no free time” was more appropriate. He had to be careful not to let his displeasure seep into his voice.

“Umm, well, I don’t think this is much of an apology, so…”

Seriously? thought Tatsuya. Going along with her in an endless loop was the last thing he wanted to do.

“I don’t know if this will help you much, but…”

Fortunately, it was a groundless fear.

“I found the log of Chiaki contacting the thief group. Her private data is in there, too, but…I’ll give it to you, Shiba. Please use it as you see fit. Umm, I’m really sorry, I know you’re busy. Thanks for listening to what I had to say. Bye.”

The call ended.

Without waiting for him to reply.

“You may be sisters, but hacking is a crime, you know…” he muttered, having meant to say that to Koharu, while looking at the log file icon assigned to his isolation box.

“Tatsuya, is something the matter?”

Miyuki must have heard him talking to himself. She had returned, a somewhat worried look on her face.

“What to do…?”

As he replied with an answer that didn’t quite line up with the question, he mulled over what Koharu was after.

She said it was in place of an apology. Not directly, but there was no mistaking what she meant.

But her true intentions were almost certainly something else.

Koharu had probably hacked into her sister’s communication log because she wanted to do something about the guys who had dragged her onto the path of evil. But it was more than she could handle. Tatsuya surmised that by leaking the information to Tatsuya, she wanted him to get revenge in her place.

Masterfully played, I suppose…

The term feminine wiles didn’t come up for him due to lack of life experience, but he also wasn’t innocent enough to avoid those “wiles.”

“…Well, fine. I’ll use anything I can.”

With a vague expression, and leaving Miyuki be, Tatsuya punched in a different number. He wasn’t confident that he could hunt down these network foxes going on only a log file of an access point they’d probably already abandoned.

But he knew someone who could.

As the siblings arrived at school, it began to rain. Neither had brought an umbrella, unfortunately, but thankfully, they only got a little wet. Besides, Miyuki was a student council member, which permitted her to carry a CAD in school. At once, she used magic to dry their damp clothing without leaving a trace behind.

However…

“We won’t be able to do any fieldwork in this rain…” said Miyuki, her face clouding.

Tatsuya shrugged. “That’s one thing we can’t do anything about.”

The preparations were going smoothly so far. It would feel a little cramped doing work indoors, but it didn’t mean they wouldn’t finish in time. Of course, in Tatsuya’s case, he was planning on doing some debugging in the robot club’s garage today, so the weather was irrelevant.

“I’ll get going.”

“Okay. Please do your best, Tatsuya,” offered Miyuki, who had work waiting for her in the council room. In the end, she parted with him only reluctantly.

Robot club was short for robotics research club. The club’s garage was a small building used for creation and testing of robots of all sizes, as well as mechanical powered suits.

In order to control the robots, large computing machines were mounted in here as well, and the club had offered them for activation sequence debugging and spell simulations during the Thesis Competition’s preparation stage.

Today’s work was activation sequence debugging. Suzune and Isori would be doing operation tests on the already-completed stage props, so Tatsuya was on his own for this job today. The plasma nuclear fusion demo machine at the center of the presentation was already connected to the computer. After helping with the settings, the robot club members had all cleared out to assemble another machine. Right now, Tatsuya was the only person in the building.

Maybe I was a little late… He gave a dry smile—this was an off day with no set starting time, but perhaps he had played the “late executive role” too well.

“Welcome back, sir.”

He was the only “person” in the garage, but a moment after he entered, a “figure” was there to greet him.

A black, balloon-sleeved dress four inches below the knee and a white, frilled apron. White stockings and black slip-ons. A maid headdress, also frilled, on the head.

Nice hobby… Grinning painfully, he introduced himself. “Tatsuya Shiba, Class 1-E.”

The “girl” who greeted him stopped moving in an upright position for about half a second, after which she bowed deeply.

The pause was the time it took to authenticate his voiceprint. Eventually, through facial recognition and voiceprint recognition, Tatsuya was given a pass through this room’s security.

“I shall prepare some coffee.”

A slightly awkward voice with slightly awkward movements. But the differences between that and expected human behavior were minor enough that it wouldn’t matter unless you observed closely.

Her name was 3H Type P-94 (3H Personal-use ’94). The robot club had shortened her name to Pixie based on the words for nine and four in Japanese.

This Humanoid Home Helper, or 3H, belonged to the robotics research club, and was just that—a human-shaped robot that did domestic work. That was the robot’s identity. One of the club’s current seniors was apparently connected to a big HAR manufacturer, and it was on loan for monitoring so they could improve its AI.

A normal 3H was given the appearance of a woman in her late twenties, but this one was set to be in her teens so that it wouldn’t stand out too much at school.

Indeed, if you put her in a First High uniform and mixed her into a classroom, as long as she was quiet and sitting, she’d probably pass for a deadpan female student. Perhaps one would even use the term cool beauty.

Of course, such fixations meant nothing the instant you put her in a maid outfit.

When he’d first come into this room for Thesis Competition preparation work, this robot maid welcoming him had been a surprise. Despite his initial astonishment, though, now he just felt a discomfort regarding her clothing.

Tatsuya sat in front of the console desk. As he booted up the terminal, he heard a quiet clunk of a coffee cup being set on the side table.

The software controlling the manipulators has room for improvement… he thought briefly before reaching for the cup. He took a sip, then nodded—acceptable.

Pixie, the latest model of 3H, had an automatic customization feature. She could learn up to fifty of her face recognition–distinguished users’ tastes. That was how she’d brought out coffee to his preference without him saying anything.

“Pixie, stand by in suspend mode,” ordered Tatsuya to the 3H waiting behind him, setting his coffee back on the side table. He knew it was a robot, but having something that looked so human standing behind him was unsettling.

“At once, sir.”

Fixed phrases like that one had smooth pronunciation. P-94 bowed so smoothly she seemed biological, then headed toward a chair next to the entrance. She sat down and made her back perfectly straight. Then she stopped moving altogether.

A 3H’s power source was a direct methanol fuel cell. She could supply herself with more methanol—in concrete terms, by drinking it with her mouth—so her users didn’t have to worry about her running out of power.

Still, there was no reason whatsoever to waste fuel, and since just standing still consumed power (standing on two legs was a highly advanced act), he made sure to sit her down when he didn’t need her. Incidentally, though her eyes were closed and movements stopped in this state, her sensors were on. This unit in particular that the robot club used for monitoring was a special version with upgraded home security features, and her eyelids, which appeared closed, were actually made of material that light could permeate. It didn’t mean something that looked human was no longer watching him, but Tatsuya wasn’t that high-strung.

He stretched out his neck (for no particular reason) then put his fingers on the keyboard. An orchestra of rhythmical keystrokes (actually the electronic sounds replacing them) began to play.

He took his left hand away from the keyboard and placed it on a pearl-gray panel. It was an interface for letting the caster communicate with the large CAD built into the demonstration machine. The caster would send the psions necessary for creating the activation sequence through this panel, and it in turn would be received by the built-in CAD.

With his right hand keying in the steps to operate the CAD one by one, and his left receiving the activation sequence formed one process at a time, he converted the activation sequence into a magic program and sent it back out (however, sending a magic program wasn’t performed through physical contact).

He was currently performing a magic program operation simulation.

And on the surface, he was following the right process, but he was actually using his “eyes” to directly observe the program’s operation as he did his checks.

His abnormally high magic-development performance was thanks to this trick, which used his Elemental Sight—his eyes that could see eidos. As a magic developer, this trick could be called cheating, but he wasn’t enough of a straight shooter to worry about things like that.

With his naked eye he watched the display, and with his mind’s eye he watched the dimension of information bodies.

About an hour passed since starting his work.

Until suddenly, he felt physically unwell.

A sudden sleepiness overcame him.

Did I overdo it…? he thought, but when he took a deep breath, the drowsiness got stronger.

Figuring he’d take a break outside, he moved to stand up…

…but his limbs felt heavy.

His body wasn’t coming around.

With enough training, people could control their physical desire for sleep with willpower. Several all-nighters in a row was a different story, but he was pretty sure he didn’t lead such a disorderly lifestyle.

Warning signals flared to life in his mind. His physical condition was clearly unnatural, abnormal.

Physical function abnormally decreased.

The state of “sleep” itself didn’t hamper combat ability.

Forced slumber, on the other hand, from which he couldn’t make himself wake up, was the main factor inhibiting combat.

Self-repair spell starting semiautomatically.

His self-repair ability saw the need for repair…

Loading magic programs.

Reloading core eidos data from backup.

…and sprang into action.

Beginning repair… Complete.

His body instantly returned to the state it was in before he was caught by the drowsiness.

The problem was still unsolved, though.

The coffee he’d drunk on his way from the house to the labs, the coffee Pixie had just made for him… He’d already checked them to make sure there was no poison in either. If there were substances involved…

Gas!

Someone had tampered with the air-conditioning system. He accessed the room’s information and learned that though its virulence was low and had a short persistence, there was sleeping gas in the air and it was quick acting.

But that left him at an impasse. It would be easy to remove the poison from the gas with his Dismantle. However, magic-observation instruments were online all throughout the school. If he used Dismantle on the entire space—in this garage room, in this situation—his spell, which he needed to keep secret, was certain to be revealed.

Miyuki, Honoka, or Shizuku would have been able to select only the harmful gas and eject it from the room, but that skill was a bit too high a hurdle for him.

And he couldn’t hold his breath forever.

The only thing he could do here was run away. The demo machine was fine as it was. He locked the computer and stood, then turned back toward the door.

But in front of him stood a slim figure to block his passage.

The figure reached a hand toward his mouth.

It wasn’t a very quick act, which gave him the time to see who the figure was.

Her hand stopped right before reaching Tatsuya’s face.

“An error has occurred in the air-conditioning system. Please wear this mask.”

The Humanoid Home Helper Type P-94. The robot girl with the name Pixie was holding a simple gas mask out to him.

At a glance, it was a conventional reusable gas mask made of nonwoven fabric, but it actually had a high-performance gelatinous filter inside that didn’t let anything larger than carbon dioxide molecules through (which naturally meant oxygen could pass). If you stuck the side with the adhesive seal on it to your face, the filter would seal up, making it hard to breathe but blocking almost all of the toxic gas.

Didn’t think she’d have something like this, Tatsuya thought, obediently putting on the mask. This time, she instructed him to close his eyes. “Your corneas could be contaminated. I will take your hand and lead you outside.”

The speech software could have used some improvements, but he understood exactly enough of what she said. It would seem that P-94, top-of-the-line 3H, was also programmed for disaster response. Or maybe the robot club had “trained” her for it.

Tatsuya knew that sleeping gas wasn’t the type to harm the eyes. Nevertheless, he did as he was told and closed them. But he didn’t head outside.

“Pixie, turn on the forced ventilators. I’ll stay here in case of any secondary disasters while I evacuate. Stand by in surveillance mode. You are not to switch out of that mode so that rescuers can enter.”

P-94 accepted Tatsuya’s string of commands. “Deeming secondary disaster avoidance as logical. Starting forced ventilators.”

The disaster-response forced-ventilation system, constructed separately from the air-conditioning, began to work. An upright, two-legged frame using a small fuel cell as a power source wasn’t meant for physical labor. The sensors she could have installed were limited by her human shape as well, so she couldn’t do any highly precise work, either.

3Hs weren’t made to act alone with superhuman strength or precision, but rather for people to have a stress-free interface to use with their home automation system. They were remote control terminals for HARs which could recognize voices, move like people, and look like people. They had standalone household functions added after the fact to support HARs in more delicate situations they couldn’t handle, but those were nothing more than an extra.

Still, that extra piece tended to be so good that you could forget their original purpose as a HAR interface.

This wasn’t just something he was idly thinking about—Tatsuya had forgotten about it until just now, too.

Being too convenient has its ups and downs… he thought, which had to be either him hating to lose or hiding his embarrassment, as he waited for the sleeping gas to be ejected from the room.

Considering a 3H’s functions, P-94 would be restoring the air-conditioning system right now as well.

Tatsuya sat in front of the terminal again, took off the mask, then closed his eyes and sat back. This way, he wouldn’t surprise the person who came to check on him sleeping.

As expected, a visitor came soon after.

Even after the gas was gone, Tatsuya sat perfectly still, eyes closed, senses keened. He immediately noticed footsteps sneaking in.

He’d ordered Pixie not to do any entrance checks beforehand to set the stage for someone to slip in unnoticed. If they hadn’t come, he’d have been disappointed.

“Shiba?”

The voice of an upperclassman he knew.

It was spoken likely out of forethought as the person checked to see if he was asleep, and to have an excuse if he did wake up. But the timing with which the person entered the room was, in the first place, unnatural, and their attempt to create an alibi was poorly executed at best.

Tatsuya, of course, committed to his sham.

“Shiba, you asleep?”

After seeing Tatsuya not respond once again, the intruder gave the appearance of looking for something. But their eyes immediately went to the demonstration machine. Not to the terminal, since they’d either seen it locked and given up or they’d intended to get the data directly to begin with.

Despite Tatsuya’s eyes being slightly open to watch them, despite Pixie in surveillance mode recording everything, the intruder used a hacking tool from a submonitor connector and began a desperate attempt to get the data out.

“Sekimoto, what are you doing?”

Then, suddenly, a voice came from the entrance. The intruder’s shoulders jerked, and he turned around.

The jig is up… he muttered silently. His fun little challenge ending prematurely frustrated him, but the related parties—the one who was stopped, and the one who stopped him—probably didn’t care one bit about his mean-spirited entertainment.

“Chiyoda, why are you here?!”

“Why? I got an alert from the safety system that something was wrong with the air-conditioning. But why did you come here, Sekimoto? What do you have in your hand?”

“No…I thought I cut the alarms…”

Sekimoto was either very disturbed or extremely weak to unexpected things happening, because that line was very ill spoken.

Chiyoda glared sharply at him. “I see. The alarm didn’t come automatically. It came manually.”

It wasn’t Tatsuya who’d sent it—it was Pixie. She’d done it on her own judgment, which made it sort of automatic, but Chiyoda had no way to figure that out. More importantly…

“You just said something I can’t let slide.”

…was what Sekimoto had accidentally confessed to.

“What do you mean, you cut the alarms?”

Criminals never acted rationally and logically 100 percent of the time. In fact, given the excessive tension while committing the crime, they frequently made stupid mistakes they never would have otherwise.

That was how law enforcement, who could only move hours or days after the fact, found clues to identify perpetrators. And now, Sekimoto had fallen right into the trap, the psychological pitfall that other criminals succumbed to.

“Sekimoto, I see you’re staying quiet. You’re basically confessing you’re the culprit.”

Kanon controlled her tone of voice well, but that only made her seem all the more serious. She raised her right hand in front of her so he could see. A powered-on CAD. It was already charged with the psions it needed to instantly expand an activation sequence.

This wasn’t a game, or training, or a prank—this was a direct descendant of one of the Hundred, the Chiyoda, prepared for battle…

“Ha-ha, Chiyoda, that’s a harsh joke. I’m the culprit? Of what, exactly?”

Sekimoto tried to throw off pursuit with an empty, theatrical laugh. But he didn’t have a bunch of sympathizers ready to help. It wasn’t going to work in a one-on-one situation.

“You’re the one who tampered with the air-conditioning and sent sleeping gas in here. Plus, I caught you in the act of being an industry-university spy.”

“That was rude! I was afraid of the accident destroying the data, so I was just backing it up.”

“With a hacking tool? That won’t work. Right, Shiba?”

When Sekimoto turned around—aghast—he saw Tatsuya standing there with a forced smile. Kanon seemed to have seen right through his sleeping act.

“Impossible! The gas didn’t work…?”

“He’s not your average cute high school kid. It would take more than a little sleeping gas to knock him out.” Kanon’s tone was too unfriendly to sound like an overestimation.

Tatsuya’s pained grin deepened. “I won’t argue I’m not a ‘cute little high school kid,’ but…” he said. “Well, the rest of what the chairwoman said is correct. You can’t take a direct backup from the demo machine. And you don’t need to.”

All that the CAD built into the machine did was record activation sequences and expand them. You couldn’t use it to edit the programs within. Program modifications were done with the electronic computer always connected to it, and that had a stock of backups stored.

“Sekimoto, don’t make fun of us too much,” said Kanon, staring at him with displeasure. “I may not know much about technology, but I at least know that.”

Sekimoto clenched his teeth and growled. It was proof he’d run out of arguments (and excuses); it was the cornered rat baring its fangs.

Kanon’s tone changed. “Isao Sekimoto. Put the CAD on the floor.”

A demand for the criminal to surrender.

And Sekimoto’s answer—

“Chiyoda!”

—was to expand an activation sequence.

Sekimoto was only in his second half of junior year, but he was strong enough to be selected for the disciplinary committee.

His spell activation process was fluid, and the speed at which he read in the activation sequence and constructed the magic program was comparable even to Nine School Competition representatives.

However…

“…You always did try to act too cool, Sekimoto.”

Sekimoto’s spell didn’t go off, and Kanon’s oscillation spell traveling through the floor knocked him unconscious.

You didn’t need to say the spell name to trigger it. You didn’t need to shout the target’s name, either.

Modern magic battles were instantaneous.

Kanon had already prepared her CAD for this. If he shouted her name for no reason, he’d never get the best of her.

At Kanon’s call, support from the disciplinary and club committees came running, then hauled Sekimoto away to the student guidance room (also known as the “interrogation chamber”).

During that time, Tatsuya didn’t interfere whatsoever, be it verbally or physically.

After he saw everyone else off, he spoke to the waiting P-94.

“Pixie, release surveillance mode. Record all video and audio from when I first ordered you to monitor the room until this moment, save it on a memory cube, and delete the master file.”

Pixie belonged to the robot club, and Tatsuya didn’t have administrator privileges. But she had recorded what had happened as evidence at his request, so he was the recording file’s owner.

“Of course, sir. Copying data to memory cube… Copy complete. Completely erasing master file.”

In accordance with his rights to the file, Pixie copied the recorded video and audio to a memory cube and deleted the original file from her own memory.

After sticking the cube containing the evidence recording—which he hadn’t even told Kanon about—into his jacket pocket, he ordered the feminine robot to stand by again.

Visiting hours at the NMU-affiliated Tachikawa Hospital went from noon to seven in the evening. Right now, it was just past four, so it wouldn’t seem strange for a young man in a suit carrying a bouquet of flowers to be walking down the hall. Even if it were a man with features like a young aristocrat.

But despite his prominent appearance and prominent behavior, it did seem strange that the other visiting guests and nurses passing by from time to time didn’t concern themselves with him at all.

He must have come here several times already, or else was familiar with the layout of the hospital for a different reason. The young man walked along silently with an unhesitating stride, without even looking at the maps on the wall. He used the stairs, rather than the elevator, to ascend to the fourth floor, then abruptly stopped as he entered the hallway.

Ahead of him was the back of a large-statured man. He recognized the person’s appearance. The man was slightly younger than him, but not by much, and he was standing in front of a certain hospital room.

The young man, Zhou, had informed Chen, his well-built superior, of today’s visitation. Chen hadn’t said anything at the time, so he shouldn’t have had any qualms with Zhou coming here to visit the girl.

Regardless of Chen’s intentions. That was how Zhou had interpreted it. Therefore, there wouldn’t be an issue between him and Chen if he intruded on the man about to intrude on his hospital visit.

With a look of nonchalance, with no hesitation whatsoever, Zhou pushed the emergency alarm button.

While the young man was still going from the third floor to the fourth, a couple entered the hospital lobby. The man’s name was Naotsugu Chiba, and the woman’s was Mari Watanabe. One was the second son of the Chiba, who fully exploited his title as “genius swordsman,” and the other was the former disciplinary committee chairwoman at the National Magic University Affiliated First High School.

“Shuu.”

Normally, Mari’s trademark was a dashing figure that all the younger girls would admire, but in front of her boyfriend now, a softer, more feminine air surrounded her. Not only was she naturally exuding coyness with him, but also she was making an apologetic face.

“I’m…well, sorry,” she said. “You’re busy, and yet I made you come with me for something like this.”

Mari had arrived under the pretense of a hospital visit so she could question Chiaki Hirakawa, currently staying within. She personally felt that this was First High’s problem, which was why she was apologizing.

But Naotsugu looked down at her with an expression that said he hadn’t expected this. “Don’t be so formal. You don’t need to worry about these things.”

“But you’re shipping out early tomorrow morning, aren’t you? You need to get ready…”

“It may be a training voyage, but it’s mainly for the guys in command and gunnery. We’re focusing on overseas training after that. Lots of physical labor, but I’m used to the exercise,” replied Naotsugu in a somewhat joking, silly tone.

Mari’s worried look softened a bit. “Combined amphibious landing training in Guam this time, right?”

“Yeah. Unlike Thailand, it’ll be short—just ten days. I don’t need to bring much, so you don’t need to worry.”

Naotsugu smiled at her, but when she smiled back, her face still showed she had reservations about it. “…Is something still bothering you?”

“…It’s, well, Erika,” she stammered, sounding unsure of whether to explain.

“Erika?” On the other hand, Naotsugu’s voice was colored with confusion—he hadn’t expected her name to come up.

“…You always practice with Erika the day before you leave the house for a while. What about today?”

A complex mixture of disappointment and mild disgust came into Naotsugu’s expression. “Erika’s practicing with a classmate. He looked pretty hopeful, so I’m sure she’s having a good time.”

“Classmate? A boy?” asked Mari casually.

An unexpectedly firm answer came back. “They’re just friends, I’m sure.”

“…”

Mari said nothing and stared at Naotsugu. He answered her look by clearing his throat.

“Shuu?”

“Anyway, you don’t need to worry about Erika. And besides, I wanted to be with you, Mari. Don’t let it bother you, okay?”

“Y-you don’t need to be so embarrassing about it.”

Their roles swapped. The person used to making the quips was surprisingly weak when they had a deadpan remark turned on them. Mari had incessantly teased Tatsuya to somehow get under his collar before retiring as disciplinary committee chairwoman, but it only took a few blunt, loving words to tragically sink her ship.

Naotsugu exhaled, relieved to have controlled his girlfriend’s reactions, but his relaxed nerves were quickly attacked by an even stronger tension:

The emergency alarm went off.

“Shuu?!”

Mari, who, until that moment, had been busy feeling enamored with her lover, looked up at Naotsugu like the television channel had suddenly changed.

“It’s not the fire alarm. It’s the violence one.”

The anti-violence alarm. It was at once an alarm to prevent third parties from getting involved in violent or criminal acts as well as a signal to summon help to restore the peace.

“Fourth floor,” said Naotsugu, skillfully picking out the alarm’s details from the message board on the wall.

“Fourth floor?!”

“Is the underclassman you were visiting on the fourth floor?”

He saw the gravity in the expression on Mari’s face and realized this had something to do with them.

“Let’s go!”

Without giving the nodding Mari time to hesitate at getting him involved, he ran up the stairs, practically pulling her.

Utterly unperturbed by the sudden alarm, Ganghu Lu placed a hand on the hospital room doorknob. He’d already found out his target was in this room, and he was confident he could take care of a single girl before police arrived with, quite literally, a flick of his wrist.

After tugging on the knob, he gave a puzzled look. The door was locked. He’d assumed all the doors would be unlocked when the fire alarm went off so that people could escape. Was the system malfunctioning? Unfortunately for him, he had not been informed about the anti-violence alarm.

The slight cultural difference created a time lag. Lu had been planning on breaking the lock anyway. He’d thought the alarm would unlock the door, but it was still locked, which had puzzled him. It barely took any time for Lu to set himself back on his goal of busting the door open, but it was enough for unexpected interference.

A moment after he pulled the doorknob out of the frame with a loud noise…

“Who are you?!”

…somebody challenged him.

After Naotsugu used the Chiba’s special self-acceleration spell to dash up the stairs in one breath, he came face-to-face with a well-built man several years older than him breaking a door lock.

He’d shouted his question reflexively, but by that time, he’d already dragged the answer from his memory. This man, emanating so much danger that all his hairs stood on end…

“The Man-Eating Tiger…Lu Ganghu! Why are you here?!”

As a member of the Chiba family, renowned for their authority in close-combat magic technique, Naotsugu knew this man’s face and name well. He was a hand-to-hand magician from the Great Asian Alliance, usually counted among the top ten duelists in the world. Given his age proximity, the topic of which one of them was stronger came up often—and most concluded that in terms of violence, Lu Ganghu, whose name struck awe and dread into opponents, had him beat.

“Huàndāoguıˇ…Naotsugu Chiba.”

From Lu Ganghu’s mouth as well came a soft voice, saying what was surely Naotsugu’s nickname, the Illusion Blade, and his real name.

A moment after their eyes met, the battle between the two behemoths began.

Naotsugu removed an eight-inch-long rod from his inside pocket. With a press of the button near its tip, it made a nice click and extended into a sword with a six-inch blade.

Ganghu Lu, meanwhile, assumed an unarmed stance. Without showing any fear of the knife in Naotsugu’s hand, he charged ahead.

Once the distance had closed to the length of a long sword, Naotsugu swung his right hand downward.

A dagger couldn’t reach at this distance. Nevertheless, Lu held his left hand over his head.

A thump rang out at the intersection of a line drawn from the blade to his hand.

The weighting magic Pressure Cut. A close-range spell that created an incredibly fine repulsive field along a thin rod or wire to sever objects touching it.

Naotsugu had created that field in the middle of nowhere, with himself as the origin, using nothing but his dagger to go on.

If that skill was surprising, the fact that Lu stopped the repulsive blade with his bare hands was astonishing.

Gang Qigong. An expansion of “hard qigong,” this was called “steel qigong” by its users in North China. Qigong was not magic but a type of classical martial art; Gang Qigong used qigong techniques as a base to magically create a layer of armor harder than steel of one’s skin. Ganghu Lu was the best user of Gang Qigong in the world.

His repulsion blade blocked by the wall of biowaves, Naotsugu brought his right hand the rest of the way down. Canceling his own spell returned the Pressure Cut into an empty swing. With no resistance, he slashed the blade without resistance down to his waist, then quickly cut upward at an angle.

Wanting to stop the invisible slash, Ganghu Lu slammed his Gang Qiqong–enhanced right hand into his right side. It met with no resistance, though. Naotsugu had canceled the repulsive blade as it materialized.

Ending a triggered but incomplete spell midway—that wasn’t a special skill. When conflicts occurred between magicians, the act of amputating the interfering force and thereby canceling a magic program about to overwrite eidos was actually an essential skill when using magic in teams.

But doing it instantly while activating the spell was a whole different beast. If you only output a magic program with the intention of not actually causing event alteration, the instant it passed into the gate—the door connecting a person’s mind to the Idea, located at the bottom of one’s conscious mind and the top of the unconscious mind—the magic program would fizzle. It wouldn’t show any signs of activating, so it wouldn’t deceive an opponent. To deliberately cancel a spell midway through, you had to project the magic program with the true intent of activating it, and then hold back before it finished activating. You needed the ability to immediately switch gears mentally.

Since Lu had prepared himself for a slash from the repulsive blade that didn’t come, his body swayed to the right. Without a moment’s delay, Naotsugu slashed diagonally from the shoulder and released a Pressure Cut. The invisible blade drove toward the right side of Lu’s neck.

Another thump sounded. No blood splattered. Lu’s body fell backward. He had twisted and stopped Naotsugu’s slash from the front. As Lu fell, he used his back as a pivot to rotate and kick out at his attacker, who jumped back to avoid it. With distance between them now, Lu rapidly stood up.

Their duel, however, didn’t restart. When it came to judging distance, the previous clash made it clear the odds were in Naotsugu’s favor. Ganghu Lu was no fool; he wouldn’t fight an enemy on their own turf if he could help it. No sooner had he stood up than he took a large step forward and thrust out with his arm.

Naotsugu swung his dagger down at Lu’s outstretched right arm. However, the six-inch blade bounced off a spiraling force field around the man’s arm. This was another traditional Chinese martial art skill—working all your muscles and bones together and transferring the force of that twist into the strike area, thus creating a weapon both offensive and defensive; it was a skill developed magically out of Chansijin.

Naotsugu’s body swayed like a leaf floating in a flowing river. Still in his position of having dodged Lu’s straight, he retreated to the windows.

He slid his entire body away from Lu’s immediate finger strike, placing wide distance between them. However, Lu gave him no time to regroup. A fist, a palm, a rake—he made his hand into many forms, mixing in elbows, shoulders, and tackles, an onslaught like a raging wave. Naotsugu didn’t have time to use Pressure Cut as he dragged himself back. Still, despite the continuous attacks, Lu hadn’t landed one clean hit on him. Only the will to fight could be read in Lu’s expression, but nobody could say for sure he felt no unease. His attack rhythm gradually sped up, and each blow’s power decreased to match.

Eventually, Naotsugu used the length of the hallway before finding his back pressed against the wall. There, Lu came in with a windmill-like punch. But as he brought his right arm down, Naotsugu matched the punch with the edge of his right hand.

He wasn’t holding a weapon. For the first time, confusion passed through Lu’s face.

A downward blow.

The edge of Naotsugu’s hand diverted the trajectory of Lu’s strike. The man’s body lurched forward; Naotsugu switched the dagger to his left hand.

Instead of the back of his head, which was exposed and defenseless, Naotsugu drove the blade into Lu’s side. His body was about to swing around vertically, and his abdomen, the axis of rotation, couldn’t avoid the blade. Nevertheless, he somehow twisted to avoid getting stabbed deep within his internal organs. The dagger broke through his skin, slicing deeply.

Hands now bracing on the floor, Lu sent a kick at Naotsugu’s head. The teen dodged it, then took a step back. Turning his forward roll into a cartwheel, Lu’s feet met the wall—there wasn’t enough space to stand up.

A moment later, he launched himself off the wall and at Naotsugu.

He brought his wrists together, and his hands formed the jaws of a tiger. The strike’s power was comparable to a beast’s fangs, too. If the strike caught someone, it would tear away entire chunks of flesh. It had the potential to even rip out bones.

Sensing danger, Naotsugu twisted far to the side to dodge the strike, not worrying about the risk of losing his posture. Even after Lu’s leap went past his prey, its force remained, and he landed two yards from Naotsugu. Then, with both hands on the floor, Lu changed direction. Once again, he shot toward his opponent. Now that he was wounded, the energy and force in his attacks had increased beyond even when he wasn’t.

This time, Naotsugu was the one to show unease.

As Lu was about to launch a fourth charge, he abruptly stopped in the middle and turned around, likely a reflexive evasive action.

Two mirage-like blades flew at Lu. They were made of superthin compressed air, heated to a high temperature with insulated compression. Lu’s large frame pushed itself between them. A moment later, though, the release of air turned into a shockwave that shot at him from either side.

With an agonized groan, Lu threw himself to the end of the hallway, right next to the stairwell. Naotsugu chased the man’s dive, but he had vanished in a split second.

“Mari…thanks for the help.”

It had been Mari’s spell that saved him from peril, but she hadn’t purposely timed it that way. She’d entered the battle as soon as she saw Lu and Naotsugu fighting. That was just how fast and dense their skirmish had been.

“Shuu, are you hurt?!”

Mari ran over, not replying to his words of thanks—she probably hadn’t heard them—and her face darkened. Naotsugu’s right hand had swollen into a dark red lump.

Naotsugu and Lu’s fight had actually been a draw after sacrifices on both sides. When he’d diverted Lu’s windmill strike, it had greatly damaged his right hand. Between that and Lu’s side, Naotsugu had the advantage if it went for longer, but in a short brawl, not being able to use his dominant hand would have been a major handicap.

“No worries. I’ll need an expert healing magician at first, but I can handle the rest of it. Fortunately, we’re in a hospital.”

“But you ship out tomorrow…”

“That’s fine, too, considering who I was up against. I can get them to make it an occupational injury.”

Naotsugu’s words—or, more accurately, the way he spoke the same as he always did—seemed to give Mari back her calm. As her anxiety faded, a different concern rose to the front of her mind.

“Who…who was that? I can’t believe he was your equal in close combat.”

Hesitation flashed across Naotsugu’s face, but only for a moment. “His name is Ganghu Lu. A magician in the GA3’s Special Covert Forces.”

“Ganghu Lu… That was him…?” The man was mentioned in the same sentence as Naotsugu Chiba quite often, so Mari at least knew his name.

“Mari,” said Naotsugu, suddenly grabbing Mari’s shoulders and turning her to face him.

“Wait, what’s wrong?” She looked away, embarrassed.

“Mari,” he said again. This time, his unusual tone caused her to look at him seriously. “I need to leave tomorrow. I’m extremely concerned that I can’t be at your side at a time like this, but…”

“Shuu, I understand. What did you want to say?”

“Right before Ganghu Lu disappeared, he saw your face. He knows you’re an enemy now.”

Mari nodded firmly. There was no fear in her eyes. That only made Naotsugu’s fears worse.

“That violent magician is known as the Man-Eating Tiger. You saw how powerful he is. So, for a while, I want you to make sure you’re never alone.”

She was about to say You’re exaggerating, but his serious stare made her swallow her words.

Ganghu Lu, forced to retreat after Naotsugu and Mari’s intervention, was now in the passenger seat of the luxury car Zhou drove.

“Was I too forward?” he asked from the driver’s seat as they left the hospital gate.

Lu said nothing, just stared out the front windshield.

Without showing whether Lu’s attitude offended him, Zhou continued, voice carefree, “Still, that was a surprise. To see Mr. Lu injured, that is.”

Even that, which could have been taken as criticism for his failure, didn’t get a blink out of Lu. Instead, he asked about the trick Zhou had used to help his escape. “You use Dun Jia?”

“Well, this is embarrassing. Compared to His Excellency Chen’s godlike works, this is simply a somewhat advanced sleight of hand. I could never show it to the others.”

And Lu’s words, which could have been taken as criticism for hiding his hand, only received a calm, completely ordered smile out of Zhou.

Tatsuya headed for the videophone as soon as he got home from school. He called a number for the second time today.

“Hello?” responded the voice of a young woman (not a girl) with the fixed greeting from two centuries ago. The increase in not just video but also audio quality was remarkable, but he could tell from the slight cloudiness that she had picked up on a mobile telecommunication terminal.

“It’s Shiba.”

“Oh. It’s unusual for you to call me twice in one day.”

Along with her cheerful response appeared the mask of a young corporate secretary, softly smiling but without an ounce of vulnerability. Normally, she purposely wore plain clothes to remain inconspicuous, but seeing her with normal makeup and accessories accentuated her flowering, above-average looks.

“I’m sorry. Are you on a date?”

Fujibayashi, dressed up for a night on the town, chuckled just as flirtatiously. “I’m afraid I’m on the job. I do wonder why men only flock to me during work, though. None of them were any good, so I suppose it doesn’t matter, but still…”

Her manner of speaking felt somehow different—doubtlessly thanks to alcohol. Of course, Tatsuya wasn’t enough of a daredevil to say I see you’ve been drinking to her face, through a camera or not.

Even for cities that had installed collective self-driving car control systems, drunk driving private vehicles was grounds for severe punishment. In particular, drinking and then getting into the driver’s seat was the crime. Society’s consensus was that because one could still drive the car manually, one needed to maintain proper judgment and driving ability.

By the same token, it was unthinkable that Fujibayashi would be using a normal car on the job. She’d have been riding her own, with all its massively improved intelligence capabilities. She’d used her own car, and she was drunk. That had to mean somebody else was sitting in the driver’s seat.

“Ahhh…” she sighed. “If only there were a boy out there as cool as you, Tatsuya.”

Whether or not she knew about Tatsuya’s suspicions, Fujibayashi let an even more amorous color into her expression, even winking at him at the end.

“I see. I had something to discuss with you—should I call back tomorrow?” he asked, completely ignoring what he was convinced was a joke.

On her end, Fujibayashi grinned musingly, forgetting to play the coquette. “So collected… I suppose that’s why they call you the ‘freest of them all.’”

“Calling me the ‘freest’ sounds incredibly sarcastic…” he said. “By the way…”

“No need to worry. I’m alone, for now,” answered Fujibayashi, anticipating Tatsuya’s doubts regarding information leakage. Then she urged him on. “You can get as involved as you want.”

“Thank you very much.” Even Tatsuya, who could penetrate the easygoing way people like Haruka did things, always found himself drawn in to Fujibayashi’s rhythm. He decided to put up a white flag with his expression and get to the point. “The school had a robbery today.”

“A robbery? This is about what you mentioned this morning, isn’t it? They finally used force?”

“Yes. They used sleeping gas.”

Fujibayashi’s eyes widened on the display as if to say, Oh, my.

“Fortunately, the attempt failed.”

“I’m sorry. This is because we make you do so much…”

“No, the army isn’t the only one under obligation here.”

Fujibayashi bowed apologetically because, since his magic was a classified military secret, they were forcing him to go through more trouble than he needed to.

That was the plain truth, and what Tatsuya had said was a pretext—the Yotsuba didn’t have the decency to be particular about how they did it. Still, this exchange was ceremonial, and they repeated it at every opportunity to let the conversation proceed smoothly.

Neither the one apologizing nor the one being apologized to actually felt that way.

“I took the opportunity to record a video of the attempted robbery.”

“Really…? How?”

If you wanted to steal information, the most basic, fundamental thing to do was disable the surveillance cameras. And if you couldn’t do that, you wouldn’t try to commit a crime indoors in the first place.

“I had an independently operating security terminal take it.”

“Oh, a 3H? Didn’t know you were into those.”

“I’m not. I was in the robotics research club room; the 3H is their equipment.”

3Hs were designed with such elaboration that people tended to think of them as catering to certain people with specific tastes. Tatsuya knew that, so he’d evasively described it as an “independently operating security terminal,” but that didn’t work on Fujibayashi.

“About the video…” he said, feeling her suspect him for being evasive in the first place, and thus forcing the conversation back to its point, “I’ll give it to you, so could you investigate it?”

“What does it show?”

She replied honestly anyway, a testament to her good-natured personality. Though it was an incredibly natural response, good and bad were relative. Having to call this a “good-natured personality” was, in turn, a testament to the relationships Tatsuya found himself having.

“The unsuccessful thief and the tool he used. I attached a log of the CAD he was breaking into as well.”

“I see. Basically, you’re telling me to catch the sly foxes already, right?”

“I would never put it so arrogantly, but in essence, yes.”

“You don’t need to worry about it,” said Fujibayashi with intentional vigor, despite Tatsuya not showing any sign whatsoever of worrying about it anyway.

She really did have a good-natured personality.

“The C.O. has been talking about taking care of things soon, too. We already narrowed it down from the log you gave us earlier, so we should be able to nab them within the next couple of days. Hold tight for some good news.”

She gave advance notice of her success, without showing any enthusiasm.

Tatsuya briefly thanked her, without saying anything unnecessary, and sent the data to her terminal.

After finishing her conversation with Tatsuya, Fujibayashi beckoned Chief Toshikazu Chiba, whom she’d driven out, to the passenger seat. Despite her blood alcohol level, she had taken up a position at the helm; Tatsuya had been mistaken on that point. After all, she belonged to an unofficial group: the Independent Magic Battalion.

From Toshikazu’s point of view, everything that had happened was really quite odd. He’d only been planning on getting a few tips from the Roter Wald bartender, known by those in the underworld, so he could break the deadlock in their investigation.

And now, for some reason, he was with a beautiful eligible woman he’d met at the café. She’d said she wanted him to help, but it seemed to him that he was the one being helped. In his mind, he kept asking himself how things came to this, but he still didn’t have an answer. He certainly hadn’t lost himself to her attractiveness, he kept reminding himself, but he was starting to lose confidence in that statement.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Chiba. It was a private call.”

“No, I don’t mind.”

Toshikazu wore a casual suit with a sense of extravagance to it, like Fujibayashi’s own outfit. It was a sad truth, even now, that police officers were underpaid, but in his case, he had a second stream of public, police-recognized income related to his family, so his pockets were lined.

“What sort of tips did your private information source give you?” he asked, maintaining his vaguely irresponsible, frivolous mood, as though he were holding a cocktail glass in one hand.

Fujibayashi turned the same amused smile she’d given to Tatsuya on him. She loved people quick on the uptake. On the other hand, she got irritated when they were too slow to catch on, so she was pleased with Toshikazu’s attentive wit. “A sketch of the poor rat being used by the foxes, and a sketch of the little tail they lent him.”

“…A video of the collaborator and the hacking, tool?” Even Toshikazu was perplexed as he asked the question.

Fujibayashi nodded with the kind of smile a teacher would give to a student who’d correctly answered a question. “Chief, do you know what the first step in foxhunting is?” she asked, eyes a bit too serious.

“No… Unfortunately, I know nothing about guns…and I’ve never had the chance to go hunting.”

The young chief couldn’t keep up with the change in topic and was unable to give a smooth reply. The elite second lieutenant hiding her identity, still looking serious, answered her own question. “The first step in hunting foxes is to find their den. Destroy the nests they would escape to, and once they hide in the bushes, drive them out with a rifle.”

“…You want us to search for their hideout?”

“I’ll give you the video from the high school student helping me. Look into where he was with the roadside cameras. You don’t get that kind of hardware anywhere; he must have met someone directly.”

Obviously, it was illegal to use the roadside camera videos for that without a search warrant. And if the target was a minor, you wouldn’t get the warrant very easily. Toshikazu, however, pointed out a different problem.

“Where he was—how big a time span should we search? A single person’s sphere of activity over just one or two months is basically infinite. Picking out someone suspicious like that, well…”

“There are thirty-two points to search within the city. Grab the places he’s been to in the past month.”

Toshikazu’s jaw dropped. “Thirty-two places…? You’ve narrowed it down that far already?”

“I have another source of data you don’t know about, Chief. I was just thinking that this would be the hard part, but conveniently enough, I just got a new clue.”

A tinge of criticism made it into Toshikazu’s eyes. “…Another source? Why wouldn’t you…?”

“Because the person is a woman, of course.”

Her unconcerned answer struck him dumb.

“I couldn’t put a girl with a future on a police blacklist, could I?”

“…But you could if it were a man?”

“It’s a matter of responsibility,” she explained.

Toshikazu had no idea what to say to that.

“I believe in paternal rights. It’s only natural gentlemen grow to be more distinguished than women. Therefore, gentlemen must firmly control themselves and take responsibility for all their actions.”

With all the sudden old-fashioned expressions—particularly convenient ones at the moment, too—Toshikazu stared at her for a good while, wondering if she was actually serious.

The wounded tiger within the skulk of foxes didn’t return until a little after the date had changed. (Though, of course, the foxes doubtlessly considered themselves to be the hunters.)

Chen was taken aback at seeing Lu injured, but he didn’t ask how he’d gotten that way; he’d already received a full report on the mission. Lu had insisted on a second attack before returning, but Chen had denied it and called him back. He had no intention of blaming Lu for the failure to assassinate Chiaki Hirakawa, but the way it failed, especially in how Zhou conducted himself, smelled fishy to him. He felt like criticizing Lu now would be playing right into Zhou’s hands. And more importantly…

“The situation’s changed.”

…a higher-priority problem had occurred, and he needed Lu to deal with it.

“Our collaborator at First High, Isao Sekimoto, failed his mission and fell into the authorities’ hands. He’s being kept at the Hachiouji Special Detention Home.”

A hospital would have been one thing. But if they’d placed him in a special detention home, a facility for holding minors with magic abilities under protective custody, they’d need more than an average amount of skill to do anything about it. Plus, Sekimoto had been in direct contact with Chen’s group. The priority on dealing with him was entirely different than Chiaki, who had only an indirect connection to Zhou.

“Chiaki Hirakawa comes later. Get rid of Isao Sekimoto.”

“Shì.”

Despite the jump in their mission’s difficulty level, Lu answered with his usual composed expression. Not even a hint of pain showed through.

The next day, Monday.

As he waited for Miyuki to exit the cabinet, Tatsuya found his classmates riding together in the cabinet two behind them. They must have noticed he was looking; the boy and the girl sitting next to each other both made an openmouthed, surprised expression at the same time.

“Tatsuya, do you see something funny?”

As Miyuki alighted the car’s interior, manner refined, she followed her brother’s gaze—only to put a hand to her mouth in surprise.

Beyond the front windshield of the cabinet two behind theirs were Erika and Leo, giving awkward, stiff smiles.

Today, there were four members in their group heading from the station to school. It was rarer for all eight of them to be together at once during this time, but still, only having four was fewer than usual.

And that, really, was only natural.

“…Hey, why are you here so early this morning, anyway?” asked Leo unhappily.

But it was entirely Leo’s fault that his mood had soured; him venting anger didn’t scare Tatsuya. “We’re down to one week left. There’s a lot to do in the morning.”

It was over an hour earlier than they usually arrived.

“What about you, Leo?”

Tatsuya had a reason—the Thesis Competition was this upcoming Sunday. Viewed objectively, it was less strange for him to be here now than Leo.

“You’re up quite early this morning as well, Erika.”

Before Tatsuya could press the unsure Leo, Miyuki loosed her verbal arrow at Erika. Miyuki gave an invigorating smile, assuring her classmate that she had no ulterior motives.

“…Well, I usually get up early,” answered Erika shortly, expression annoyed, before walking faster toward campus.

“Really? Then maybe Saijou got up early this morning,” said Miyuki, almost a mumble.

Erika’s feet stopped abruptly. That was too much for her to endure and walk away. “Wait, Miyuki! You’re making it sound like I go wake him up every morning. Would you stop?!”

“That’s right! I mean, I was the one up earlier anyway!”

Erika’s counterattack, however, came to nothing thanks to the hornet’s nest that had just come out of Leo’s mouth.

“…”

“…”

“…”

Erika, Tatsuya, and Miyuki glared silently at one another. (Specifically, Erika was the only one glaring; Tatsuya and Miyuki both wore poker faces.)

“…Huh? What’s going on?”

Only Leo didn’t understand the situation (that he’d caused).

“…Why aren’t you saying anything?” Erika’s tone was cocksure, but her face was red and she almost had tears in her eyes.

“Well…the early bird gets the worm,” said Tatsuya.

Even he wasn’t savage enough to attack again. Or maybe he just didn’t have the tact to do anything but divert the conversation. Next to him, Miyuki smiled with discomfiture and Leo was still tilting his head, wondering what was going on; in a way, it was a beautiful contrast.

With the start of classes approaching, Tatsuya returned to the classroom to see Mizuki in the middle of carefully pacifying the angered Erika.

“Oh, Tatsuya!”

Mikihiko was the one to call to him, sounding like he was glad Tatsuya was here. Leo was sitting backward in his seat as usual, a glum look on his face.

Tatsuya saw, quite clearly, that Mizuki had stepped on a landmine and Mikihiko had fanned the flames.

“Come on, Erika, cheer up already,” said Tatsuya, lightly touching the can in his hand to Erika’s turned cheek.

“Ow!” She jumped up like a duck in a thunderstorm. “That’s hot! What’d you do that for?!”

“Here.” Tatsuya slipped his can of hot chocolate into Erika’s hands. She was 50 percent more aggressive than usual.

“Ow,” she said again in a different voice this time, juggling the drink and casting a confused stare at Tatsuya.

“Drinking something sweet will calm you down,” he explained.

“…Hmph. You can’t fool me,” she said, opening the drink and putting it to her lips.

Tatsuya saw her cheeks soften a little. He narrowed his eyes into a strange smile at her.

“…What do you want?” demanded Erika, finding fault with his smile. Still, while glumness remained in her tone, it was significantly more relaxed.

“The whole Chiba dojo was drilling a new spell into Leo, right? Nobody has any strange suspicions about this, so lighten up.”

Tatsuya only meant that as a way to soothe her, but it had a bigger effect than he’d realized. Erika’s eyes filled with unadulterated surprise. “…Are you clairvoyant, Tatsuya?”

“No, that’s not a skill I have. It just seems like Leo’s willpower is worn down, but on the other hand, his magic power looks energized.”

When Tatsuya said magic power, he meant a combination of the psion energization that came with using magic and his event-altering interference power. Psions’ level of energization depended on magic program construction speed, construction accuracy, and construction scope, but these weren’t enough to alter events by themselves. Magic only came into being when combined with the power to overwrite the information attached to those events, which was based in a sentient being.

“Willpower, magic power… You say it like it’s all so obvious, but…well, I guess it’s a little late for that.”

Though magicians could sense psions, it took experience and skill to distinguish the interference’s energy. At this point, Erika was starting to tire of being surprised at how irrational Tatsuya was—or maybe she already had, in her own way.

“By the way, Tatsuya, I heard there was some trouble yesterday,” Mikihiko said, showing relief that the storm was finally past them.

“Yesterday? Oh…news travels fast.”

Tatsuya had paused not out of an attempt to feign ignorance or put on airs. Both Chiaki Hirakawa and Isao Sekimoto were incidents already resolved for him, so he hadn’t associated the word trouble with it right away.

Fujibayashi had taken it over, promising to resolve it within a day or two, so to him, it was an already-established fact that they’d catch the entire information theft organization today or tomorrow.

The Electron Sorceress.

This nickname given to Kyouko Fujibayashi marked her as both a magician excelling in electron- and EM wave–interference magic and as a demonic hacker who could bend information networks to her will.

Some said she was actually better at tampering with information networks than altering events in the real world.

Just as Tatsuya could read the data attached to past events that the flow of time had overwritten, she had a unique skill where she could reconstruct overwritten and deleted data on magnetic and optical storage. And unlike Tatsuya, she could go back as far as she wanted. The flipside of that was if the physical storage media was destroyed, she couldn’t trace anything. It was improbable, though, that all the media recording specific information of the equipment making up the global network would be eradicated.

In other words, if there were any traces in an electronic information network, she could follow the network virtually anywhere.

Fujibayashi had taught Tatsuya his network-chasing know-how, but he didn’t think he’d ever compare to her in this field. In Tatsuya’s estimation, you could count the world’s “foxhunters” rivaling her on a single hand and still have fingers left over.

“Well, they caught the criminal, so I don’t think we need to worry.”

Hence, Tatsuya answered Mikihiko thusly.

However, Erika and Mikihiko didn’t know about Fujibayashi’s actions, so they weren’t convinced.

“I don’t think it’s over just because they caught the criminal.”

Once Erika voiced her complaint (?)…

“It didn’t seem like a solo crime, either. I wonder what organization was backing him…”

…Mikihiko also expressed his concern.

“Why not ask the man himself?”

Once Mikihiko spoke, Leo, who had been listening to the conversation quietly, blurted this out in his usual easygoing manner.

It was easier said than done to ask the person in question. Chiaki would have been one thing, but Sekimoto was in a special discrimination office. Even so, the usual retort for anything Leo said didn’t come.

“Yeah…maybe we should go put the heat on him,” said Erika, normally the straight woman in their little comedy routine. Her agreement was unusually positive.

“Huh? But, Erika, Sekimoto got…”

“Thrown into a special detention home. We can’t just walk in and talk to him.”

Erika, the one argued against, finished Mizuki’s stammered, paused sentence. That, of course, was not because Mizuki had stopped her and she’d changed her mind.

“But it’s not like it’s impossible. If it comes to it, we could just sneak in.”

“Wait, wait,” Tatsuya interrupted, naturally unable to let any more of this go. “You don’t need to be rash. All you need to meet him is a letter of proxy from the school. He’s still a First High student, you know.”

Magic training came with accidents. More than a few magic high school students lost their magic during training and dropped out. But that was all the more reason students didn’t easily drop out, barring any atrocious crimes. What Sekimoto had tried to do had been incredibly malignant, but it hadn’t worked. They would check to see if there was room for him to improve before dealing with him. A proxy, even a student one, to determine that would be allowed a meeting with him, exactly because special detention homes placed holders of rare talent in their custody.

“Really?” Erika had to have known that. “But the disciplinary committee basically controls those proxy letters, right?”

Erika had proposed her near-criminal method because she had a reason she didn’t want to go through the proper process.

“It would be easier than sneaking into a special discrimination office.”

However, Tatsuya firmly turned down Erika’s selfishness.

But then, after school, in the disciplinary committee HQ:

“No.”

Kanon’s answer to Tatsuya’s request for a meeting with Sekimoto was very simple.

“…Won’t you tell me your reason?”

It was so simple that Tatsuya was very nearly speechless.

“No means no.”

Kanon obstinately repeated the word. It was less that she was getting emotional and more that she was worried that, if this came down to an argument, she’d give in.

“But why?” pressed Tatsuya. “Meeting applications for detention homes go through the disciplinary chairwoman or the student council president. But the final authority lies with the school. I just can’t comprehend why you would turn me away at the door without a reason.”

Kanon scowled, not trying to hide her reluctance. With her being so clearly hard-hearted toward him, he started to wonder if he’d done something to offend her.

Still, Tatsuya wasn’t possessed of the admirable quality of backing down quietly, so it was hard to call Kanon’s tactic a success.

Eventually, deciding that refusing him any longer was pointless, she reluctantly answered, “…Because it’ll cause problems.”

“What proof do you have…? And what do you mean by ‘problems,’ anyway?”

Of course, that kind of reason would never persuade Tatsuya. His return question was only natural.

“Are you saying nothing would happen?! With all of you running around?!”

But for some reason, Kanon came back with a stream of questions. Sharp, angry ones, too.

“You don’t seem to realize this, so I’ll spell it out! Shiba, trouble loves you! You may not mean to, you might not make any mistakes, but the trouble is going to come to you on its own. We’re already busy, so don’t give us more work to do!”

That was a truly unfair way of saying it, but Kanon spoke with such force that it didn’t allow defense—and Tatsuya thought to himself that, upon reflection, he couldn’t completely dismiss the claim.

“Kanon, that wasn’t right to say to Tatsuya.”

The timely help he got was from Mari, who showed up at HQ frequently despite her retirement.

“He’s involved in this,” she said. “It’s only natural he’d want to hear the details personally.”

“But, Mari—”

“Now, wait, Kanon. I understand how you feel, too.”

You do?! thought Tatsuya, but he kept his statement of protest to himself—Mari did seem to be defending him, after all.

“Tomorrow, Mayumi and I were planning to check up on Sekimoto. Can’t he just come with us?”

“Well…I guess if he’s with you…”

Even Kanon couldn’t carry through with her stubbornness in front of Mari. Half-hearted though it was, she agreed to Mari’s proposal.

“That’s fine with you, right, Tatsuya? Not that you’ll be able to bring everyone, but still.”

Honestly speaking, he wasn’t satisfied. Still, with how Kanon was acting toward him, he decided he needed to compromise, too, and submitted to the proposal.

In her bed in a hospital room with no windows, Chiaki sighed.

She was so bored she didn’t know what to do with herself.

She wasn’t sick, and she wasn’t injured. Well, technically she was injured, but not enough to be hospitalized. As far as she was aware, there was nothing wrong with her body that required them to keep her in this bed.

Neither sickness nor injury was the reason she was locked away in this room.

Yes: This was just a luxurious prison cell.

She knew she’d done something that deserved being sent to jail. She had no intention of complaining about having her freedom taken like this, regardless of her true feelings. She just wanted them to do something about this boredom. Nothing crazy like a television, video games, an Internet terminal, or model building; a cheap, off-network reading device would be enough. It didn’t even have to be entertainment—forced labor was fine with her. All she wanted was to stop sitting here and doing nothing.

Not long ago—well, it was more than two hours ago—a nurse had come in to check on her and said she couldn’t meet anyone today. An agitator had just broken in yesterday, and it was just to be safe. That was only natural; the emergency alarm connected to the police had even gone off instead of the fire alarm.

And nobody would want to come visit her anyway—she was certain her sister had run out of patience this time—so the lack of visitors didn’t affect her. They didn’t need to be safe or anything. She’d caught on; the “agitator” had been after her. They’d tried to tear this room’s door off. It wasn’t as though she’d been deep asleep. She couldn’t have missed that if she’d tried. She figured “they” had come to get rid of her. That was inevitable, and she’d even given up on that. They’d only been helping each other temporarily. They weren’t friends. That was her impression, and they would think the same. It only made sense that they’d plot to kill her so she wouldn’t spill any of their information.

Right now, she didn’t care about her life. Nothing mattered anymore. She didn’t even know why she’d had such enmity toward that man. She scorned herself; maybe rotting away in this empty white room was a fitting end for her.

Just then, there was a knock on the door. Chiaki was steadily lapsing into lethargy, but enough intellect remained to think the knock was strange. The nurses were done with their afternoon rounds. She hadn’t called one, either. She was pretty sure nobody would come visit her, and besides, nobody was allowed to.

Another knock at the door interrupted her doubts. Quickly—without thinking much of it—she unlocked the door with her remote.

“How are you feeling today, Miss Chiaki?”

An unexpected person opened the door and entered. Deep down, she knew that if anyone was going to visit her, it was going to be this young man.

“Mr. Zhou…”

The one who had given her those kind words as she’d run away through streets by night, her sister’s cornered emaciation too hard for her to watch. The one who had agreed with her dark thoughts, that there was no reason the two sisters had to be the only ones suffering. The one who had told her a little revenge was all right, because revenge didn’t have to mean killing. The one who had shown her where to aim her emotions, which had nowhere to go. The one who had given her the means of exacting that “revenge.”

This person had saved her mind, and he stood before her now, holding a large bouquet.

“But…how? They said no visitors today…”

There was so much she wanted to thank him for, to apologize to him for, but that was what she was fixed on? Chiaki felt pathetic. Right after saying it, she wanted to go back ten seconds and deck herself.

“I used a little trick,” said Zhou, closing one eye. It was a wink, but he was one of the rare men for whom it didn’t come off as sarcastic.

“A trick? …Magic?”

“No, it’s a little different from magic.”

In line with her own common sense, Chiaki had interpreted trick as magic.

But Zhou smiled and shook his head.

“People can cause all kinds of miracles without needing magic. Well, this technique is too minor to be called a miracle.”

He smiled at her again, and Chiaki finally regained the ability to think straight, or at least felt like she did.

“Umm, Mr. Zhou, I… You let me borrow so much, but I couldn’t do it, so I’m…”

Right before the word sorry left her mouth, he held the flowers out to her.

They were strange and beautiful, and she found herself taken by the mysterious sense of captivation they granted her.

“You don’t need to worry about any of that.”

Zhou’s voice sounded a little bit distant to her.

“You don’t need to worry about something I did. But if…”

As Chiaki looked at the flowers, dazed, she listened to Zhou.

“If that will cause you regret…”

Chiaki’s eyes lost their focus.

“If that will be a burden on you…”

Her mind was filled with his voice.

“…then you can forget about me.”

“Forget…?” she mumbled unconsciously. She listened to the sound of her own voice, unaware of what she was saying.

“Yes, forget all about me.”

“Forget…? Is that okay…?”

Guided by Zhou, Chiaki gave herself permission to forget.

“Yes, it’s okay.”

“All right… Then I’ll forget…”

Chiaki gave herself the order to forget.

After school on Tuesday, October 25. Tatsuya, along with Mari and Mayumi, had gone to the Hachiouji Special Detention Home where Sekimoto was being held. With the Thesis Competition in five days, they were in the final stretch of their preparations, but Tatsuya’s share of the work was going well. He had more than enough time to take a few hours off.

Erika, Leo, and Mikihiko had actually wanted to go with him, but their upperclassmen being there seemed to scare them off. Erika was the only one with something against Mari, but for pure-hearted (?!) boys in high school, female seniors they weren’t really close to appeared to be a pretty high hurdle.

Of course, the letter of proxy had only included three people on it in the first place. Incidentally, Miyuki, who couldn’t leave her student council work, saw him off with a beautiful, not-the-least-bit-smiling expression.

Getting into the building was a process in a few ways, but once they did, they had enough freedom to make the effort seem like a letdown. No employees escorted them; they’d only been handed guide terminals. Still, Mayumi had dropped the name Saegusa. They hadn’t informed Tatsuya of that particular part of the plan, but the special treatment they were afforded from it didn’t even bear questioning.

The room Sekimoto was being held in wasn’t a jail cell. He wasn’t behind bars such that anyone could see straight in; it was more like a small private room in a business hotel. However, a hidden room sat next to it from which one could look inside.

Mayumi and Tatsuya entered that hidden room. Mari would be the only one talking to Sekimoto. It was on Mari’s insistence, but neither of the other two argued. If Sekimoto went crazy, Mayumi was confident she could deal with him even from the next room over. Besides, Tatsuya knew his skills in that arena couldn’t beat Mari’s even on a bad day.

From what they could see, Sekimoto wasn’t being restrained by anything. He couldn’t leave the room, of course. He sat still on the bed, wearing simple clothing that resembled a hospital examination robe. Obviously, they’d been doing thorough physical checks. There was zero chance of him hiding weapons or CADs anywhere.

Beyond the observation window disguised as a wall, Tatsuya and Mayumi saw the door open. It went without saying that Mari was the one to enter. Sekimoto, who had been watching the door open with disinterest, gave a look of shock. A moment later, his eyes filled with suspicion and caution instead. Mari appearing alone had caused him to feel danger.

“Watanabe…? What are you here for?” Still sitting, Sekimoto rubbed his left wrist, probably unconsciously looking for his confiscated CAD. His voice didn’t shake, which was a wonder because he looked incredibly tense.

“To hear what’s going on, of course.”

As another (former) disciplinary committee member, Sekimoto probably knew Mari’s methods pretty well. They were merciless. He couldn’t suppress the fear roiling within him. “E-even you can’t use magic in here!”

Sekimoto’s remark was technically true. This facility was for detaining law-breaking magicians (up-and-comers and hopefuls) who weren’t of age. Unmanned Cast Jamming oscillators, for example, had yet to be invented, but every corner of this building could detect when magic was being used. And if it was, those on watch could introduce neutralizing gases, turn on rubber-bullet gun emplacements, or have police officers armed with antinite storm in.

“You think?”

—If the surveillance systems were working properly, that is. Sekimoto correctly understood the smirk on Mari’s face.

“I don’t have much time, so let’s get to the important bits.”

Seeing her sneer (or so it registered with Sekimoto) made him quickly hold his breath—though it was already too late, and he didn’t have any spells to escape by holding his breath.

Suddenly, his mind began to haze over. Without realizing he had fallen victim to Mari’s spell, he started answering her questions.

“Mind control using scent?” pondered Tatsuya, seeing at a glance from the hidden room what Mari had done.

Smells directly stimulated a person’s emotional memories. Doctors had discovered this last century, and the folk remedy of aromatherapy was used for its strength in affecting emotions. Mari was manipulating the air to send several scents into the olfactory cells in his nasal cavity and forcing him to perceive smells that lowered his mental resistance, achieving the same effect as a truth serum.

“Tatsuya, is this your first time seeing it?” Mayumi wasn’t surprised he’d figured out the spell. She knew this much was only natural given his intelligence and insight in magic. She was actually surprised he’d never seen Mari do this during the half year they were together on the disciplinary committee.

“It is. I assume it would cause trouble if she used it in the open.”

“I suppose you’re right,” agreed Mayumi. Magic usage was strictly controlled by law. Plus, this technique could be used for brainwashing. If used lightly, others would be torn between their sense of fellowship and their duty as upright citizens.

Even as he spoke to Mayumi, Tatsuya didn’t let Sekimoto’s confession slip by him. He picked up on the admission that he’d “planned to look through Shiba’s belongings after extracting the data from the demonstration machine.” When asked about his goal, he answered, “a jewel Relic.”

“…Tatsuya, you had something like that all this time?” asked Mayumi, eyes wide.

“No, I don’t, actually.” He perfectly understood her impulse to ask, but responding truthfully was a different story.

“But…”

“A little while back, I was doing research into Relics related to the philosopher’s stone. Maybe he got the wrong idea.”

He’d used this excuse days before, too, during the student council elections. Mayumi remembered that; she didn’t ask again. Mostly because she didn’t completely believe the explanation but also because now wasn’t the time for that.

A moment after Tatsuya’s plausible lie, the Hachiouji Special Detention Home’s emergency alarm went off.

All three of them reacted quickly to it. Mari pushed Sekimoto, his mind still foggy, onto the bed (rather than put him to sleep), left into the hallway, and locked the door. By that time, Mayumi and Tatsuya had already exited the hidden room.

“There’s an intruder,” said Tatsuya, looking at a message board on the ceiling. Mayumi and Mari looked up at the same time, confirming his statement.

“Who would be so reckless…?” muttered Mari with a shiver. After the incident two days ago when the NMU affiliated hospital was attacked, the entirety of western Tokyo had been placed on alert by the Metropolitan Police Department. It still hadn’t culminated in the Ministry of Police mobilizing its peacekeeping riot police (a domestic peacekeeping force) to the local police level (its essence aside, organizationally speaking the MPD was the police for the city of Tokyo), but there were five times as many police officers on patrol today. The Hachiouji Special Detention Home was on 200 percent alert. To charge in any way, you’d need either a great amount of skill or a great degree of stupidity—and Mari’s gut told her it was the former.

“Tatsuya, can you tell where they’re coming from?”

Tatsuya hit his LPS terminal. Its clamshell-shaped permeable display lost its transparency and showed a three-dimensional map of evacuation routes. Going backward from those courses would let him infer the intruders’ present location.

“It looks like they came in from the roof. They likely jumped from an airplane or used a catapult. I think they’re near the third floor’s eastern stairwell.”

Mayumi turned and looked into empty air, eyes unfocused, using her innate skill, the perception spell Multiscope, at full power in the direction Tatsuya said. “…Spot on. Good job as usual, Tatsuya. Four intruders, and they’re armed with high-powered rifles.”

A high-powered rifle was a portable anti-magician weapon. To gain the bullet speed needed to shoot through anti-physical defensive magic, it used enough gunpowder to get three to four times the explosiveness of a normal assault rifle. Its power meant it needed advanced manufacturing technology. Random terrorists couldn’t get their hands on something like those.

“The police set up a barricade on the landing, and they’re fighting now.”

“It looks like the entrances and exits to the hallways are blocked by walls.” After Mayumi relayed the situation, Tatsuya read the three-dimensional building diagram. They were on the second floor right now, near the middle stairwell. This wasn’t all that anxiety-inducing, but… “Here’s their real attack.”

Tatsuya looked sharply at that middle stairwell, and a moment later, Mari glared at the doorway as well.

“Huh? What?” Mayumi didn’t seem to understand what they were wary of, but her confusion didn’t last long.

A young, well-built man appeared before them. He stood a head taller than Tatsuya, which placed him at just under six three. His toned muscles had no sense of dullness, and Tatsuya could feel the flexibility of a large, carnivorous animal from them. Oddly, the man felt like he lacked presence, perhaps as the result of some technique. He almost felt invisible, like Tatsuya might lose sight of him even though he was right there, but at this close range, his lack of presence didn’t matter. Mari knew who he was.

“Ganghu Lu…”

Despite Mari’s mumble, Mayumi looked on blankly, having no idea. Tatsuya’s expression was still severe, but that was because he knew the man without Mari telling him—and, of course, his true strength.

As Lu began to approach, he set his eyes on the three. In particular, on Mari.

“We should have fled, but it seems we were too late,” said Tatsuya dispassionately, stepping in front of the other two. As he walked toward Lu, Mari grabbed him by the shoulder.

“I’ll take point. You guard Mayumi.”

Don’t be absurd, thought Tatsuya. Sure, Mari was already skilled enough at magical combat to be called top tier, even as a high school senior. But when it came to close-quarters fighting, Ganghu Lu was super top tier. Her odds of winning in a straight contest were terrible. An “irregular” like Tatsuya had better chances.

“Mari, be careful.”

Surprisingly, however, Mayumi agreed to the formation. This was no time for infighting, so Tatsuya had to back down as well.

“I know—he’s not normal,” said Mari, not turning around.

Her right hand came up slowly before sweeping down and swinging back up as if to dust off her skirt. With a rustle, the triangular pleats on its side, made with superthin material normally hidden by its form-retaining function, spread apart and turned up. It exposed her shapely thigh in brown leggings—and a holster. She drew immediately. Her weapon: a short, rectangular stick eight inches long.

As her fluttering skirt calmed, it hid her leg lines. After seeing her draw her weapon in her left hand, though by no means taken in by the view, Lu finally assumed what looked like a combat posture.

He leaned forward slightly, letting his arms dangle in front of him, loosely curling his fingers. An energy filled his body, as though he could pounce at any moment.

But it was neither Mari nor Lu to start the fight—it was Mayumi.

The moment they saw a haziness collect on the wall and ceiling, a deluge of white bullets flew at the foreigner. He immediately dashed forward, but half the bullets caught him.

They didn’t leave any damage, though. He’d reflected the bullets of dry ice with the Gang Qigong armor covering his body.

The berserker continued to charge at Mari. She met him with a sixteen-inch-long blade.

A dull, metallic noise rang out as Lu blocked her smash with his right hand. But a moment later, his face reeled backward. The sharpened edge of a strip of paper eight inches long flew across his vision. Mari’s weapons were an eight-inch hilt connected to two eight-inch rectangular paper strips by thin wires—a small, three-part sword.

Mayumi’s second wave came. Lu jumped a good distance away. His gut had been right: Countless scratches appeared in the floor and walls. These bullets she’d made were finer, harder, and faster than her first wave, giving them double the penetration power.

For the first time, a human expression crossed Lu’s face—confusion. He knew he wasn’t in peak physical condition, thanks to the wound in his side. But he found it hard to believe mere students, and female ones at that, were giving him difficulty. Nevertheless, the indecision in his mind vanished in an instant. He removed his invisibility, deciding to throw everything into this battle.

Layer upon layer of psion information bodies manifested across his entire body. Tatsuya knew they were information bodies with the same properties as anti-physical defensive spells. Until now, Lu had been reinforcing his skin’s structural information by circulating a high density of psions over top of it. He’d switched it into a defensive spell.

Mayumi fired her third wave. Ganghu Lu blocked it with his matter-blocking wall. Then, with speed that could be called godlike, he closed in on Mari. She fixed her two blades in a straight line and prepared to intercept, but given the strength of his defensive spell, a simple counterattack wouldn’t work.

The instant he made contact with her, he disappeared. Mari quickly looked right. It was entirely instinctual, but thankfully, her intuition had been correct.

But she wasn’t in time.

Ganghu Lu’s body had slipped past the outside of the short sword’s range. In her mind, she yelled her classmate’s name, but she didn’t have time to say it out loud.

Lu faced straight at Tatsuya, who stood in front of Mayumi—and was swallowed up by a maelstrom of psions.

Program Demolition.

When Tatsuya had seen him switch his Gang Qigong from information boosting to an anti-physical wall, he’d been increasing the pressure with a mass of psionic particles. The cluster tore away Lu’s armor.

There was undeniable shock in Lu’s eyes.

Mayumi wasted no time initiating a ranged spell.

Lu’s reaction to it certainly matched his “super top-tier” rating. In a split second he quelled his confusion at his Gang Qigong breaking and reconstructed the information-boosting version.

However, while she’d decreased the number of bullets, each individual one was more powerful, and he couldn’t pull through the barrage completely undamaged.

Lu stopped as his senses were battered by bullet impacts and swarms of psions.

Mari came up behind and attacked. From out of the short sword in her raised left hand fell the two blades. The thin, rectangular edges spun through the air and reached Lu’s crown. Then her right hand thrust out, and black powder scattered from it toward Lu’s head.

As soon as Lu turned, he covered his eyes and nose. The black powder spread around his neck and over his head, glinted with a dim light, and vanished.

Lu staggered. The carbon powder had burned rapidly thanks to Mari’s absorption spell, which she limited to just oxidization, suppressing the heat and light. It had devoured the oxygen in the air, turned into carbon dioxide, and created a momentary state of low oxygen around Ganghu Lu.

Her left hand swung down her weapon, now only a thin wire. She’d applied the repulsive blade, Pressure Cut, along it. But there wasn’t only one repulsive blade. The two strips of paper falling toward him—their edges were bordered by Pressure Cut, too. They descended as Mari struck, faster than gravity pulled them. Three attacks all slicing at the same time from different directions. No matter how much expertise you had, it was impossible to dodge, and the Man-Eating Tiger, Ganghu Lu, was no exception. He tried to avoid the incoming wire, but the two strips of paper struck him in the shoulder and back. The Gang Qigong was still active, but after being hit by Mayumi’s projectiles and cast into a state of oxygen deprivation, he couldn’t harden his armor enough, and the papers dug into him. Though they didn’t manage to split bones, the shock of deeply gouged skin gave him the last push he needed to finally crumple to the floor.

More often than not, the cavalry didn’t arrive on time. Therefore, in the cases where they did, it was dramatic.

Police support made it to them not a moment after Lu went down. The four officers were astonished to see blades sticking out of a collapsed young man’s back, but after seeing the students’ uniforms, they went to constrain Lu. They’d probably been informed about Mayumi.

Tatsuya was prepared for questioning, but contrary to his expectations, it didn’t happen. That, too, was probably the power of the Saegusa name at work. Still, he wasn’t unhappy with it. He was glad he wouldn’t have to waste time. The same likely went for Mayumi and Mari, too. He traded glances with them, and then they left.

When they left the special detention home’s gate, Mari hesitantly spoke to Tatsuya.

“Tatsuya, well, I’m sure you know this, but not a word of this to anyone.”

That wasn’t enough for Tatsuya to completely understand what she wanted to say, of course. “Not a word—about your weapon? Or about your Douji-Giri?” he asked, just to make sure.

Not only Mari, but Mayumi as well, sighed. “So you knew about it…” said Mari.

“Tatsuya, you really do know everything…” added Mayumi.

By that reaction, he figured Mari had meant the Douji-Giri, but it seemed a little oversensitive to him. “It isn’t that I know everything, but… Genji’s secret move, Douji-Giri, is a pretty well-known spell, isn’t it?”

The simultaneous slashing attack from three directions Mari had used to deal the finishing blow was called Douji-Giri, meaning “simultaneous cut.” As with ninjutsu, this secret technique’s identity as magic had been hidden. It had been passed down among a small handful of swordsmen of the Genji school, its name of “simultaneous cut” hidden by the alternate name “child cut,” both being pronounced the same in Japanese. But once magic’s secret had gotten out, the term Douji-Giri had made its rounds among scientists.

“I would never say anything about what the spell is, of course,” he answered.

Mari made a face that was a mixture of hesitation and embarrassment. “I mean, I believe you, but…I don’t want you to tell anyone I can use it.”

Tatsuya didn’t happen to have interest in gossip. If she wanted him to stay quiet…

“That’s fine, I won’t.”

…he would accept, of course. He didn’t particularly care about why. But for some reason, she started explaining anyway. “Thanks a lot. The spell wasn’t actually passed down to me officially. I got Shuu to help me modify a skill written in my family’s old manuscripts, and after some trial and error, we somehow got it to work.”

“Shuu” must mean Naotsugu Chiba, thought Tatsuya as he listened. Come to think of it, when she’d used Douji-Giri before, it had been alongside one of the “Magic Melee Genius’s” favored spells. “I see,” he said. “Which is why the Pressure Cut spell was mixed into it.”

“Yeah, basically. And…my family is supposedly descended from the Watanabe no Tsuna. It was technically a school of Genji, but one with pretty low status. If people start talking about how one of them can use Genji’s secret technique, well…I can imagine the trouble that would follow.”

Tatsuya understood that. Thinking about it just made him think of the mess it could make. Still… “But if you’re going to be a successful combat magician, you wouldn’t be able to keep it secret forever, right?” The trouble’s going to come whether you like it or not, isn’t it?

Mari made a sour face. “Yeah, I know. I just want to get through school without that happening.”

Mayumi giggled at her.

“All right. I won’t say a word to anyone.”

Anyway, Tatsuya didn’t feel like getting involved with low-level harassment, and he didn’t honestly care. A little lip service came easily.

The call from Fujibayashi came two days before the All-High Magic Thesis Competition, on Friday while he was relaxing, after night had fallen and he’d eaten dinner and bathed.

“…To sum up, we arrested pretty much the entire active spy force in these last three days,” said Fujibayashi, finishing her well-organized explanation in a businesslike tone. On the display, her expression softened. “That information you gave helped us a ton. Unfortunately, their leader, Xiangshan Chen, got away, but you and your classmates got Ganghu Lu for us, so we can be happy with the results. Thank you.”

“No, I was the one who asked you to do this.”

“Technically, yes, but your magic high school and FLT weren’t the only ones to suffer damage. Other special manufacturers like S.S. Electronics and Tsukumo Magic, and even nonspecialist ones like Touhou Tech were getting bothered by these industry and university spies. Intelligence and counterintelligence aren’t our responsibility, but given how our unit works, we can’t turn a blind eye to spies after magic technology. Even if you hadn’t contacted me, we would have mobilized in the near future. We just had to push the schedule up a bit, so you honestly did help me out.”

“Well, all right, then. By the way, how did info about the Relic leak?”

“I’m embarrassed to say, but the military’s accounting data got leaked. The army ended up going after every single place paying consignment costs for magic research.”

I see. So that’s why it all seemed half-baked. Tatsuya nodded. It really was haphazard. It seemed like it had pretty low-cost performance, but information was always a jumble of dirt and diamonds. If you got one useful piece of data in a thousand IP database searches, you were lucky. Maybe spies are the same way, thought Tatsuya.

“The members come from all over Asia, but we might even be able to get something on that town, too.”

“You seem happy about it.”

“There’s no point hiding it. I can’t stand thinking how there might be bad guys in my own backyard. I’m a coward like that. When the time comes, we might need your help again.”

“If it’s a mission, there’s no saying yes or no for me. Thank you for taking the time to contact me.”

“You’re welcome. Good luck on Sunday. I’ll be rooting for you.”

Leaving him with friendly encouragement, Fujibayashi ended the call. She clearly didn’t see this incident as very serious, just yet another incident with spies after magic technology. Tatsuya, too, was only thinking “there was a pretty big-name bad guy this time.”

Unfortunately, this would turn out to be a little premature.

When Tatsuya returned to the living room, he sat heavily on the sofa. His unusually crude behavior must have been his fatigue. In terms of physical stamina, he could go for a week with almost no sleep and not have a problem. His fatigue was emotional. Grappling with a different approach than his own to the gravity-controlled thermonuclear reactor, one of the Three Great Practical Problems of Weighting Magic, for the Thesis Competition; receiving a Relic said to be impossible to analyze, much less duplicate, with modern technology and then being asked to meaningfully analyze it with his personal skill and translate it into a chemical formula; and being watchful for industry-academic spies. Even Tatsuya was mentally exhausted.

Deciding to empty his mind for now, he closed his eyes from within his armchair, then tilted his head back and rested it on the back of the couch. The position had no special meaning, of course; it was just a matter of his mood.

Miyuki, who was always sitting next to him, wasn’t unhappy that her brother had suddenly shut himself in his own world. She was the only one he would show vulnerability to. Miyuki was actually happy he was letting his guard down this much.

She didn’t want her brother to always be thinking about her. Just being next to him satisfied her, and if he cared for her once in a while, she was perfectly happy. The term convenient woman, when it came to Tatsuya, was only a compliment for her. Still, almost nobody would ever say such a thing aloud.

Rather than being unhappy right now, Miyuki was worried about him. She couldn’t recall very many times Tatsuya had shown himself to be this candidly exhausted.

She rose from the sofa carefully so as not to make a sound. Coming around in front of him, she quietly peered at his face, his closed eyes. She held the left side of her long hair back with her left hand so it wouldn’t fall on his face and alert him. Lest she touch his arm, she supported her body weight with her right hand on the sofa’s armrest. Her pleated skirt hem nearly touched his leg, causing her heart to start pounding, but Tatsuya stayed still. Wearing the shortest skirt she could tolerate had borne unexpected fruit, she thought.

From what she could see, his face wasn’t pale enough for concern. Relieved, she searched for any other signs of irregularity in his face. As she watched her brother’s face from close-up, her mind steadily misted over. Dreamily, she forgot why she was doing this in the first place, and without realizing what she was doing now, brought her face closer to his.

Her heart beat faster, blood rose to her head, she couldn’t think. She stared at her brother’s face mindlessly. She forgot to soften her breath, and he would feel that this close. Tatsuya had to notice that, and he did—his eyes burst open.

Their eyes met.

Time stopped. Not just for Tatsuya, but Miyuki as well, the one normally freezing others finding her own motor functions frozen.

Facing each other with naught but astonishment on their faces, one gazing at the other.

Suddenly, unable to maintain her unnatural position any longer, Miyuki tilted forward.

Her face approached his face, her lips approached his lips.

As they were about to cross a line that should never be crossed…

…Tatsuya recovered his physical functions.

By the time he quietly said, “Watch out!” his hands had already stopped his sister at her shoulders.

“Kyah!”

Whether having let up on the arm supporting her or running out of energy, Miyuki staggered and put a knee on the sofa. More accurately, on the thigh of Tatsuya as he sat on the sofa.

The two froze again.

Almost close enough to kiss, they stared at each other, eyes wide.

Tatsuya’s hands were around both of Miyuki’s shoulders…

…and Miyuki was up on one knee on top of Tatsuya.

This time, though, the ice melted quickly.

They carefully pulled their faces apart so that this mistake wouldn’t become reality, and Tatsuya returned his head to its original position, with his neck leaning back.

His gaze naturally dropped from Miyuki’s face to her neck, to her chest, and then below that.

Following her brother’s eyes, Miyuki looked down at herself with much trepidation, for she could tell without looking.

And as expected, not only was she embarrassing herself by having her knee on her brother, but her short, pleated skirt had spread far beyond tolerable limits, now only just barely hiding her underwear.

“I’m terribly sorry!”

Miyuki moved her leg off her brother with great force, bowed fast enough to cut through wind, then turned into a gale as she ran out of the living room and rushed up to the second floor (without doing anything unsightly like stubbing her toe on furniture).

She dived into her room in a mad rush and locked her door before leaning back against it and sliding down to the floor. Try as she might, Miyuki couldn’t make her legs stand. Perhaps unconsciously, as a result of the ladylike education instilled in her, she tried to at least get her legs under her to sit in seiza, but she’d used up all her energy fleeing into her bedroom. Her body couldn’t even do that, and her hips sank between her legs.

Her skirt had spread out as she flopped down, and in her slovenly posture—but her back still straight as a needle—she stayed awhile, dazed. Her head was delirious with heat, denying her the ability to think.

But as time passed, her thoughts, which had emergency evacuated, slowly returned to their duties.

Where was she?

What was she doing?

Why was she alone like this in her room—?

Suddenly, she covered her face with her hands and looked down. Her palms were hot. She knew without looking in a mirror that her face was red as a beet.

What on earth was I doing to my brother…?!

She couldn’t understand what she’d been thinking at the time. She must have been possessed; that was the only explanation.

Just a little more and I would have k…ki…

Once again, her mind began to overheat and her thoughts froze.

If left alone, she probably would have been in this state until morning. Or else in an infinite loop of rebooting and freezing.

But Tatsuya couldn’t leave her like that.

“Miyuki?”

“Yes?!”

Miyuki nearly jumped out of her skin responding to his considerate voice calling her from the other side of the door.

She brought her hands away from her boiling face and made them into fists on her lap. Her eyes were wet, like she was a moment away from crying. Putting too much energy into her back, her shoulders, and her arms stretched straight down, her body was trembling slightly. As though she were scared.

“May I come in?”

“Please wait a moment!”

Nevertheless, the option of going against her brother’s words never existed in her thoughts. With swift motions to make her previous lack of energy in her legs seem like a lie, she stood up, then, with her still-trembling hand, slowly unlocked the door.

“Please come in.”

Miyuki opened the door, then slid to the side to give her brother room to enter. Tatsuya didn’t step inside.

He’s watching me…

Unable to meet his eyes, she looked away as casually as she could, but still felt his gaze on her.

Her body immediately heated up.

This wasn’t the heat flushing her out of embarrassment like before, but a heat that felt like it would melt the very core of her body. Her temperature—not her body temperature but how hot she felt—continued to rise without limit, and eventually, she could stand it no longer; she turned her averted face and averted eyes back to Tatsuya.

Her head tilted up to cover the height difference, over five inches. Just as she did, a tear welled in her eye, fell. Flustered, she tried to lift a hand to wipe it. But Tatsuya’s hands were on her cheeks now—when did that happen?—and blocking hers. He used his thumb to softly wipe his sister’s tear.

“Well, I, hmm…” began Tatsuya abruptly, while Miyuki had lost her voice and widened her eyes. “I’m sorry. I guess I worried you. I’m fine, so don’t worry about it anymore.”

He spoke with a clumsy smile, then took his hands from the girl’s face.

“I’ll clean up downstairs. You should get some rest.”

After giving Miyuki the command, his tone subtly embarrassed, he turned his back without waiting for an answer.

Miyuki watched him as he disappeared down the stairs, then clapped the door shut.

She wobbled over to her bed, shakily removed her clothes, and buried herself in her blanket in her underwear.

Then, finally snapping out of it, she started rolling from side to side.

Her whole body writhed, but unlike before, she seemed genuinely happy.

The short hand on the clock had passed its peak. Tomorrow, in terms of the calendar date, the All-High Magic Thesis Competition would begin here in Yokohama. Of course, there was no special air enveloping the city or anything like that. The competition was a special event for magic high school students, important enough to affect the futures of students chosen as representatives, but for everyone else unrelated to magic, it was just another of the dozens of events held throughout the year.

Even in this age, Yokohama’s Chinatown was a central district for entertainment. The usual guests were entering the usual stores that still had billboards out at this hour, which was most of them.

One of the many shops, an eatery with a particularly large frontage, already had its outside lights off. A room inside, illuminated with a calm light, was a private, sequestered living room not visible from outside.

Two men sat in this room facing each other. Two glasses, resting on a table. One could describe the aged Chinese wine filling them as of the highest grade, but neither man made an effort to drink. The young man who took out the wine thought it was a bit wasteful, actually, but the man in his prime sitting across from him wasn’t picking up his glass, so he left his alone as well.

“Mr. Zhou, you’ve been an enormous help.”

“It was my pleasure, Your Excellency.”

Chen’s tone was condescending, despite his words. Zhou reverently lowered his head to the man, without letting his eyes, smiling modestly, leave him.

“Our nation has contacted me—they’re dispatching a fleet. It will allow us to carry out the next operation safely.”

“I am honored to have been helpful.”

Chen and Zhou’s expressions were the same as always. They’d remained that way since sitting down at the table.

“There is, however, one unsolved problem.”

“Oh, and what might that be, Your Excellency?”

Each knew the other’s usual expression was a mask, and each was sounding out the other’s true thoughts.

“As you may be aware, my aide has, unfortunately, fallen into enemy hands.”

Both of their faces changed. Chen’s expression filled with regret.

“I am aware. I can only call it a stroke of terribly poor luck,” answered Zhou, face melancholic, voice sounding truly sad at the event. “To think Mr. Lu would…”

“Despite his blunder landing him with the enemy, he is an essential warrior, one that our country needs.”

Zhou nodded silently, indicating his agreement—and so that he wouldn’t make any needless commitments.

Because he wasn’t saying anything, Chen gave up and made his request himself. “Would you lend us your aid, one last time?” he asked, without bowing.

Zhou’s eyes widened slightly in surprise, but then he broke into a smile. “Yes, of course, Your Excellency. I would never ignore the plight of a comrade.”

He leaned over the table, still smiling. “To tell you the truth, the day after tomorrow—oh, tomorrow, technically—Mr. Lu’s custody is to be transferred to an alien penitentiary in Yokosuka.”

Chen showed real surprise at the information Zhou offered. “Is this true?”

“Yes. It is truly fortunate timing. In fact, I’ve already investigated the transport route.”

Leaving out how he’d made preparations in secret to delay the transportation until early tomorrow morning, Zhou explained the details to Chen.

“I hesitate to speak of this as a suitable exchange, but for tomorrow’s operation…”

“Yes, of course,” nodded Chen to Zhou’s reserved request.

“The operation’s primary goal is the Magic Association of Japan’s Kanto branch, after all. Some combat is unavoidable, but I will remind the mission’s commanders to keep damage to this Chinatown to a minimum.”

“I thank you very much for your consideration.”

Zhou bowed respectfully to the promise Chen made that he couldn’t necessarily back up, a fact Zhou knew well.

—One day left until the Thesis Competition. Tatsuya still didn’t know that the storm had already edged so close to them.

(To be continued)