November 6, AD 2095

Yotsuba Main House

Parlor

“I have to say, you’re even more secretive than I’d heard,” said Kazama suddenly, without context, as he and Tatsuya spoke. It pulled Miyuki back to reality.

“You could tell, sir?”

“Who do you think I am?”

Tatsuya gave a dry grin and bowed lightly in apology.

“I couldn’t tell until I was invited inside, but… This may not be as bad as a frontline field hospital, but there are very few places so thick with the stench of death.”

Miyuki frowned in spite of herself at the man’s unreserved evaluation.

Tatsuya knew his sister’s expression was probably unconscious. Can’t blame her, he thought. This is the infamous Lab Four site, after all.

“The fourth magic technician laboratory, the four of death… You really can’t tell from looking at the building aboveground.”

With modern magic on the rise, Japan, like other advanced countries, established research institutes for the development of magicians. Of them, numbered one through ten, half were still in operation. The remaining half were shut down because of the inhumane research methods used before magicians had started to recover their human rights.

Rumored to be the most blind to humanity and life was Magician Development Institute Four, also called Lab Four.

The research carried out in Lab Four was so secret the only thing anyone knew was that it had been closed down, without even its whereabouts being revealed. But as it turned out, the old center of Lab Four was underneath the Yotsuba main house.

The magicians developed at Lab Four were the Yotsuba, the only ones given the number four in their name. Other magicians existed with the character for four in their surname, such as the Yomo, the Shihoudou, and the Watanuki, but none of them were part of the Ten Master Clans or the Eighteen Support Clans. They simply possessed the character four by coincidence, unrelated to Lab Four; the Yotsuba were the only magicians that had come from the lab.

“The research facilities are all underground,” explained Tatsuya. “And not only this mansion—all the houses in the village are disguised Lab Four facilities.”

“Looks like it. It surprised me three years ago when I found that out, too.”

“Well, the surface facilities are still used for magician ability tests, and the dojo in the mansion has a high-usage frequency… I wonder if the scent of death you smelled is the corpses of culled magicians.”

“And so the Yotsuba Guardians were trained literally side by side with death. I see. Which is why a little training right after joining the army wouldn’t let him stand up to a child.”

When Miyuki had first learned of this, she’d actually covered her ears to block it out. These days, she could accept the facts honestly.

But even now, it stung her heart.

She couldn’t get used to this pain.

She hoped she never would.