The morning after a night of madly dancing plasma and diamond dust.

Despite it being a Sunday, Tatsuya had come to school. Miyuki was standing next to him as though it was her proper place.

Like the days of old, schools didn’t close just because it was Sunday. In fact, this school kept its gates open for those diligent in their club activities but, moreover, for students who had received permission to use the library, lab rooms, or practice rooms on their day off.

Of course, the Shiba siblings’ destination wasn’t a club room, or practice grounds, or the library, or a lab room.

Tatsuya and Miyuki had come to the student council room.

“It looks like nobody else is here yet.”

As Miyuki had said, the student council room was empty. Upon hearing her remark, Tatsuya cracked a grin. “The cliché is that the person who calls the meeting always arrives last, but reality doesn’t appear to work that way,” he joked.

Miyuki smiled a little. “I see.”

The remark was doubtlessly a courtesy.

And well… Tatsuya himself was aware that it had been a lame joke. He’d been amused simply because his council-mates had always been the ones to send for him, but today was a rare time that he was summoning them. That was what he found entertaining, at least more than whether tropes applied to real life or not.

On the other hand, just because Tatsuya was the one who called the meeting didn’t necessarily mean he needed a lot of time to prepare. In the end, he didn’t have to wait long.

“Good morning, Tatsuya, Miyuki.”

Some of the people he was waiting for appeared quickly enough to be called punctual.

“Oh, Erika. You came here with Yoshida?” Miyuki noted.

“It was a coincidence!” she snapped. “…Is it just me, or do I feel a vague sense of malice in the air?”

“It’s just you.” Miyuki smiled back.

As the female high school students had a personable (?) conversation—

“Were you waiting long?”

“No, we just got here. Sorry for calling you on a Sunday.”

—their male counterparts exchanged standard courtesies.

“Why does it feel like you’re treating me and Miki differently…? Well, whatever. Anyway, what’s going on? You never call us out on weekends, Tatsuya.”

It was certainly an unusual thing. They hung out sometimes like high schoolers do, so meeting one another on weekends wasn’t rare, but Tatsuya was always the one being invited in those cases.

Speaking of unusual, Erika’s gaze was wandering restlessly, probably because the furnishings in the student council room—one whole wall covered in information appliances—were a strange sight. When he saw her doing that, Tatsuya reflected that this might be the first time she’d been in the place.

“Hold up on that for a bit. I want everyone together before explaining.”

“There’s more coming?” Mikihiko asked.

“Yeah. They should be here soon…” Tatsuya muttered in affirmation.

As though he’d been lying in wait for it, a knock came from the door. Part of him knew the person on the other side was probably the most familiar with this room out of all the currently enrolled students; he wouldn’t find it strange for her to enter without the pretense of knocking. But here she was, being a surprisingly (?) conscientious and practical person. The fact that she’d knocked on the door without using the intercom did raise a question regarding her practicality, but Tatsuya himself opened the door manually rather than using the remote control, so he was just as bad.

“I apologize for calling you out here.”

If Mikihiko questioned why Tatsuya would go out of his way to greet the newcomers, his doubts would have been dispelled as soon as the door opened. It was Mayumi and Katsuto.

“Yoshida and Chiba? Did Shiba call you two as well?”

Katsuto offered a plain question in the place of Mayumi, who looked more than just surprised.

“Ah, yes.”

And Mikihiko gave a short reply in Erika’s stead, who was also suddenly speechless.

“Let’s get started, then,” Tatsuya began before anyone could interject, prompting everyone to take a seat.

“Could you explain something first? Why did you call us here with the upperclassmen?”

“Agreed. I’d like you to start there as well.”

Social emotions have a mirrorlike quality. Kindness brings about kindness, malice is responded to with malice, and hostility invites hostility. Controlling one’s reactions in response to such emotions by factoring in one’s personal interests is a form of adult discretion, but if people can’t find a way to harmonize all their respective personal interests, they won’t feel the need for discretion at all.

Mayumi’s attitude was the classic example of an emotional reaction. She herself had nothing against Erika—in fact, she probably didn’t even think about her much. Still, she had been dragged in by the hostility Erika displayed. Watching from the sidelines, Tatsuya thought to himself, You’re two years older than me, Mayumi, so I’d appreciate it if you acted a little more rationally.

“I had something I wanted to inform you all of, regarding the capture of the vampire we’re chasing.”

Of course, Tatsuya didn’t particularly mind if they stayed at odds. He decided to get this business over with without futilely trying to mediate.

“Let’s hear it.”

Katsuto was the first one to react, though it might be more accurate to say nobody apart from Katsuto reacted at all.

“Last night, I fired a synthetic molecule device into the vampire that transmits a specific pattern of radio wave every three hours.”

He’d actually added paralyzing bullets to the mix as insurance in case the anesthesia didn’t work, but as a result of a grievous miscalculation, it had turned out that his “insurance” was no longer reliable. Nevertheless, he couldn’t effectively make use of the insurance on his own, either.

“The transmitter will survive for three days at most. Its radio wave output strength is weak, but the roadside cameras’ surveillance antennae that detect and control illegal radio waves are able to receive it.”

This time, everyone reacted. Or maybe it was more accurate to say they were completely incapable of not reacting.

“Wait a minute, Tatsuya,” said Mayumi, eyes wide. “Last night? Where?”

“How did you find them?” Erika demanded critically, as if secretly frustrated.

“Synthetic molecule device—where on earth did you get something like that?” added Mikihiko, bafflement in his voice.

Tatsuya knew they were all reasonable questions anyone would want to know the answers to, but he had no plans to explain the background situation or the events leading up to it. That would require him to talk about part of the Independent Magic Battalion’s technological power—an internal secret—and even Lina’s true identity, which he was keeping under wraps for the moment.

“This is the radio wave frequency and pattern,” replied Tatsuya, sliding a card to each of the four. “Mayumi and Erika, both your teams should be able to use the surveillance antennae, right?”

“…You want us to use this to find where the vampire is?” Mayumi asked.

Tatsuya nodded.

“…Why give this to us?” Erika interjected.

By us, she was asking why he gave it to both the Saegusa-Juumonji team and the Chiba family, and Tatsuya wasn’t naive enough to misunderstand that. Nevertheless, he also didn’t intend to instruct them one way or another. His goal was to tell the four assembled here about what he’d discovered thus far. Ignoring the question, he advanced the next piece of information.

“About the identity of the vampire we’re chasing—it appears to be a magician on the run from the USNA Army.”

Expressions of you can’t be serious and that makes sense appeared simultaneously across four faces.

The unknown faction interfering with their search. Both Mayumi and Erika had sensed that they were at a high level, both individually and organizationally, and that they weren’t something a simple illegal organization could bring here. If their identity was a team of USNA magicians chasing a deserter, then things made a whole lot of sense.

“Also, he’s not independent. There are at least two deserters, and there could be as many as ten or so.”

“Ten people deserted the Stars?” Erika balked.

“No, Erika, just because they’re with the USNA Army doesn’t necessarily mean they’re part of the Stars.”

“Wait, really?” Mayumi asked.

“…The Stars are a unit of handpicked magicians from the rest of the USNA Army who are exceptionally especially high magic-combat strength. There are, of course, plenty of other magicians in the USNA Army outside the Stars.”

Tatsuya corrected Erika’s misunderstanding and Mayumi’s, too. The two beautiful young women had shown oddly in-sync reactions (?), but they’d probably get mad if he pointed that out. He decided it would be in his best interests not to say anything he didn’t need to.

“—And even if they’re not Stars members, they’ve received combat training and also have these abnormal vampire powers. They won’t be easy opponents by any means.”

“You’re right. Even ignoring their monstrous strength, we can’t get careless with them,” said Katsuto heavily, clearly hardening his feelings.

“But even if they’re not Stars magicians, they’re still from the USNA Army… I’d thought military magicians were strictly controlled in every country. Has USNA’s military discipline loosened?”

Mikihiko’s comment had no direct relation to the topic at hand. But Tatsuya had his own ideas about this. Instead of returning their “discussion” to its main thread, he proactively addressed the present doubt.

“Actually, it’s probably the opposite.”

“The opposite?”

“It would mean the parasites’ influence was stronger than the military regulations placed on magicians, wouldn’t it? Parasites change a human’s nature, right? If that change was mental as well as physical, it wouldn’t be strange for a host’s sense of values to change.”

“That’s…true. Then why did the parasites desert?”

“Maybe they felt it was pointless to remain in the military, or maybe they have a goal they can’t accomplish while in it. We won’t know until we catch the parasites and question them.”

“A goal… Most demons, not just parasites, want to sate their appetites or increase their own numbers, but I guess it’s not worth wondering about right now. We can think about everything, but it’ll be no more than speculation. More importantly, if military discipline hasn’t loosened, that’s an even more serious situation.”

“Yeah. For some reason, these desertions appear to have happened despite military discipline being maintained.”

“…So what do you want us to do anyway?”

It was Erika who had interrupted in a sulking voice as Tatsuya and Mikihiko were getting excited over a digression. Tatsuya saw Mayumi giving them a fed-up look, too.

“I didn’t intend to tell you what to do.”

Condemned for the derailment, Tatsuya, without showing a hint of awkwardness or clearing his throat, gave an immediate response, as though it were obvious.

Erika wasn’t the only one who looked confused at the answer.

“They hurt a friend of mine, so I don’t plan to leave them be. But at the same time, I’m not obsessed with personally making them regret it. If Public Safety or the MPD will deal with it, I won’t meddle, and if the Clans Council takes responsibility for dealing with it, I won’t complain. Of course, I couldn’t care less if the Chiba family does their hunt on their own,” said Tatsuya, who had already stood up and was moving away from the table. “I apologize for bringing you all the way here. With things being as they are, I thought giving these to you directly would be best.”

“No, it’s fine. You’ve done well,” said Katsuto in thanks, preempting Mayumi, who looked like she wanted to ask something. “We’re here together anyway, so we’ll return after having a little talk.”

“I see. Can I ask you to lock up afterward?”

“Sure.”

Tatsuya bowed to Katsuto, traded glances with Miyuki, then left the room.

Mikihiko looked after him with a clinging sort of gaze, but he chalked it up to his imagination.

As Tatsuya was leaving school…

“Lina, would you please wake up already?!”

Yelled at by her roommate, Lina had finally crawled out of bed.

Ten minutes ago, her futon had been forcefully removed from her, and she’d gotten up without a choice. As she sat down at the dining table, Lina was still in her pajamas.

“I swear… I know it’s Sunday, but you’re being real lazy.”

Amazed, Silvia placed a cup of hot milk with honey in front of her superior. With uncertain movements, Lina drank the contents a little at a time. After downing the drink, she exhaled and then finally woke up fully.

“Thank you… Silvie, has HQ said anything?”

She spoke in the perfect tone of the Stars commander—though her baggy, thick pajamas and unbrushed hair had no dignity or anything resembling it. Still, she wasn’t hard to look at even in her disheveled state. Being a peerless beauty was a powerful asset. Silvia simply offered her a pained grin. She didn’t say anything, but she was clearly thinking, This is good in its own way.

“As of right now, not yet. Still, I don’t think we’ll get away without any blame…”

“You think so, too…?” Lina hung her head and buried it in her hands.

Seeing her do that made her seem about as unreliable as she should be at this age, and even though she knew it was like attacking a fleeing enemy, Silvia couldn’t help but ask her questions.

“Lina, what in the world happened last night? They may have been satellite-class, but they still had Stars codes. And four of them were disabled… Two of them had knife wounds on internal organs, plus brain contusions and spinal sprains. They’re so badly wounded we can’t expect them to return to duty.”

“Ugh…”

“And then even you went missing for over three hours without any communication.”

“Uuugh…”

Silvia probably didn’t intend it, but her questions were pointing out Lina’s failure.

“Did…did you lose?”

That was the last straw. Lina, cradling her head in her hands and groaning, suddenly collapsed onto the table. Even Silvia gave a start and winced, her momentum unintentionally delivering a finishing blow.

“I’m done for. I don’t think I can keep doing this anymore. I’m turning in the Sirius code name.”

“Huh? Umm, Lina… Commander?!” As Lina began to complain with her head on the table, Silvia began to panic. “Y-you’ll be fine, Commander. You’re carrying out your duty as a member of Sirius wonderfully…”

She thought she’d been asking normal questions, but she finally realized they were driving Lina’s back against the wall. Flustered, Silvia started trying to soothe her.

“But what kind of commander would ever lose to a high schooler?”

Silvia felt like looking at the sky and sighing. It seemed like Lina was completely trapped in a morass of negative thoughts. “High schooler,” she’d said—as though Lina wasn’t a high schooler herself. Setting that aside for the moment, whimpering and whining like this was something teenage girls tended to do. Silvia herself had gone through that once upon a time. “Angie Sirius” is a normal girl, too, she thought, feeling an odd rush of emotion.

“Umm. That’s right—you were just unlucky this time.”

But Lina wouldn’t be able to do her job like this. “Sirius” was the strongest combat force they possessed. Silvia got started trying to cheer her up in order to somehow reboot her.

“Commander, you lost to one of the Shiba siblings, didn’t you?”

“…Both of them. Miyuki got in the way when I tried to capture Tatsuya.”

“Oh! I knew those two weren’t average high school students.”

“…If that’s what the average high school student is like, I wouldn’t be able to stand it.”

“Then wouldn’t the task of fighting those un-average magicians at the same time be too much to ask of satellite-class soldiers?”

By deftly replacing “high school student” with “not average high school student” and “un-average high school student” with “un-average magician,” Silvia eliminated the root cause of Lina’s shock, aiming to bring her depressed thoughts up for air.

“It wasn’t them!” Lina whined suddenly, her head coming up forcefully. Silvia’s plan had had a bigger effect than she had thought. “Besides Tatsuya and Miyuki, three ninjas showed up, too!”

“Ninjas…?”

Silvia knew that ninjas—ninjutsu users—were a kind of old magician. The reason she (mentally) reeled in surprise wasn’t because she took the term ninja to be a product of dubious fiction but because the force of Lina’s reply had pushed her back.

“We knew Tatsuya was connected to ninjas! But nobody even considered that someone with that level of skill might interfere!”

“Y-yes, you’re right…”

“The only thing the intelligence data said was that a ninja was working as Tatsuya Shiba’s trainer! I had no idea that particular ninja was master-class!”

“…Where did you get that intelligence?”

“I was told by the man himself. If I’d known such a strong opponent could get involved, I would have made a different plan. This is clearly a failing of the intelligence department. I’m not supposed to be doing intelligence work to begin with, so they should be giving me more reliable information for backup. Don’t you agree, Silvie?!”

As Silvia intended, Lina seemed to have broken out of her self-deprecating loop of negative thinking. Instead, Silvia would now have to listen to her venting and complaining for the foreseeable future.

“Silvie, I’m sorry…”

Apparently having finished venting all the pent-up complaints and dissatisfaction, Lina was like her usual self again. Once she had recovered, the first thing that hit her was self-loathing at her disgraceful conduct.

“It’s all right. Everyone needs to complain sometimes or they’ll explode.”

As Lina dejectedly apologized, Silvia gave her some more honey milk, smiled, and shook her head. Lina started trying to make herself even smaller after hearing that, but Silvia didn’t mean anything by it. She’d learned at a young age that one of a subordinate’s jobs was to deal to their superior’s temper.

“We don’t have any instructions from HQ, but there are several reports I’d like your approval on. Ah, no, you can stay like that.”

Lina had probably thought she had to fix herself up first and then come back. As Silvia’s pajama-clad superior rose from her seat, Silvia waved for her to sit down.

“First, regarding the four wounded last night… Neither Titan nor Enceladus suffered any injuries. If we can’t spot any aftereffects by the time the day is up, they should be able to return to duty. Like I said before, Mimas and Iapetus probably won’t be able to do the same.”

“…Once those two are up and moving again, we’ll make preparations for them to return home.”

“I’ll handle that. The next report is from Commander Canopus. He says the Stars can’t afford to dispatch any more personnel to Japan.”

“…I see.”

“He also mentioned he thought the General Staff Office seemed like it wanted to send Stardust reinforcements.”

“Are they sending us more chasers?”

Research into evolving perception-type abilities into usable magic was lagging compared to functional magic already organized into the typed-magic system. Magicians with searching and tracking skills, even ones at Stardust level, were rarities. Even if you put the entire USNA Army’s magicians into a group, it would be hard to say that there’d be enough of them. Now that some of the already few search-and-tracking personnel had been diverted to Japan, the Joint Chiefs of Staff would have little leeway in sending even more chasers here.

“No, soldiers.” And sure enough, Silvia’s answer was a no.

“I feel like the strength of Stardust won’t be enough to deal with this situation, but… We have no choice.”

There wasn’t much of a difference in skill between satellite-class soldiers and Stardust. The only thing about Stardust’s soldiers was that they couldn’t withstand the enhancements, so they could fall apart at any moment. But for those fields in which they were enhanced, they displayed capabilities that compared favorably to Stars personnel. However, the satellite-class personnel dispatched to Japan had also been chosen with a heavy emphasis on their combat effectiveness, so compared with them, the Stardust soldiers would still have lower combat potential. Lina’s sigh wasn’t without reason.

“In terms of our other investigation, the other team hasn’t gotten any noteworthy results yet.”

Silvia, too, felt that Lina’s concerns were valid, but it wouldn’t do them any good to think about this and that, so she got right to the next report.

“In this situation, we need to prioritize dealing with the deserters, so we’ll just have to have the other team do their best. But it would seem we can’t make very deep inroads there.”

The other investigation was finding the one who used the magic that the USNA diplomats and military were calling the Great Bomb, the strategic-class spell that caused the massive explosion. Lina was initially dispatched to Japan to figure out who that strategic magician was. The other team had arrived in Japan a step before Lina and her comrades infiltrated Magic University and its affiliated high school. That team was infiltrating magical equipment companies, starting with Maximillian Devices, to gather information.

“Come to think of it, I haven’t had the chance to see Mia recently, either.”

The name Lina mentioned as though just remembering it was one of the people on the other team living next door to them, whose real name was Mikaela Hongou. They were both of Japanese descent, but unlike Lina, you couldn’t really tell Mikaela apart from a Japanese person. She’d taken on the false name Mia Hongou, written all in kanji, to infiltrate Maximillian Devices as a sales engineer.

“She’s been running around until late at night for the last few days. She seems to be at work again today.”

“We’ve been having to go all over the place until late at night ourselves, but… What a hard worker, going in on a Sunday.”

Lina and Silva exchanged glances and giggled. Mia’s camouflage as a sales engineer for Maximillian Devices was supposed to be just that—a camouflage—but they both remembered at the same time that Mia had said, the last time they’d seen her, that a coordinator at the university had taken a liking to her.

“Apparently, she’ll be going to First High tomorrow,” Silvia continued. “She says she’s going with a delivery of CAD adjustment instruments.”

“Huh?”

But when Lina heard this, her smile froze solid on her face. She was the Stars commander, yet she’d be seen playing the role of a high school student. She was feeling a sense of reluctance similar to when children didn’t want to be seen in class by a parent.

“Her afternoon schedule is open, so why not go meet her for lunch?”

Lina, who had no real experience with student life, didn’t really understand what was bothering her, but Silvia, who correctly grasped Lina’s state of mind, made a suggestion—while hiding a smile at how her commander was uncomfortably averting her eyes.

“Tia!”

Amid the din, Shizuku turned around at a voice calling to her from behind. On the US West Coast, it was currently early evening on Saturday, January 28. Shizuku was at a house party being held where she was boarding.

“Ray,” she replied after seeing the man (or rather, boy) waving his hand in an exaggerated fashion, raising her own a little.

His name was Raymond S. Clark.

He was the first male student at her school abroad to talk to her, and ever since then, the Caucasian classmate (likely a pureblood Anglo-Saxon, rare on the West Coast these days) would always find a reason to approach her.

She felt that he was probably making passes at her, but surprisingly, he was unobtrusive and good at keeping his distance, so she didn’t hold any particularly bad feelings for him.

Incidentally, the nickname Tia was something Raymond had suggested. When she introduced herself, he’d asked her what “Shizuku” meant, and after explaining that it was the drop in teardrop or dewdrop, he’d given her the nickname Tia. Shizuku didn’t exactly feel like the nickname was odd, but when she’d asked another girl in her class if she really looked that much like a crybaby, the response was that she matched the teardrop-shaped pearl image to a tee, and Shizuku hadn’t voiced any objections since then—out of embarrassment. Tia had a nice ring to it anyway, so she let it go, and before she knew it, the nickname had stuck.

But getting back to the topic:

“That’s a lovely dress, Tia. You look even more charming than usual,” said Ray with a big grin, completely unashamed of the words.

“Really?” responded Shizuku—not in an unfriendly way but tilting her head in honest confusion.

Her black hair, which she wore in a somewhat long layered style, swung.

Ignoring Ray, whose gaze was growing even hotter, she looked down at her outfit.

A skirt long enough to almost touch the floor.

Her exposed back, shoulders, and arms.

Long gloves that went up to her elbows.

She’d heard the USNA clothing had, in places, reverted to traditional styles, but she’d been surprised at just how classic everything had become. It wasn’t even uncommon to see women at normal parties wearing dresses that required squeezing into corsets. Shizuku’s dress thankfully wasn’t one of those.

“Those clothes suit you, too, Ray.”

She’d bought the dress on the store clerk’s recommendation, so she still didn’t quite understand what about her dress was so good, but it was proper etiquette to return compliments when given. Raymond’s tuxedo outfit was antiquated to her sensibilities (for someone from the same country, it was exaggerated), but it did suit his youthful, noble looks, so she felt no reservations about flattering him.

“Thanks! I’m honored you said so, Tia.”

Besides, if he was going to be this happy about it, Shizuku didn’t feel bad. Raymond’s unabashed expressiveness reminded her somehow of her younger brother. She’d thought the established theory was that during adolescence, Aryans looked more mature than Mongoloids, but despite Raymond being the same age as her, he looked quite young to her eyes.

…No, it’s not that he’s that young, it’s that Tatsuya seems mature, she corrected herself, looking back up at Raymond. “Are you by yourself?”

“I’d never think of escorting a woman aside from you, Tia.”

Today’s party wasn’t the sort where you needed an escort to attend.

“I wasn’t talking about that,” replied Shizuku, pointing out his misunderstanding along with the doubt she had.

Raymond became amusingly bewildered. “Huh? Uhh, yes, I suppose I am…by myself?”

Don’t ask me, thought Shizuku, but she didn’t say it—she’d realized his lie after seeing the men constantly at work behind Raymond. (She didn’t know it, but they were goading Raymond on.) Nevertheless, she didn’t feel like blaming him for it.

“Umm… Tia, about what you asked me for…” said Raymond, clearly trying to change the topic as though he realized his outlook was grim.

“Ray,” stated Shizuku. This was what she was after, but in her opinion, this wasn’t the place to do it. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

The emphasis she placed on his name caused Raymond to close his mouth and nod at her suggestion.

They called it a house party, but it was being hosted where the Kitayama family’s daughter would be staying. It was quite a bit more extravagant than parties that used any old hotel. The yard was open to partygoers as well, but given the time of year, it was rare to see anyone going outside.

Shizuku put a woolen stole over her dress and walked out under the star-filled winter sky. Her height wasn’t particularly notable for a Japanese girl, but by American standards, she clearly fell into the category of “short girl.” Her American-sized shawl covered her down to her waist, but she still had misgivings as to whether it would block the midwinter chill.

Using the CAD that was still in her handbag, Shizuku created a field of warmth around her. While she was at it, she extended its effective range to cover Ray as well. The heated zone also served to block out sounds.

“Thanks, Tia… Magic can be pretty convenient, can’t it?”

“This isn’t much. It shouldn’t be uncommon.”

Shizuku felt like he was acting a little too surprised for a follow-up remark, but Raymond shook his head strongly as though it really was incredible.

“You might not have noticed, since you just came to this country, but to us, magic isn’t something useful like this. Here, you don’t see people applying magic to daily life very often. It’s something we use to display power, to flaunt intelligence, to parade our status.”

“So you’re stingy with it?”

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha… Well, yes.” Raymond bent over laughing. But there was something a little off about his smile. “Here in the States, magic research is all about the fundamentals, military usages aside. Applying it to public welfare, daily life, and things like that is considered bad form. Though maybe not so much if it’ll make a lot of money. Which is why… Err, I’m sorry. This isn’t what we’re here to talk about.”

Ray didn’t seem like he had any worries at first glance, but he must have had things on his own mind, too. Shizuku waited in silence for him to continue.

“Getting to the point,” said Raymond, bringing up his face, which was pulled into a sharp expression, making him look like another person. “First, the news of a vampire appearing is true.”

The “well-informed student” she’d told Honoka about. The information source she’d promised Tatsuya. It was Raymond here.

“The cause is unknown, but I found some information that seems to be related.”

“Tell me.”

“Of course. This is under a high-level information freeze, but in November, in Dallas, they did an experiment based on extradimensional theory to generate and evaporate micro black holes.”

“Extradimensional theory?”

“Sorry. Even I don’t understand the details.”

“That’s okay. What about it?” urged Shizuku, wondering to herself if Tatsuya would know if she asked him about it.

“I don’t know the details of the experiment, but the vampires’ appearance was observed right after they wrapped that up.”

Shizuku thought about this for a few seconds, then spoke. “You think the experiment and the appearance of the vampires are causally related, don’t you, Ray?”

“I did already say the cause was unknown,” said Raymond, pausing to get his own thoughts in order. “But I’m certain that the black hole experiment was what called the vampires.”

Shizuku didn’t know where Raymond got his information or what basis he had to make such a statement. But in their short time knowing each other, she’d found out that he had a unique knack for discovering the hidden truth. For her, it wasn’t important whether that was his own ability or that of an organization.

“…I see. Thanks.”

The important thing was that she could trust his information.

“You’re very welcome. I’d never turn down a request from you, Tia. If there’s anything else I can do, feel free to ask me.”

From a stranger’s point of view, Raymond’s approach was a very obvious one. But Shizuku herself thought only that his curiosity would wear off soon Whether this obliviousness of hers was innate or something she’d picked up from her friends recently, nobody knew.

Tatsuya found himself faced with an unusual Sunday off. But that didn’t mean he could just go wandering about in his school uniform. Tatsuya and Miyuki decided to return home first without stopping anywhere.

They weren’t using his motorcycle today, instead opting for the train. As always, they sat down side by side in a two-seater cabinet, and as her brother stared out at the receding townscape, Miyuki watched his profile with a distressed gaze.

This incident had Tatsuya worried about something. Or maybe not so much worried as blaming himself. That was unusual for Tatsuya—he didn’t normally fret over what might have been.

I wish he’d tell me, thought Miyuki.

She didn’t think she’d be much help; not for a moment did she believe she could solve his problems. But even so, she could at least listen to him. She might not be able to overcome his anxiety, but she could at least share it.

That was what she thought as she continued to watch her brother’s profile.

“I was naive…”

Had her wishes gotten through? Tatsuya had just muttered to himself.

“Brother?”

Suppressing her impatience, pushing her wish away, and pretending not to have noticed anything, Miyuki casually addressed him without saying anything, unable to put into words the question What’s bothering you?

“I’ve been assuming that I’m unrelated, and this is where it got me. I’m behind on every little thing. Despite all the clues, I still don’t know the most important things.”

He was being abstract, but Miyuki instinctively knew what “clues” was referring to. “You mean…about Lina?”

Tatsuya’s eyes widened—she’d unreservedly and correctly guessed what was getting at him. “Wow… I really can’t keep anything from you, can I?”

The words That isn’t true at all! rose to the top of her throat, but she prudently swallowed them. Most of the things Tatsuya thought about were beyond her comprehension. But she shouldn’t be irritated with him for it, she told herself; instead, she should do her best to understand.

“I’ve known from the very beginning that Lina has been plotting something,” he said. “I even had a chance to question her. I could have made my own chance for it, too. But I didn’t want to make any waves in my own life, so I let her go, meaning I was slow to react as a result.”

Tatsuya gave a self-deprecating grin.

Miyuki endured a painful tightening around her heart and waited in silence for her brother to continue.

“Well… I get it. Even if I had done something about it right away, that wouldn’t have necessarily meant I could have prevented the damage. It’s entirely possible I could have made the situation worse. But still… Faced with the fact that my friend got hurt, I can’t help but think about it even though I know it’ll do me no good.”

This time, after hearing Tatsuya’s confession, Miyuki couldn’t stop a smile from coming to the surface. It wasn’t because her brother had told her what he was thinking but because of what he’d told her.

“Brother… You’ve become a kind person.”

“Miyuki? What’s that all of a sudden?”

“No… You were kind to begin with. It was just hard to see, so…”

“I’m sorry, could you explain it in a way I understand?”

With Tatsuya making an utterly confused face, Miyuki didn’t bother to hide her smile anymore. “I see there are things even you don’t know, Brother. You may be smart, but you don’t understand yourself, do you?”

“You think too highly of me. Of course those things exist. There’s plenty of things I don’t understand. I can’t see myself without a mirror. I can only imagine what I look like from a flipped image.”

“I should have expected you not to put up a show of strength about that. What I mean is…”

Miyuki paused meaningfully. Even knowing he was playing into his sister’s hands, Tatsuya couldn’t help but bend his ear.

“You can’t forgive them for hurting your friend Saijou. And you don’t want to be rough with Lina, because you’re friends now, even if it’s only been for a little while. That makes me happy, Brother—the fact that you have compassion for people other than me. Your emotions are far more human than you think.”

Tatsuya turned to face forward again and shut his eyes.

It was funny to Miyuki that her brother was so clearly trying to hide his embarrassment.

It made her very happy that he let her see him acting like that.

“Yoshida, I confirmed the signal at the Tokyo Tower park. They’re moving toward the Iikura intersection now.”

“Got it. We’re currently close to the Toranomon intersection on Sakurada Street. We’ll hurry to Iikura.”

“Within ten minutes, please.”

“Understood. Arriving in two.”

She hung up. Realizing that it seemed like they’d make it this time, Mayumi breathed a sigh of relief.

As a result of their discussion that morning, the student council members settled into a system where Mayumi would coordinate information while Katsuto and Erika led teams on the ground.

Both sides knew that squabbling among themselves would do more harm than good. But neither of them wanted to make concessions, so now they were doing whatever they each thought best. As a result, they were holding their own allies back.

In that sense, she’d have to thank Tatsuya for pulling a fast one on them and making a situation where they’d be forced to talk it out—but Mayumi felt like she’d been treated like a child, which annoyed her to no end.

Just you watch. I’m giving you the bitterest chocolate I can find for Valentine’s Day.

Finding satisfaction in imagining Tatsuya’s utter bewilderment, Mayumi returned her focus to the monitor.

Until yesterday, even if they got information on suspects for their search, the unknown third faction would always get the drop on them, and by the time they got to the scene, the suspects would have already fled.

How are they ahead of us when we’re using the police’s public security system? They’d even suspected an informant in their ranks. But now that the vampire’s identity was all but confirmed, they had a guess as to who the third faction was. If it was a team of agents from the USNA Army, it would have search methods ready that they didn’t. With unknown technology at their disposal, it was only natural they’d get the better of some civilian high school students.

Today, not only had the Magic High crew found a suspect, they had managed to pursue it without the third faction getting in the way, meaning the situation had taken a turn for the better. The clues Tatsuya had given them were certainly beneficial.

But the transmitter Tatsuya had put into the suspect wasn’t very easy to use. It was difficult, in fact. Sure, Mayumi been able to catch the transmitter’s radio waves using surveillance antennae. But in a city with such a highly advanced public transportation system, a person could move quite far in three hours.

One radio wave transmission lasted ten minutes. They had to capture the target in that time.

She’d only learned this after using the surveillance systems attached to the roadside cameras, but the cameras couldn’t trace the parasite vampire. It wasn’t that vampires didn’t show up on camera, like in urban legends or fiction. But the legends and fiction weren’t completely off the mark, either. No matter how much they adjusted the focus, the vampire only appeared as a blurred image.

From above them, it was especially bad. You couldn’t see any features at all. The tracing systems in roadside cameras were based on facial recognition systems, so they weren’t useful if you couldn’t see any features. There was no communications interference happening, so the Saegusa family staff had speculated that vampires were probably using magic that disrupted optical devices.

That was how they’d gotten away three and six hours ago, respectively, and the team’s search had continued into the dead of night.

But this time, it looked like the estimates were right on.

Meaning to narrow their search net, she called Katsuto, who was currently searching the Shiodome area.

In the classroom after the weekend was over, Tatsuya ran into a scene that had become familiar to him over the last few days.

Erika was slumped over her desk. It was good that she came to school early today, but it looked like it had taken all her energy.

Or maybe she was up all night?

“…Umm, should I wake her up?” asked Mizuki quietly. Tatsuya and Miyuki had met up with her at the station. Given how soundly she was sleeping, normal conversation probably wouldn’t wake her up. Mizuki would have realized that at a glance as well, but she still lowered her voice, which was a very Mizuki-like thing to do.

“Let’s let her sleep.”

Tatsuya’s response, on the other hand, was a frank one indeed. Perhaps it would be better to call it pragmatic.

It was pretty evident that if they forced her to wake up now, her brain wouldn’t start working for at least the entire morning, and Tatsuya’s mental state wasn’t actually giving him the ability to care much about other people’s affairs.

What had caused Tatsuya to lose his composure was an event that had happened about half a day before:

Essentially a moment after Tatsuya and Miyuki had finished dinner, their home phone had rung.

It wasn’t a strange time to make a phone call—that is, for the ones on the receiving end.

But on the US West Coast, it was well past midnight. There was nothing strange about Tatsuya steeling himself, wondering what had happened.

“Hello, Shizuku? Has something happened?”

On the screen, as expected, was Shizuku. But what she looked like had been outside their expectations.

She was in her pajamas. What’s more, it was a fashionable negligee, without even a gown on.

They shouldn’t have answered the phone in the living room, either. The big, high-resolution display showed a vivid image that was just like seeing her in real life.

Was it silk? The faint gloss on the fabric wasn’t doing much to conceal Shizuku’s slender frame.

Tatsuya had seen her in a swimsuit during their summer vacation. But Shizuku’s attire on the screen was more suggestive than that.

It was probably the “almost seeing, almost not” effect at work. If he just couldn’t see anything, that would be one thing. But being able to see the fact that she had no underwear lines raised the effect exponentially.

As far as they could tell from the image, she wasn’t wearing any underwear on her upper body, either. The ample sewn-on lace and the thin draping covered the important bits, but she was in such a state where a little loosening would be all that was needed to expose those bits.

Normally, even Tatsuya would have doubtlessly been flustered. Thankfully, most of his mind was taken up by worry, so he didn’t make an unsightly display of panic, but…

“Shizuku?! What are you wearing?!”

…the other one looking at the screen with him, the same-gender Miyuki, was the one to blush—that was how disheveled Shizuku looked.

“Oh, Miyuki, good evening.”

“Enough with the greetings! At least put on a robe!”

“…Okay, I guess?”

Her face seemed mystified, but as she was told, she crawled into a robe.

“Sorry for calling so late.”

And then she bowed a little to them, meaning to restart the conversation.

“It’s not that late for us here, but… Have you been drinking?” asked Tatsuya. Her vocal articulation sounded slightly—and suspiciously—different from mere drowsiness.

“Drinking what?”

“I meant—” began Tatsuya before canceling that sentence. He’d learned long ago that saying things like this was pointless. “Anyway, what’s wrong?”

His ability to think had lowered somewhat, but she wouldn’t have called them up without anything to tell them about. He decided they needed to attempt the maneuver quickly.

“Mm. I thought I’d tell you as fast as I could since you should know.”

He didn’t ask Know what? an insightfulness that probably deserved praise. “You found out already? That’s amazing.”

“Praise me more.”

Coaxed by a level voice, Tatsuya felt a sudden sense of exhaustion. Who’s the one who let her drink? She was clearly drunk. That seemed to be why she was acting so uninhibited. “Well, you really are amazing, Shizuku. Anyway, what did you learn?”

He was reluctant to come off like he was hurrying someone who took the time to call him in the middle of the night (by their time), but it would be best for both parties if they finished quickly. After all, she may have been drunk, but it didn’t seem like enough to lose her memories.

“It’s about why the vampires appeared.”

But it was more sensational news than he’d thought. Tatsuya and Miyuki both leaned forward.

“Extra…extra something, I think. An experiment to create little dark holes.”

“Dark holes? Shizuku, what are you talking about?”

After her unexpected gibberish, a whole host of question marks danced around Miyuki’s head. That’s right—over Miyuki’s head.

“I don’t know, either. I thought I’d ask Tatsuya.”

“An experiment based on extradimensional theory to generate and evaporate micro black holes, right?” said Tatsuya in a low, hard voice.

“Yeah, that.”

Shizuku didn’t appear to notice that Tatsuya’s voice had momentarily changed (she wasn’t in a state that would let her), but Miyuki looked cautiously at her brother’s expression.

“So something like that happened…”

The voice he spoke in was calm, the same as usual. No, even calmer than usual. But it was Miyuki who knew most of all that he was experiencing major shock.

“What is it?”

Miyuki was about to hang up the phone at that moment. She’d planned to give a lame excuse like It’s late and end the conversation. She didn’t want to damage Tatsuya’s mood any more.

But Shizuku had asked a short question before she could.

“It’s too much to explain in detail, so simply speaking…”

And Tatsuya went ahead and answered it:

“The experiment was to try to artificially create a very small black hole and harness energy from it. It’s predicted that in the process of a generated black hole evaporating, its mass will be converted to thermal energy. They must have wanted to confirm that.”

Having failed to interrupt the conversation, Miyuki had no choice but to listen to her brother’s explanation—but her heart skipped a beat when she heard “convert to thermal energy.” The warning they’d gotten from their aunt floated back up into her heart.

“Is that extradimensional theory? Taking energy from other dimensions?”

Of course, Shizuku had no way of knowing her concerns, and on the screen, despite her drunkenness, she asked a very academic…ish question.

“No, extradimensional theory isn’t related to the actual process of harnessing the energy. Physics predicts that the tiny black holes will evaporate regardless of how they’re generated. Extradimensional theory postulates that our universe is like a thin film of three-dimensional space enclosed within a higher-dimensional world, where the only physical force that can overcome the dimensional walls is gravity—in other words, the theory is that because gravity leaks a large portion of its energy into other dimensions, we can only observe it in this dimension as a much weaker force than it actually is. At extremely small, particle-scale distances, gravity acts upon other objects in this dimension before leaking out to other dimensions, which means gravity has a far stronger pulling force than we can observe at a normal scale. That’s why, leaving extradimensional theory out of the equation, it’s possible to generate infinitesimally small black holes. That’s the theoretical foundation for the micro black hole–generation experiment, based in extradimensional theory.”

“…Did you get that, Miyuki?” asked Shizuku, bobbing her head left and right.

“Unfortunately, I didn’t understand much of it,” agreed Miyuki with a shake of her head and a dry smile. She looked up at Tatsuya’s face from up close and hedged, “But what part of that is related to the parasites appearing?”

Tatsuya looked down at his sister’s face, glanced at Shizuku on the screen, and began to speak of what seemed at first to be something unrelated:

“Magic-induced event alterations don’t need an energy supply. You also see no traces of physical energy having been supplied in the afterward. We also know for certain that in this physical dimension, there exists no nonphysical energy that can be converted into physical energy. But with movement and acceleration magic, we can observe ex post facto that there was a clear variation in the amount of energy at around the time the magic was cast. In this way, magic isn’t constrained by the law of conservation of energy. It appears that the law of conservation of energy is being rejected by magic.”

“They call that proposition the First Paradox of Modern Magic, don’t they?”

“That propasition, err, I thought the propersition itself was connncluded to be incompleeete.”

Tatsuya glanced at Shizuku’s face on the screen for a moment. Her articulation was getting pretty bad—in fact, she could barely speak. But he couldn’t see any signs that she was about to fall asleep on the spot. Her eyes gleamed with intellectual curiosity. She’d doubtlessly be unhappy if he told her he’d explain at another time. Drunk people can be stubborn about the strangest things, reflected Tatsuya, deciding he’d just keep talking.

“Yeah. You’re right, Shizuku—it only appears as though the law of conservation of energy is failing. In the first place, the law is a deductive one, and it’s impossible that any phenomena would go against it. In extremely short time frames like those applied to quantum mechanics, phenomena that disobey the law of conservation of energy can occur, but even then, if you look at it after the fact, energy equilibrium is always maintained. Since magic is also something that can have physical effects, at least in that category, it should obey the law of conservation of energy. The law says that in a closed system, the total amount of energy remains the same. If you did observe a variation in the total amount of energy, it would mean you’ve either made a measurement error or that the system wasn’t closed.”

“This world, in which magic is observed, isn’t a closed system… That seems related to the extradimensional theory you explained before.”

“I get it! The enershy you need for magic comes from another dimenshon?”

“More and more magical researchers are getting behind that sort of theory recently. I happen to agree; and if extradimensional theory is correct, then I think there must be some reason gravity is the only physical force that can act across dimensional barriers. Everything from this point on is just a groundless delusion of mine, but…”

As Tatsuya hesitated, Miyuki and Shizuku watched in silence.

“…Gravity acts on another dimension—wouldn’t that mean it supports the walls between dimensions by doing so? Perhaps magic is drawing energy from a different dimension without breaking that wall. Magic is a phenomenon that doesn’t need an energy supply, but that doesn’t make it unrelated to energy balance. Even if we’re just talking about what we can observe, magic that has a total energy balance of close to zero tends to be harder to fail.”

Miyuki and Shizuku watched him closely, sorting out his thoughts as his gaze drew distant.

“Magic programs probably contain a process that calculates the lack of energy brought about as a result of the event alteration and draws that shortage from another dimension. You can’t observe any physical energy supply, but if you consider that this extradimensional energy has nonphysical properties—magical energy, in other words—and that the magic program converts it to physical energy after the fact, things line up.”

Even if they couldn’t fully understand what Tatsuya was talking about, the two young women listened intently, because they instinctively realized he was speaking of things very important to their lives as magicians.

“Beyond the dimensional wall is a dimension in which magical energy is abundant, and gravity supports the dimensional wall so that it doesn’t let that energy into our physical dimension. And magic crosses this wall, with the total energy balance drawing in the shortfall into the physical dimension so it all adds up to zero. I think that’s the system that provides a solution to the First Paradox of Modern Magic. Nevertheless, if you generate a micro black hole using energy calculated based on extradimensional theory, the gravity acting across the dimensional wall would be erased by the black hole’s generation. When that happens, for the instant the black hole is generated, perhaps the dimensional wall would end up wavering.”

“What would happen if…the dimensional wall wavered?”

“Magicwal energy you can’t har-ha…control with magic programs would shpill in…?”

Miyuki and Shizuku exchanged glances over the screen. The high-resolution cameras and displays showed the same emotion in their eyes.

“Energy structuralizes spontaneously, creating information bodies. Otherwise, the universe would have long ago homogenized and turned into a world of nothingness. There’s no doubt the other dimension’s magical energy structuralizes in the same way. And at the moment the dimensional wall wavers, information bodies of magical energy formed in that other dimension could potentially invade our world. That’s what I think.”

On the other side of the screen, Shizuku shivered.

On this side of the screen, Miyuki hugged her brother’s arm.

Mikihiko finally showed up in class after second period had ended.

“Everything good now?”

He wasn’t late. He’d been resting in the nurse’s office again today.

“Tatsuya… I hate you.”

Tatsuya had asked him out of worry, but what he got in response was a resentful complaint. “Hey, now. That’s not very friendly.”

He wanted to believe it was a joke, but there was a lot of emotion behind those words. Enough to make Mizuki, who was listening carefully, wince in fear.

“Let me at least complain about it. Do you have any idea how much my stomach has been hurting since then?” Mikihiko said, rubbing his stomach with a hand, no doubt remembering the pain. “All Saegusa ever does is smile and smile and never say anything, and Erika was clearly angry the whole time and stayed quiet… I had to talk on and on by myself. I felt helpless, like I was lying on a bed of nails…”

“Didn’t Juumonji say anything?”

“Do you think he would make any comments about something like that?”

I see. That makes sense. All very “predictable” actions from those three.

“Umm… I don’t really understand, but it sounds like you had a hard time.”

When Mizuki displayed some heartfelt sympathy, Mikihiko seemed to recover a bit. On the other side of Mizuki, Erika was slumped over her desk, like usual.

It wasn’t until lunch break that Erika finally revived. And no sooner had she opened her eyes than she grabbed Mizuki and started complaining.

“Are you listening? It was running away alone the whole time, but suddenly there were three of them. Don’t you think that’s unfair?”

Having the good judgment to know not to talk about this in the cafeteria where who knows who might have been listening, Erika had brought Mizuki into an empty classroom—a lab room Mikihiko frequently used—without even taking lunch.

“Umm, I suppose it is?” Mizuki nodded, overwhelmed, but she honestly didn’t understand what Erika was talking about. At best Mizuki knew Erika was referring to the “vampire,” but she had no idea what the situation was. She was thinking about how she never knew vampires came in threes.

“…Anyway, let’s go to the cafeteria. Lunch break is almost over.”

“Eh, I’m not really that hungry.”

Mizuki really wanted to point out it was because she’d been sleeping this whole time, but she had a feeling if she did that, Erika would fall into an irreparable sulky mood, so she couldn’t.

She sighed. There’s no helping it. It wasn’t as though she were dieting—the tradition (?) itself was abandoned these days anyway—but she decided to give up on lunch. Their schedule today didn’t include any physical education or practice of the active sort, so she told herself skipping one meal would be fine. Besides, she was wondering about something else.

“Hey, Erika, how come you and Tatsuya are fighting?”

At that moment, Erika’s shoulders twitched. “Wh-what are you talking about? We’re not fighting. We’re not, okay? Really.” She shook her head and hands vehemently.

The long ponytail she’d been growing since the spring—Erika’s favorite hairstyle lately—bounced to and fro in time with her head movements. It was plain as day that she was bothered by the question.

“You don’t have to lose your head… I wasn’t thinking you did something to him anyway. Tatsuya would just laugh it off if you got a little carried away, right? So if it was your fault, you wouldn’t be fighting anyway.”

“I…I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or an insult…” said Erika, crinkling her nose in something approaching an argument.

“It wasn’t either. I was just stating the facts,” replied Mizuki flatly, disregarding it.

“And I don’t know if I can get behind you saying they’re facts, either!”

“Okay, okay. Anyway, I don’t think you’re the cause of it.”

Her indignant yet somehow unenergetic refutation was summarily washed away.

“Mizuki, you’ve grown strong…”

“If you don’t want to talk about it, I won’t ask anymore.”

Even when she tried to pull things off track with a stagy line, a fastball was thrown back. Erika put her head on a table, her energy depleted. “We’re not fighting… I’m just uneasy right now, and it’s my own fault. I won’t drag this on past today, so can’t you let me go for now?” she asked, craning her head, timid eyes looking out from between her hair and arm.

Mizuki put a finger to her chin to think about it and tilted her head. Her hair, a shoulder-length bob cut with a tendency to curl at the ends, swayed along with her neck movement. She looked directly at Erika a moment later.

“If you can say for sure you’ll be back to normal tomorrow, then that’s okay.”

Her feelings didn’t seem to have slanted the way Erika was hoping. “Right… Ahh, this is no good.”

Even Erika herself didn’t believe that she’d be fine tomorrow without doing anything. She came back up, her face looking refreshed as though she’d accepted things.

“When all’s said and done, all I’m doing is demanding attention from him. He never asked me to help him, but I figured he’d be on our side without saying anything. So when I saw him helping that woman, too, it made me mad, made me feel like calling him a two-timer… Great, and now I’m embarrassed about it again.”

She covered her face with her hands, but bits of her reddened skin were visible. She wasn’t just saying she was embarrassed. Seeing her oddly adorable appearance, Mizuki heaved a sigh.

“…Why do you sound like you’re totally appalled?”

“Maybe not totally, but I am.”

As Erika gave a sharp gaze through her fingers, Mizuki sent back an apathetic look of her own.

The sharpness vanished from Erika’s eyes.

Mizuki moved in front of her (though all she really did was turn her chair and sit back down), reached out, and lowered Erika’s hands from her face.

“Then you’re just stuck being stubborn and hating yourself for it… I think they call that tilting at windmills.”

“Urf! Your merciless words hit me right in the heart.”

“I was being serious.”

“…I’m sorry.” Erika’s body somehow seemed to shrink away.

“Erika, if I’m being blunt, Tatsuya is never going to be the one to meet you halfway.”

“…You think so, too?”

“It isn’t like he won’t go after people who leave, but if you start thinking he’s avoiding you, you’ll be left behind forever. His mind is full of Miyuki already. You might not have to appeal to him, but you have to at least stay in his sight, or he might not even remember you.”

“…That sounds like something he’d do.”

“I can say for sure that Tatsuya doesn’t care at all about what you think he does. I’m pretty sure just thinking about it would be a mistake.”

“Yeah… You’re right. He’s obtuse— No, he’s a lukewarm man with nerves of steel. I won’t get anywhere by being embarrassed.” Erika clenched a fist.

Seeing that, Mizuki gave her a somewhat detached smile.

That was exactly when Mikihiko came in the room.

“Oh. I figured you didn’t have anything,” he suddenly said as he entered. Before the two of them could ask, What? he held out the plastic-bagged sandwiches he was holding.

“Here, Erika. Carrot, tuna, potato. Shibata, you like egg sandwiches, right?”

“Huh? But why?”

“Th-thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” That was his reply to Mizuki. “Don’t why me. You have to eat something, or you’ll get hungry while you’re asleep.” And that was his reply to Erika.

“Heh… Miki, that’s very thoughtful.”

“I’d like to say you’re welcome, but Tatsuya sent me here with this. He said you seemed to be avoiding him and told me to bring it.”

After hearing his answer, Erika and Mizuki exchanged glances.

“It doesn’t look like you’ve been forgotten, but…”

“I’ve been left behind already…” Erika suddenly stood up, determination clear on her face.

“Wh-what?” said Mizuki, eyes wide.

Erika struck a powerful pose. “If that’s the way it’s going to be, I have ideas of my own, Tatsuya! I’m not going to let you treat me like air!”

“Says the one who runs away whenever he pays attention to you.”

“Did you say something, Miki?”

“No. I just said to eat and make it fast,” Mikihiko answered without meeting her gaze as he took out his own food. He was, after all, a childhood friend who had known her a long time. He might step on land mines once in a while, but he was well aware of how to handle this particular firecracker.

Once Erika sat down and the three were just about to bite into their sandwiches, it happened.

“Ow…!”

Suddenly, Mizuki scowled and shut her eyes tight. The sandwich fell from her hands, and Erika deftly grabbed it in midair. But that was a reflexive act; both her eyes and Mikihiko’s were on their friend’s suddenly distressed face.

Mizuki took her glasses off and pressed her hands to her eyes. Pained words escaped her lips.

“…What…is this…? I’ve never…seen an aura like this before…”

Mikihiko, who realized what was happening, immediately took out a paper talisman and formed a barrier that cut off any spiritual waves. It was taking advantage of a blind spot in the school rules that you weren’t allowed to carry around CADs, but nobody present minded.

After directing his awareness outside, Mikihiko picked up on the waves as well.

“This is an evil presence…”

Waves not of psions but of psycheons. But Erika didn’t understand and didn’t realize it until she looked to where Mikihiko’s awareness was focused.

Pure waves of “evil” were crossing the barrier and flowing inside. The waves were so strong it wasn’t strange they could nullify the effect of Mizuki’s aura-blocking lenses and affect her eyes.

“Shibata, put your glasses on.”

But with the barrier softening them now, she should be able to block the waves with her aura-cut coating lenses. As Mikihiko predicted, after Mizuki put her glasses back on, she appeared to calm down.

Then, with enough time finally to think about what was happening—Erika and Mikihiko exchanged pale glances.

“Is the parasite coming to the school? In broad daylight? For what?!”

“It’s got guts, I’ll give it that! Where is it, Miki?!”

The chair she knocked over as she stood up made a clamoring noise, but Erika didn’t take the slightest notice. She drew close to Mikihiko, almost pushing her face into his.

“Erika, calm down,” answered Mikihiko in a calm but stern voice, standing up as well. “Let’s get our weapons first. I can’t rely on my talismans alone.”

“…Yeah. Mizuki, you wait in the classroom.”

“I’m coming, too.”

Mizuki shook her head at Erika’s seemingly sensible instruction.

“Mizuki?”

“I have a feeling I should go with you. I don’t…know why, though.”

Her voice was soft, but they could sense a determination within it that even a lever couldn’t budge.

“…All right. But don’t leave my side.”

“Miki?” Erika’s eyes widened.

But his answer wasn’t simply one of getting carried away by the mood. “It’ll be easier to deal with it if we’re together than if it attacks her alone. Besides, Shibata’s eyes should come in handy.”

“Right… All right, Miki, but you have to take responsibility and protect her, got it?”

As if to say she’d be wasting time asking any more questions, Erika ran out toward the office where her CAD was being held. Mikihiko followed immediately after. Both he and Mizuki were well aware that this wasn’t the time to be acting out a romantic comedy or coming-of-age drama. They just ran hand-in-hand lest Mizuki be left behind; he didn’t have a choice—at least, that was the excuse he made to himself.

Warrant Officer Silvia Mercury First had been dispatched to Japan as Major Angelina Sirius’s aide. Taking care of Lina, however, was not Silvia’s only mission.

Stars members were classified into first-magnitude-class, second-magnitude-class, constellation-class, planet-class, and satellite-class. Of these, the first-magnitude-, second-magnitude-, and constellation-classes were treated as official combat personnel, while the planet- and satellite-classes were appointed jobs as rear support staff or illegal operatives. This was, of course, the standard role allotment. Lina, for example, was a first-magnitude-class but had been given a mission as an illegal agent.

Silvia’s mission as the “first” member of the “Mercury” planet class was generally logistic support, and she specialized in the collection and analysis of information using her magical capabilities. For this mission as well, expectations for her information-processing skills in this area were high, and she’d been involved in psionic wave pattern analysis at a secret base prepared separately from the embassy.

The job she was grappling with now was the identification of the person in the white mask who had crossed swords with Lina and lived to tell the tale. She was working as part of an operational team matching their data against those involved in the USNA military and government personnel to see if any of them had the same psionic wave characteristics as the pattern they’d gathered from the mystery person.

The reaction stone, the centerpiece of a CAD, had the ability to convert both ways between psionic signals and electrical signals. In addition, whether magician or non-magician, a person always released psions a little bit at a time even when they weren’t doing anything. Using the reaction stone to convert this psionic radiation into electrical signals and doing the appropriate processing, you could electronically record psionic wave patterns and display them on a monitor. Still, it was easier to quickly find slight disparities if you reverted them back to psionic waves to observe rather than displaying them on a flat screen. That was why a magician with training in psionic wave identification had been committed to a task that even non-magicians could perform.

She obviously didn’t have data on the entire USNA military or all government authorities, but the data covered nearly everyone with a connection to magic. And anyone not related to magic was out of the Stars’ purview. Silvia, while secretly hoping they wouldn’t find any matches, continued her wave pattern search.

Confirming that nobody in the Stars matched the pattern was the first thing she’d done. Everyone found to have similarities within active service divisions outside the Stars all had alibis, too. Today, she had started her search through staff members assigned to the military’s magical technology fields. And a little after noon, just when she was about to take lunch, Silvia—

What? No, that couldn’t be…

—found an interesting data point.

As she had lunch with classmates from Class A—but not with Miyuki and the others—Lina wondered what she was going to do after this. Lunch break was an hour. About thirty minutes were still left. She’d probably finish her food in about five more minutes. Normally, she’d go somewhere else and have some postmeal tea or pay a visit to the student council room as a temporary member. Today, however—

…Should I go see Mia instead?

Mia, aka Mikaela Hongou, her next-door neighbor and in some ways her colleague, was on a visit to First High as an undercover employee of Maximillian Devices. Because Lina had been hung up on her deserter pursuit mission, she hadn’t seen the woman for a few days. She didn’t have anything to ask of her in particular, but it certainly was a good opportunity.

As she thought it over, not showing any opening in her motions or expression, responding without a pause whenever the conversation went to her, she had just emptied her last plate when, a moment later…

What’s this?!

Lina nearly stood up out of reflex but held herself back only a couple inches from her seat. Thankfully, it appeared to the classmates sitting with her that she was simply adjusting her position, and they didn’t appear to harbor any suspicions about it. Giving an inoffensive but insincere smile, she desperately suppressed the anxiety whirling through her mind.

An instant swelling of heterogeneous waves. The students around her didn’t seem to realize it, probably because it wasn’t a magical presence, just as psionic waves weren’t. Lina herself could sense it only because she’d encountered it and fought against it several times recently.

But no doubt about it, it was the masked stranger, the vampire. She had a clue as to which direction it was in, if only roughly. It was toward the side gate where traders entered and exited.

That’s right! Mia!

Once she thought about the location, it connected to her thoughts from just before, sending them back into her mind. Right now, Mikaela was scheduled to arrive at First High. And if she was visiting as a member of the supply team, she’d use the side gate.

“I’m sorry. I just remembered something I had to do, so if you’ll excuse me.”

With a polite farewell to the classmates sitting with her, Lina left her seat.

Anti-Stealth Field… I’d presumed them mere high school students. Was that a mistake?

A wordless voice emerged from inside the small Maximillian Devices trailer. A noise like a swarm of buzzing bees came back, waves of psycheons inaudible to the human ear. It was the “voice” the parasites exchanged via human thought. Seventy percent of the intent in that voice was affirmative, 30 percent negative. They weren’t unified as one, but they also weren’t separated as individuals.

Do you think I’ve been noticed?

The field was thick, spread out along the walls and gates. The parasites’ psycheonic wave suppression and psionic wave stealth only wavered for an instant. Magicians who could distinguish psycheonic waves were rare, and regardless of their psycheonic signature, the psionic waves of the parasites weren’t much different from humans’.

After the thought-produced question from the individual parasite in the trailer, the psycheonic noise came back from inside her. If a third party could have sensed the thought flow, it would have seemed to that observer that she was asking herself a question. And this time, the answer was 90 percent negative—judging that she had not been noticed.

I believe so as well, however… I knew I shouldn’t have come here.

For her overt objective—gaining free entrance to First High property—today’s job was her greatest chance. But considering her true objective, setting foot into a school guarded by sensors and anti-magic was an action that carried with it unnecessary risk. Given her ostensible position, she couldn’t refuse doing this job, but perhaps she shouldn’t have come here anyway, even if it meant abandoning her cover… Unease began to claw at her mind.

After finishing lunch, Tatsuya went to the school building roof.

Because Erika had put him in a bad mood today, their lunch group had consisted of him, Miyuki, and Honoka. A “flower in each hand,” so to speak, from an observer’s perspective. And, well, he really was doubly favored. Neither Miyuki nor Honoka bothered to hide their favor toward Tatsuya, after all. It wasn’t that they didn’t feel like it—it was more that they couldn’t even imagine the idea of hiding it.

One might not be able to blame them, but people nearby were stealing looks. Even with Tatsuya’s heart, it had been extremely uncomfortable. He’d come here to escape the cafeteria.

The rooftop of First High’s main school building had been made into a hanging garden with elegant benches, making it a popular spot among the students. But it being the middle of winter, almost nobody was stalwart enough to spend time outdoors here exposed to the wind.

Today was humid, and while the wind chill wasn’t incredibly cold, they were still the only three up there. One might think they should do something about the cold using magic, but aside from a few exceptions, students weren’t permitted to carry CADs in the buildings. It wasn’t that one couldn’t use magic without a CAD, but nobody was fanciful enough to go out of their way to use CAD-less magic activation, something they weren’t used to, just to secure spots for themselves during lunch break. The three present, though, were part of the group allowed to carry CADs around. Miyuki had already used a cold-blocking spell to give them a moment’s relaxation.

To repeat that—Miyuki’s spell was affecting all three of them. Her magic could lower the temperature enough to liquefy nitrogen. Even in the opposite direction, it was a piece of cake to shut out cold that wasn’t even below the freezing point.

So there was no way it could be cold.

Nevertheless, Honoka clung tightly to Tatsuya’s arm, not leaving any space between them.

The moment Honoka had performed that outrageous (?) act, Miyuki had given them a sober—or rather, a cold—stare, but now she was embracing his opposite arm as if to compete.

Thanks to them, Tatsuya couldn’t move very well. He was shackled by both arms.

It would have been endearing if his face had started to steam even a little, but despite the voluminous chests pressing against him from either side, all Tatsuya did was grin painfully as if to say, It can’t be helped. No doubt there were quite a few male students who’d tell him he had no right to complain even if someone stabbed him in the back.

Miyuki and Honoka had both been silent for some time now for reasons he didn’t understand. When he looked at them more closely, he saw their ears and cheeks had reddened. It couldn’t have been because it was cold, which meant it must have been that sort of thing, but he didn’t grasp why they didn’t just let go in that case—and though one might not call Tatsuya obtuse for thinking that, he wouldn’t avoid criticism that he didn’t understand a woman’s heart.

Of course, he hadn’t been thinking only about that this entire time. He was lost in thought, mentally away from the two quiet girls, meditating on the incident staring him in the face.

At first, he’d been thinking about what the vampire stood to gain by attacking people. At the moment, all he knew was that they were assaulting humans with high magical aptitude and stealing their blood and spirit energy.

Why were they targeting magicians?

Was there some meaning to stealing their blood?

And why did those deserters from the American army come to Japan in the first place? Was their objective only achievable in Japan, or were they wrapped up in another’s schemes?

His thoughts wandered without an answer until, at some point, they came to the vampire’s true identity.

The vampire’s identity is for certain something classified as a parasite among old-style magicians.

It’s valid to assume that Master’s theory about parasites being independent information bodies originating in human mental activity is correct.

Shizuku’s news, the micro black hole experiment in the USNA being the trigger, is also worth believing.

In that case, the incident was brought about by information bodies that invaded from another dimension… My own pet theory.

The issue is how the concept of information bodies invading from another dimension links to the concept of information bodies originating in human mental processes.

Where is the “mind” physically located in the first place? A different dimension? A higher-dimensional world? Or “nowhere”?

For that matter, where is the Idea? Where are the eidos?

Realizing that his thoughts were about to hit a dead end, he shook his head a little. The action served to reset his thinking.

There are two ways to think about this.

One, the parasites invaded from a different dimension.

Two, parasites that already existed in this world have been activated by uncontrollable energy flowing in from a different dimension.

In the end, if we don’t know what a parasite—an independent information body originating in human mental activity—really is, I won’t know any more.

In that case, what I should be thinking about is how to discover one and how to analyze it.

If they’re mind-originating information bodies, there’s a high chance they’re made up of psycheons.

I should be able to locate them with my perception abilities, but I won’t be able to analyze them…

His thoughts were interrupted by Miyuki suddenly stirring.

“Miyuki, what’s wrong?”

Her movement had been an unconscious one born of unpleasantness, without any intent to play with him whatsoever.

The sound of Tatsuya’s voice caused Honoka to realize his sister wasn’t playing around, and she moved her tightly held body away. At the same time, she shivered. The cold-blocking spell had lost its effect.

“Ah, I’m so sorry.”

Miyuki immediately manipulated her CAD, which she was still holding in her free hand.

The chill grew distant in short order.

But Miyuki’s face was still dark.

“That’s not important. What’s wrong?”

Tatsuya didn’t make any show of having felt the cold. Considering all the training he’d gone through, literally face-to-face with death while using his self-restoration magic, this level of chill wasn’t worth bothering with. More importantly, his sister’s strange behavior concerned him.

“…I felt a terribly unpleasant wave, as though it grazed past my skin… But it must have been my imagination…”

Miyuki shook her head apologetically. She seemed to be feeling guilt over ruining her brother’s relaxation time. Tatsuya, though, didn’t accept the apology.

“Unpleasant waves? Were they psionic waves? Or psycheonic ones?”

Tatsuya couldn’t put it down to her imagination; it oddly matched what he’d just been thinking about. But this question turned out to be pointless.

“I don’t know… But if you didn’t notice them, Brother, they must have been psycheons.”

If it had been a psionic wave, there was no way Tatsuya wouldn’t have noticed.

Tatsuya felt that she did well in one-upping him when he heard that, but he immediately corrected himself—now wasn’t the time for such carefree thoughts. Magic high schools were equipped with terminals directly connected to the National Magic University, which held mountains of secrets within. From a security standpoint, this school would need the same level of protection as the university, and it was, in fact, furnished with an advanced system. Suspicious persons, sneak photography, and wiretapping were out of the question. But the countermeasures it had against magical interference were especially stringent.

The sudden wave of psycheons must have gotten caught in that anti-magic. If magical waves that made people feel unpleasant were always hanging around, authorities in Japan wouldn’t possibly leave that alone. Considering she was unable to sense it anymore, he knew that whoever those waves belonged to possessed the ability to control them.

He couldn’t judge the person right away to be harmful just because the waves felt uncomfortable, but there was even less reason to look at it optimistically. Especially not in a situation like the one they were in. It was more probable to assume that the person who had given Miyuki that unpleasant feeling was the parasite they were currently opposing.

Tatsuya made a mental list of methods with which to discern the source of the psycheonic wave, but as he began to investigate which would be most appropriate, his info terminal went off. It was the indicator that he was receiving a voice communication. Tatsuya put the phone unit to his ear.

“Tatsuya, it’s terrible!”

Without any preface, those words leaped suddenly from the receiver. They were so forceful that a more timid person, even if the issue wasn’t major—such as if it’s terrible was followed by my snowman fell over—would have started to panic a little. Normally, one might think, Could you please at least start with your name? but now wasn’t the time for that, and this was perfect timing for Tatsuya anyway.

“Saegusa, do you know the exact location?”

The operational lifetime of the transmitter he’d fired into the vampire in question hadn’t run out yet. If the vampire who had infiltrated the school was that particular one, they could pinpoint its current location using the school’s local positioning system. As the previous student council president, Mayumi would have known the LPS’s administrator code. (Of course, the act would be in violation of the student council president’s authority.)

“The vampire is in the— Oh, if you know, then this will be fast. The signal is moving from the side entrance toward the lab building’s service entrance for materials. Maximillian employees were scheduled to come do a demo for a new measuring device today.”

Which means it’s mixed up with them, he thought quickly, before answering briefly for want of time. “Understood.”

Why, for what reason, had the vampire come to First High now? He put that question, which related to his prior ideas, up on a shelf for the moment and quickly rose.

He pressed the button on the flight device attached to his belt and leaped over the fence.

After him, Miyuki triggered her flight spell as well.

Honoka, the only one who had been walking around without a flight device, was left alone on the rooftop.

At school, save for certain exceptions like student council and disciplinary committee members, students weren’t allowed to carry CADs on their persons. Because of this, they left their CADs at the office when they arrived at school and picked them up when they left.

The office wouldn’t easily return the CADs left there unless it was time to go home. During the incident in the spring, it was clear to everyone that it was an emergency, so they specially returned them. But today, only a handful of students and teachers noticed that something was going on. The office worker, unfortunately, was not included in that handful and wouldn’t accept Erika and Mikihiko’s requests for their CADs—not them alone anyway.

“What’s wrong, Yoshida? …Ah. I’m surprised you noticed without a receiver.”

As Erika was arguing with the worker, Katsuto arrived.

“Oh, hello, Juumonji,” she said. Erika may have been a tomboy, but she had to admit Katsuto was superior and thus afforded him the courtesy. It didn’t have to do with who was older—what she couldn’t ignore was the difference in their talent and skill.

As Erika stepped aside, Katsuto placed a hand on the counter and leaned forward. With only that, the worker—a school faculty member—was overpowered by a student.

“I request CAD return due to an emergency.”

As an unofficial rule, club committee officers were granted the right to carry CADs, but after giving the chairman’s seat to Hattori, Katsuto had been conscientious about upholding the rules.

“B-but it’s not yet time for—”

“It’s an emergency.”

It seemed like he didn’t intend to let the rules confine him. Katsuto applied even more pressure to the female employee who was bravely trying to do her job. As a result, the grown adult quickly became pale.

“If we leave this be, it may cause disastrous results. The CADs, please.”

“…Please wait a moment.”

It wouldn’t be accurate to vilify the employee as “weak.” None could go against Katsuto’s will unless they were considerably powerful.

“These two are my assistants.”

“…All right.”

But even so, the sight of her invited pity.

Notwithstanding her energetic dash there, Lina found herself balking as she caught sight of the trailer Mikaela was in. She’d already felt a resistance to being seen by an acquaintance going about her high school life. It wasn’t just the school uniform—she could handle being seen in those clothes. What embarrassed her, illogically, was being seen mingling with actual high school students, pretending to be one of them.

And now, the fear had cropped up in her mind that the sight of her going alone into a business trailer of a top manufacturer in the magic engineering industry might not be fitting for a high school student, either.

Disguising herself as a student and engaging in an intelligence mission was the task assigned to her. With another mission having interrupted, her spy activities were on hold. To add to that, the targets whose true identity she was supposed to find, Tatsuya and Miyuki, had instead found out her identity. Even Lina had to worry over whether she needed to pretend to be a student at this point.

But even if the siblings knew who she was, the other students and faculty didn’t seem to. Tatsuya and Miyuki didn’t seem to want to tell others about her USNA identity. What their intent was in keeping quiet, Lina couldn’t possibly begin to guess. In a situation where she also couldn’t silence the two who had discovered her secret, the most suitable choice would be to not do anything that could compromise her cover any more than it already was.

Now was a time she needed to avoid doing something suspicious, something that a high school student wouldn’t do.

Thus, Lina was currently worrying about whether they would let her visit Mikaela in the Maximillian Devices trailer at all.

Unfortunately, she didn’t have the option of not giving Mikaela a report. Naive though it may have been, she couldn’t neglect her responsibility for a fellow soldier.

Caught between one sense of duty toward her mission and another toward her comrade, Lina ended up working by halves. For someone who had a propensity for sneaking around and avoiding people, she was starting to be careless in observing her surroundings.

Even when she saw Mikaela up close as she came out of the trailer, she simply sighed in relief.

Although they’d pinned down the location, neither Tatsuya nor Miyuki were of a mind to do something as reckless as fluttering down from midair on the spot. They knew for sure one of the vampires causing a mess in the capital had gotten onto school grounds…but that wasn’t to say it was actually causing some sort of trouble right now. The visitors had probably been under surveillance since getting caught in the security spell, but the Maximillian employees had come to the school after going through proper procedures. They couldn’t be rash without a clear reason.

And the fact that the visitors were under surveillance presented an inconvenience to Tatsuya as well. It was his first time against a monster rather than a magician. If he carelessly opened hostilities and was forced to use spells designated confidential, he’d have no end of covering up and silencing. Just thinking about it, as far as he could imagine, made him feel gloomy.

If they could just find out who the vampire infected with the parasite was, they’d have ways of going about this, but the Maximillian employees had come as a team of six. With so many moving around in one group, they wouldn’t be able to discern which was emitting the waves. But that didn’t mean he could erase—in this case, literally annihilate—everyone who witnessed it. Tatsuya and Miyuki hid in an empty classroom in the lab building and kept watch on the mobile laboratory (the trailer’s cargo compartment), which had parked alongside the material delivery entrance.

“Lina?” muttered Miyuki suddenly.

Tatsuya had noticed her approaching the trailer before his sister said something, but he turned his attention back to the blonde transfer student.

Right on the heels of yesterday—their “duel” had ended very early in the morning, so it technically happened on Sunday—she had come to school as though nothing had happened. Her guts spoke to the fact that she was commander of a major power’s elite forces, but this boldness now was oddly inattentive for her.

It didn’t exactly feel like she was sneaking up on a target. Her attention was too scattered for that, and she didn’t notice their eyes on her, either. She did seem like she was hesitant about something.

As Tatsuya watched her for no particular reason, she stopped next to the trailer, and a young woman who must have been a technician walked over to her.

Lina’s lips formed the word Mia. Tatsuya conjectured the woman was a USNA Army agent sent to infiltrate Maximillian Devices.

During the questioning yesterday, Lina had said she was trying to capture the vampire. Her claim was that she wasn’t merely pretending to be its enemy. But at the same time, she said that though she knew who the deserters who snuck into Japan were, she didn’t know who was working with them. There was a high chance one of their own had turned into a vampire and was working as a collaborator with the deserters, but Lina and her allies hadn’t discovered any information on who it might be.

The Sirius of the Stars couldn’t possibly be unaware of the identity of an opponent she’d faced head-on and exchanged blows with several times, but…

As he thought about it, Tatsuya decided to take the risk and use his “vision” on the woman.

And then he noticed it. In his expanded awareness, he saw a different observer searching as well.

Several “spirits” were floating around the woman.

Not having expected Angelina Sirius to be the one to initiate contact on the First High campus, Mikaela Hongou felt perplexed and nervous. They shared the mission of discovering the mystery strategic-class magician, but their lines of command differed. Lina was higher ranked, but Mikaela didn’t think she’d ever give her orders or directions. In this aspect, Lina was almost too fastidious—too naive to be kind and too obstinate to be mean. But Mikaela couldn’t think of anything Lina would want to ask for her help on. She was the Stars commander, and Mikaela nothing more than a mere magical technologist.

Nonetheless, she couldn’t ignore her just because she wasn’t her direct superior. Doing that would be like asking others to suspect her. Mikaela got out of the trailer and endeavored to feign normalcy as she slowly walked toward Lina—

Shaking a hand at the spirits clinging about her as though batting away bugs.

When he saw the woman swat at the spirits no normal magician should have been able to see, Mikihiko knew she was the one.

“It’s her. No doubt about it,” he said in a hushed tone.

Without a word, Katsuto nodded.

“So that’s what Lina was about. I see… She was an accomplice.”

The low, anger-filled voice belonged to Erika, who had already expanded her armament device into its kodachi form. Tatsuya and Miyuki would have known that was a misunderstanding, but one couldn’t blame her for thinking that way.

“I’ll put up a barrier to block vision and hearing. It won’t fool machines, but…”

“I’ll do something about that.”

Mikihiko and Katsuto nodded to each other. Behind Mikihiko, with a face unable to contain her fear, Mizuki was cringing.

“Not yet, Erika.”

“I know,” replied Erika, who, though certainly getting ahead of herself, gave a response that maintained a sense of calm.

Mikihiko threw the talismans in his hand. The six strips of paper slid low through the air as though possessed of invisible wings. They surrounded the trailer, then landed on the points of a regular hexagon.

“Here it goes.”

Mikihiko’s hands made a symbol.

His perception-blocking area magic, with a different spell logic than modern magic, activated.

“Mia… Is something wrong?”

Lina tilted her head dubiously when she saw Mikaela flitting her hands like she was swatting at bugs.

If it had been summer, the gesture wouldn’t have seemed at all out of place. It wouldn’t have been strange even in spring or autumn. But the season was winter. And not the warmer part—it was cold. Indoors was one thing, but there was no way any kind of insect would be flying around outside now.

“No, it’s nothing to worry about.”

Just hearing her voice, it seemed like it really wasn’t anything important and that there was no hidden meaning. But the look on her face was definitely rattled. She’d made some sort of huge, possibly fatal mistake—that was the sort of expression she had.

What mistake had Mikaela made? She’d have to find out. That’s what Lina’s gut told her.

But first she had to tell Mikaela to get away from here. Lina’s instincts screamed at her to figure out why she was bothered first, but her logic stressed that getting her away from the vampire threat took priority.

That hesitation stopped Lina for a moment. But thankfully (?), she didn’t need to wonder about her decision any longer.

“…What’s this? We’re surrounded?!”

As the awareness-blocking area spell sprang forth to surround her, Lina’s consciousness was stolen away.

“Is this a barrier?!”

After the large trailer she’d been monitoring suddenly disappeared, even Miyuki couldn’t help but be shocked.

As his sister turned to him with the question, Tatsuya nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Must be Mikihiko. He’s quite skilled.”

“This is Yoshida?” Miyuki couldn’t hide even further surprise at the fact that a freshman boy, regardless of whether he was Course 1 or Course 2, could construct an information-blocking field with such a wide scope and thick density.

“Its effects are visual and auditory deprivation,” mused Tatsuya. “It won’t prevent the actual object from moving… I see.”

He’d been uneasy because they hadn’t made any advance arrangements to discuss what they’d do, but it would be far too much of a waste to let this thoughtful preparation be in vain. Tatsuya brought his voice call, which was still ongoing, out of suspend mode.

“Saegusa, it’s Shiba.”

“What is it?” the immediate reply came back. She must have been keeping her connection online, too.

“Please turn off the surveillance recorders near the lab building’s materials delivery entrance.”

If they’d been on the street, this would have been an unreasonable request even for the daughter of the Saegusa, but in school Mayumi had, in a way, been doing whatever she liked. She would be able to do this.

“I’d ask why…but you probably wouldn’t answer.”

“Thank you.”

“Ha…There, it’s off.”

When Tatsuya thought about it, Mayumi was fairly easy on him. But he was somewhat indulgent with her at times, too, so it went both ways. A mutually advantageous relationship, so to speak.

“Let’s go, Miyuki.”

“Yes, Brother.”

They exchanged glances, nodded, and then they jumped out from the classroom window they’d been hiding behind.

A white blade glinted before her eyes. The act of dodging it was wholly reliant on her instincts.

Lina pushed Mikaela aside, then used the recoil to roll backward herself. After she slid a switch on the side of her terminal, it split into a front and back piece. A tablet-shaped multipurpose CAD appeared from within them. It was a believable gimmick for an infiltrating spy to have, and her assailant—Erika—didn’t hesitate over it, either.

Without even a glance at Lina, Erika turned to Mia, still on the ground, and pointed the tip of her kodachi, drawn back to lunge at her throat.

“Erika, what are you doing?!” shouted Lina, constructing a magic program.

She triggered the spell to blow Erika back.

However, it was blocked by the anti-magic shell surrounding Erika—a mass of event influence.

“Katsuto Juumonji?!”

Aghast, she turned around, and there was a giant boulder of a body. Looking at just its size, it wasn’t an unusual physique in her eyes, but its sense of presence was more enormous than she’d ever seen before.

The preliminary report had labeled his strength as requiring caution. But now that she’d actually experienced it, she couldn’t help but be shocked that there was still an enemy of this level of power hidden among them. The instant Lina’s attention was on Katsuto, Erika closed the last step.

“Mia?!”

Her cry out of worry for her comrade changed into a cry of unbelieving shock.

Mikaela had caught the kodachi with her bare hand—and without using a CAD, surrounded it with a barrier spell.

She’d seen that magic before. It was the same as the strange person in the white mask.

“What is this…?” muttered Lina, stupefied, when a whisper came to her ears at that moment:

“Lina, can you hear me?!”

“Silvie?”

“Thank goodness, I finally got through!”

They weren’t conversing through a communication device. This was the magic Silvia specialized in. Vibrating the air, then reading those vibrations as sound, without going through the flesh. If she could locate a person, their distance didn’t matter, nor did the presence of obstacles, and she didn’t need a communicator or a listening microphone.

She had to admit, the spell was useful for eavesdropping, but looking at it from a purely communication perspective, she could send messages just by vibrating the air in someone’s ear canals, without fear of others overhearing. One couldn’t expect secrecy from anyone who overheard the voice of whoever she was calling, but it was still a convenient spell for times like this when she had no room to carry a communicator.

“I’ve discovered who White Mask is!” In front of her, Mikaela put some distance between her and Erika while they continued glaring at each other, when suddenly Lina’s attention was stolen by Silvia’s voice.

“It was Mia! White Mask’s identity is Mikaela Hongou!”

Lina’s mind was filled with white. But that lasted only a moment.

“Mia, you were the one in the white mask?!”

For Lina, Mikaela was no more than a simple teammate. She lived in the apartment next door, and their relationship only consisted of having tea and chatting once in a while. Nevertheless, the fact that Mikaela had been the one in their battles to the death delivered no small shock.

As Lina was displaying an incredibly human reaction, Mikaela, who was staring down Erika, turned to look at her. But it wasn’t to profess innocence, nor was it to declare remorse. It was a cold, inhuman glare, cautious of the enemy.

“What are you trying to pull, now of all times?!” Erika shouted.

Erika believed Lina and the vampire to be accomplices. Lina’s shout sounded like nothing more than a bald-faced lie, so Erika pushed it aside and swung her kodachi, meaning to use the opening Mikaela had shown to slay her.

She took a step closer and horizontally slashed toward the woman’s neck. But the weapon changed trajectory like some sort of parlor trick, weaving past Mikaela’s outstretched hand to plunge directly into her chest.

Mikaela looked down in disbelief.

In a way, this result was inevitable.

Lina may have gone through close combat training, but she was still a magician.

Mikihiko may have studied martial arts, but he was still a caster.

And Erika may have learned magic, but she was still a swordswoman. When they fought sword versus fist, Erika’s skill was far greater than any magician Mikaela had ever faced.

But a moment later, Erika was the one whose expression pulled back in tension. Completely unconcerned by the fact that she was wearing a skirt, she raised a foot and delivered a kick to Mikaela’s gut. The impact shook the kodachi out, and with a pivoting jump, Erika pulled far back.

Mikaela’s right hand sliced through Erika’s afterimage. Her fingers had twisted into hooked nails, and a pyramid-shaped energy field surrounded them. Then, before Erika’s and Lina’s very eyes, the hole pierced in her chest closed up in an instant.

“Healing magic?! She healed that wound instantly?!”

“It looks like we’re dealing with a real monster…”

Lina’s voice was tight with shock, while Erika spat her words, still staring down her opponent.

“In that case, how about this?”

They heard that voice from behind the trailer.

As it spoke, the winter suddenly intensified. A pinpoint cold wave flew at Mikaela. The American, without any time to resist, either physically or magically, froze on the spot.

“Miyuki?”

Erika, her stance slipping, said the name in shock. The one who had appeared in her sight was, without any room for doubt, Miyuki. She could see Tatsuya behind her, too.

“What’s going on?” Silvia shot into her commander’s ear in a panic. “Lina, are you all right?!”

“I’m fine for now, but please send any free soldiers as reinforcements. This might turn into a rather messy escape.”

“Understood. I’ll dispatch them immediately.”

Lina gave her orders in a quiet whisper.

As this transpired, Tatsuya was walking up to Lina from her front.

“Cut.”

Lina quickly said a single word. Silvia’s spell ended. It might not have made a difference, but it was to hide their secrets. Tatsuya would have seen her lips move, but he didn’t say anything to that effect.

“Lina, she seems to be an acquaintance of yours, but we’ll be taking her,” he said as he turned to her frozen sculpture of a neighbor and approached her.

“The Maximillian people… Did you kill them?”

At Lina’s question, Tatsuya gave something that fell short of a pained grin. “What a scary thing to say. I just put them to sleep for a bit.”

The Maximillian employees weren’t collaborators and didn’t know Mikaela’s identity. They were just civilians who had been caught up in all this. If Tatsuya and the others caused a commotion now, it would give her the chance she needed to get out of the situation, but she also genuinely felt relieved that they wouldn’t be causing the employees any more trouble.

“Wait a second. I can’t let you just take her away.”

Lina probably couldn’t help it, but she’d been convinced and had withdrawn. Instead, it was Erika who was ready to appeal for a victor’s rights.

“It may seem stupid to you, Tatsuya, but we have a sense of honor at stake here. If that woman is the one who hurt Leo, I won’t give her to anyone else—not even you.”

She hadn’t taken up a fighting posture, but she readied the grip on her kodachi, without an ounce of needless strength or anything more than the power it needed so that she could shift into a fighting stance right away.

Actually, there was no need to gauge that slight action—one at the glare she was giving would explain everything.

Erika was 100 percent serious.

“It’s not like I need her.”

But she’d had an extreme misunderstanding.

“Huh?”

As expected, her expression turned to astonishment. Tatsuya’s answer had been like clapping his hands right in her face.

“You’re going to investigate the woman and deal with her, right?”

Lina’s lips drew back when she heard “deal with her.” Her face made it clear that she was desperately telling herself she had no right to comment.

“It’s fine with me as long as you share what you come up with.”

Tatsuya wasn’t watching Lina when she made that expression. His eyes were focused on keeping both Erika and Katsuto within his field of vision.

“I’ll contact you.”

At Katsuto’s words, Tatsuya responded with a bow.

Tatsuya watched Katsuto and Erika,

Miyuki watched Tatsuya and Erika,

Katsuto watched Tatsuya and Lina,

and Erika watched Tatsuya and Miyuki.

Only Mikihiko kept a close eye on the surround area, and he was the quickest to spot something wrong.

“Look out!”

The warning was so sudden that he only managed to get out two words. But it did its job. An airborne electrical discharge caused by an emission-type spell stopped on the barrier Katsuto had expanded and was erased by the anti-magic Tatsuya loosed.

Miyuki and Erika turned around to the caster who had fired the spell. Then they both stopped in place, dumbfounded.

The woman who had fired the electric magic attack was still frozen. A living human, or even something inhuman, couldn’t be conscious in this state, nor could they ever use magic—that was what common sense dictated.

But that was now overturned. The ice sculpture was wrapped in electric light.

“Self-destruct?!”

Lina was the one to cry out.

“Get down!”

Katsuto and Tatsuya shouted in unison. Tatsuya scooped up his sister; Mikihiko protected Mizuki with his arms; and Katsuto, Erika, and Lina curled up, taking a defensive posture.

Mikaela’s body burst out of Miyuki’s ice and spat flames. It burned down to nothing in an instant like a dry piece of paper.

And then—from the empty spot where the dancing ashes had disappeared, magical lightning bolts attacked all five of the students on the ground: Tatsuya, Miyuki, Lina, Erika, and Katsuto.

Dull clouds hung in the winter sky, looking as though snow would start at any moment. But the rain of electric attacks hadn’t come from the clouds; instead it had poured down from an empty spot in midair. It wasn’t lightning. Their speed was far less than thousands of kilometers per second—the naked eye could perceive their movement. It was, at most, the speed at which a bolt would be fired from a crossbow.

But even a small, golf ball–sized orb of lightning was enough to take any human out of the equation. If ten of them hit at the same time, it would likely end in death.

And just because their eyes could follow them didn’t mean they had any time to prepare defensive walls when shot at from a distance of less than ten meters. The only reason they stopped the initial barrage was because of the effects of the walls they still had up, which they’d expanded, mistakenly thinking the self-destruct earlier was an attack on them. If this attack had been unleashed out of nowhere, it doubtless wouldn’t have left everyone unharmed. And this wasn’t to say the crisis was gone now, either.

Tatsuya’s magic erased the flash of light that appeared at Miyuki’s back before she could turn around.

As for the ball lightning that appeared over Erika’s head, it electrified the cloud of ice particles Miyuki had made and disappeared.

Katsuto’s barrier halted an electric flash, and Lina’s plasma scattered a lightning attack.

There was no sign of an activation sequence being used, but the ball lightning’s creation and the addition of a movement vector to the lightning bolts had been event alterations caused by psion-constructed magic programs. Reading the signs of the event alterations—which involved watching which electrons separated from molecules and converged in midair—although the attack looked as though it was occurring at random points, they barely managed to make it in time.

There was no sign of a caster. At the very least, not one in range of Tatsuya’s “vision.” A magician wasn’t what his “vision” had found.

That must be the parasite!

Magic fired from a clump of psycheons, floating in the sea of information.

Mikihiko and Mizuki had left the other five and hidden themselves behind the trailer slightly farther away.

The flashes of light that appeared in midair scattered before reaching their friends. That was what Mizuki was seeing now—she couldn’t see any signs or aftereffects of magic. Instead, she saw a barrier that blocked most magical wave motion. Based on their experience a few minutes ago, Mikihiko had judged it necessary to establish that barrier for Mizuki, and thanks to that, they remained unexposed to the electric attacks. The information life-form, its flesh abandoned, wasn’t equipped with a way to perceive light or sound. It seemed to be aware of this world by way of magical waves.

The situation their friends were in looked grim. The parasite’s attacks were sporadic but sudden, and though they didn’t seem to be overwhelming Tatsuya and the others, the group also couldn’t counterattack. They simply didn’t know where their opponent was in order to attack it. The monster’s attacks couldn’t hurt them, but they also couldn’t take care of the monster.

“That’s strange… Why doesn’t it run…?” Mikihiko muttered.

Hearing that, Mizuki suddenly began to wonder about something she hadn’t been concerned over before:

The thing that used to be a vampire, the parasite—why was it still repeating its ineffectual attacks?

She couldn’t say for sure that the parasite had a mind or the ability to make decisions, but even if this was instinctual or mechanical behavior, there must be a reason it was so adamant about remaining here and continuing its assault.

But what could it be?

That was the question that ran through Mizuki’s mind.

He dismantled the magic programs the parasite constructed before they could link to any event alterations.

At first, he couldn’t get the hang of it, since there was no activation sequence expansion process, or anything to substitute for one, but now Tatsuya had a nearly 100 percent chance of shooting down the parasite’s spells.

Now that they had some leeway in dealing with the attacks, he had time to start to doubt.

“Why do you think it is, Shiba?”

It seemed the same for Katsuto.

Right now, Tatsuya and Katsuto had taken up back-to-back positions, with Miyuki, Erika, and Lina between them. They couldn’t see each other’s faces, but Tatsuya had an easy time understanding the question.

“I don’t know whether it’s deliberate or instinctual, but it seems to have a reason to keep us here.”

“Yes. If it wanted to run, it could do so at any time.”

“I, at least, don’t have a way to confine it.”

“I don’t, either. We don’t know where it is to begin with.”

Tatsuya and Katsuto were in a similar bind. They could see where it was located within the information dimension, but they didn’t know where that location corresponded to in the real world. Its position in the physical dimension wasn’t clearly defined. The relationship between it and physical beings was horribly weak, as though it was barely hanging on by a slender thread, just enough so that it could activate magic.

Moreover, the enemy was a psycheon information body. Even if they knew its position, if they didn’t know its structure, Tatsuya had no way to attack it.

“Lina, you got anything?”

In the middle of his question, Tatsuya pointed his CAD behind him at Erika and pulled the trigger. The spell about to form next to her dispersed.

“…The vampire’s main body is a nonphysical entity called a parasite.”

At first, she’d decided not to respond to Tatsuya’s question, but she seemed to rethink it—now wasn’t the time. Lina answered in a reluctant tone.

“The London conference definition, right? I know that.”

Lina was speechless for a good ten seconds after Tatsuya’s response.

“…Who on earth are you people? Don’t tell me all Japanese high school students are like this.”

“Don’t worry. We’re exceptions in several ways.”

It wasn’t clear whether Lina understood the twisted state of mind hidden behind him saying exceptions and not calling them special.

“So?”

Tatsuya himself didn’t have a clear awareness of it, either, so it wasn’t strange she wouldn’t understand.

“Parasites possess humans and alter them. There seems to be an affinity when it comes to who they possess, but searching for a host is apparently their behavioral principle, equivalent to a self-preservation instinct.”

“In other words, it’s looking for the next person to possess?”

“Probably.”

“How?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.”

“…Useless.”

“Well, excuse me!”

Even as they traded harsh words, Tatsuya and Katsuto combined their efforts to block every one of the parasite’s attacks. But the parasite had to have an energy limit, too. At this time, what Tatsuya felt was not hope but concern.

An information life-form’s energy metabolism system was an unknown for him. But he couldn’t bring himself to think it could keep on firing magic endlessly. If it decided it wouldn’t be able to possess anyone from their five—whether that was a deliberate judgment or an instinctive one—it could move to another place in search of a host.

But that didn’t mean making it possess someone on purpose was a good idea. He wasn’t overconfident in himself to that degree.

He couldn’t see a way out.

“Not good… It’s after Erika.”

Mikihiko’s remark as he protected Mizuki and watched his friends’ backs was unintentional.

“Did it detect that Erika doesn’t have any way to resist it…?”

Erika’s magical faculties generally fell into close-combat skills against opponents with physical bodies. If distance was the only issue, she could blast someone with a somewhat-honed shock wave, but he was pretty sure she had no skills that would let her go up against an enemy without a body.

Mikihiko may not have wanted to acknowledge it, but he was impatient. If he’d been a little calmer, he might have realized that Mizuki was listening to him, and if he had, he wouldn’t have been so careless with his next remark.

“If only we knew where it was, we could do something about it…”

After hearing Mikihiko’s comment to himself, Mizuki hardened her resolve.

“Yoshida, please undo the barrier.”

“Huh?”

It wasn’t as though he’d forgotten she was there, but the unexpected request made his reply a confused one.

“Shibata, what was that?”

“I might be able to tell where it is.”

At that point, Mikihiko finally realized he’d spoken aloud something he’d meant to keep to himself. He grimaced, regretting it.

That didn’t seem to bother Mizuki. With a strong force of will in her eyes, she looked up sharply at Mikihiko.

“…I can’t. It would be too stimulating. Remember how much it affected you even when its demon energy was suppressed? There’s no telling what’ll happen if you look directly at it now that the energy is released. In the worst case, you could go blind.”

“When I chose to be a magician, I was prepared for the risks. Erika’s in danger, isn’t she? If I can’t help now, the power I have doesn’t mean anything, and there’s no point in me being here.”

He knew what she meant. He’d been raised with those exact values himself.

But he’d thought Mizuki had been born into a relatively affluent, ordinary—if you called not having magical aptitude ordinary—family, and that she was born with her demon-sight in a genetic throwback way. She was supposed to be a girl raised by parents with no attitude toward handling magic, of only a side-family bloodline, so thinly connected that if she hadn’t been born, they wouldn’t have even known there had been a caster in their lineage at all.

She had neither the reason nor the need to possess such resolve.

Mikihiko wanted to tell her not to say things like that. Considering yourself an accessory to magic gave certain kinds of magic fuel, and that was something only people like him, who had acquired a lot of security, needed to have. It wasn’t meant for a girl who had simply been born with magical talent by chance.

After thinking about it and putting aside the fact that he was still no more than a boy himself, he said, “…All right.”

In the end, he could do nothing but consent to his classmate’s wishes. The very values constraining him as a magician from an elite family forced him to consent.

Mikihiko took a folded-up cloth out of his blazer pocket and handed it to Mizuki. When she took it, confused, he told her to try opening it. The cloth was thinner than she expected and about the size of a shawl. It was a Yoshida family magic tool, created based on a treasured Shinto item called a hi-re.

“Put it around your neck. If you think things have gotten dangerous, use it to cover your eyes. It should have a stronger effect than the glasses you wear.”

Mizuki, probably spurred by the firm tone, didn’t offer any questions and wrapped the thin cloth around her neck. A moment later, Mikihiko reached out to her, unwrapped the cloth, then made it hang down at her chest so that it was the same length on the left and right.

With her neck and shoulders being touched, Mizuki’s body tensed nervously, but Mikihiko missed it altogether.

“Promise me. Promise me you won’t do anything crazy. Erika wouldn’t want someone else getting hurt for her sake.”

“…I promise,” nodded Mizuki, forgetting her embarrassment at the boy’s fixed stare.

“Here goes,” Mikihiko muttered, and Mizuki gripped the ends of the cloth he’d given her.

Just answering him with an unwavering yes, even though it was such a short reply, took all her mental energy.

She was so scared she couldn’t even have lied.

But strangely, it didn’t make her feel like running away.

She had an odd belief that this was her role.

Mikihiko murmured something she couldn’t make out. A moment later, the chaotic wave came crashing over them.

She didn’t even have time to think that her eyes hurt.

Intense pain shot through her body. But she couldn’t even figure out exactly where the pain was.

As her knees threatened to give out, she used all her energy and opened her eyes wide.

And at that moment, she understood just how many things she didn’t see—how many things she closed her eyes to—on a daily basis.

What she saw was now an alien world, with one alien thing that stood out.

Her gut told her it was the parasite.

It fired a spell, which collided with Katsuto’s barrier and disappeared.

Hidden in that electric attack, she could see a slender, reaching thread.

Several of those threads were coming off the monster’s “body.”

They were long and thin, closing in on Lina and Erika, blocked by Katsuto’s wall and shredded apart by Tatsuya’s gunshots.

Those threads were mixed in with the electricity, and instinctively, she knew that they were trying to invade the girls’ bodies through their bioelectric currents.

That was how it looked to her.

“It’s over there.”

Her mouth formed words, and her arm pointed, of their own accord. Mizuki was watching like a theatergoer on the other side of the silver screen.

“About seven feet above Erika, three feet to the right, and little bit behind—twenty inches. There’s a point of contact there that the monster is using.”

Mizuki had shown Mikihiko where the hole was, through which the threads were stretching into this world.

Considering even the time it would take to answer her to be a waste, Mikihiko’s fingers danced over his CAD. His personal fan-shaped device unfolded into a strip of paper inscribed with the spell of the flames that surround Vidyaraja, the Wisdom King. He funneled psions into it, then collected the activation sequence that formed.

The anti-demon spell, Garudaflame—independent information bodies of “flame,” whose objective it was to deal external damage to other information bodies—fired at the position Mizuki had indicated.

And then Tatsuya saw a magic program fire—one that possessed the concept of “burning” but did not materialize as an object-burning phenomenon, its information bodies cut off from real-world events.

The enemy was before him, but he couldn’t help being surprised.

Tatsuya knew the basic tenets of SB magic, or spirit magic. It worked off a system that cut off from reality the independent information bodies floating in the information dimension, then actualized the phenomenon recorded within them.

The spell Mikihiko had just displayed worked under the same logic. The difference was that instead of actualizing it as a phenomenon in the physical dimension, it did so in the nonphysical dimension.

If you were using a spell designed to overwrite the information itself, its difficulty aside, it was neither rare nor original. The information body–dismantling magic he used was built, in a way, to overwrite the information itself.

But Mikihiko’s spell had used the system underpinning magic theory—that information accompanied phenomena, and the information accompanying it was recorded in the information dimension—to generate only the phenomenon-accompanying information, thereby interfering only with the information dimension without interfering with the physical dimension. The “burning,” which hadn’t appeared in the real world, had caused an overwriting of information in the information dimension, telling it that something would burn at that location.

It was like the spell took the concept of what a magic system should be and turned it on its head. But what surprised Tatsuya more was how he’d suddenly started to clearly see exactly where the parasite was after being unable to get more than a vague impression of it. It was almost as though fuzzy parameters had abruptly been given concrete values.

The phrase Schrödinger’s cat passed through the back of his mind.

The essence of that thought experiment, where you wouldn’t know if the cat inside the box was alive or dead unless you opened the box, was, contrary to the intention of its proponents, that uncertain facts became definite upon being observed. Whether you applied the Copenhagen interpretation or the Everett one, the result would be the same: that for the observer, the uncertain fact would become certain.

In the case of a parasite—this information body called a “monster”—if someone were to observe it, would it become perceptible not only to the observer but to third parties as well?

By Mizuki perceiving it, had its existence in the physical dimension strengthened?

If that was the case…

…then now Mizuki is in danger!

There was no way the parasite wouldn’t notice a gaze strong enough to apply changes to its attribute information.

Tatsuya hastily focused his “eyes.”

There, he saw the scene he’d feared beginning to unfold.

Thoughts flew by in an instant.

Tatsuya stuck out his left hand, which was not holding a CAD, toward Mizuki.

Those who see can also be seen by those at whom they look.

One doesn’t need to borrow Nietzsche’s words; this is pure logic: You need a line of sight in order to see someone. And if there is a path for your sight, that means they can see you, too.

When Mizuki perceived the parasite, the parasite moved its attention to Mizuki.

“It’s coming!”

Hearing Mizuki’s shout—or maybe it was a scream—Mikihiko immediately reexpanded the barrier.

“Where?!” he demanded, reinforcing the hastily built defense as much as he could.

The defensive spell was activated mostly out of reflex.

It was mainly meant for concealment.

It provided little defense against things getting inside, and now that they’d been witnessed once, the concealment was only half as effective.

Mikihiko himself knew the necessity of being the one to attack. But Mizuki didn’t have the mind to respond to that.

She simply covered her eyes and fell to the ground.

The boy couldn’t blame her.

He knew she was a normal girl who had absolutely no experience confronting “evil.” That was why Erika wanted him to protect her and why he planned to anyway. He’d already factored in Mizuki seeing the “evil” and losing agency—that was why they’d kept their distance.

Now, thanks to his own miscalculation, it was coming closer. As expected, Mizuki had fallen into panic, so how could he possibly blame her?

Besides—he hadn’t the time to.

A “thread” reached out from the parasite. Mikihiko couldn’t see it, but he knew “something” was hiding in the electric light, trying to capture her.

Well, Mikihiko wasn’t just standing around doing nothing. Even if he couldn’t spot the thing, he had ways of cutting off spiritual interference. Old-style casters like Mikihiko had always been experts in dealing with spiritual phenomena by intervening with physical ones.

But at the same time, there were a lot of traditional old-magic spells that needed time to prepare. It was inferior in its speed to instantly react, which was the reason people had pushed modern magic as the main method and treated old magic as a mere branch.

Even so, Mikihiko took aim at the hole that opened in the barrier and used a spell called Cutting Exorcism to block evil interference. Though its power was inferior to ritual magic, it possessed speed that rivaled Swiftnine, used by magicians of esoteric Buddhism.

Psions shaped like a sword sliced the thread reaching from the parasite.

But it was, in the end, a simplified spell.

Even if it could sever the curse, it wouldn’t be able to slay the main body.

Another thread immediately reached out and neared Mizuki.

Mikihiko, knowing this would be a stalemate, tried to use Cutting Exorcism again.

But the blade never swung down.

Faster than Mikihiko could use it, a violent wind wrapped in an invisible light blasted the thread away, along with the main body.

The cloth Mizuki had borrowed from him did indeed shut out the discomforting waves that her glasses couldn’t block.

But strangely, just because she couldn’t feel the discomfort any longer, that didn’t mean she couldn’t see anymore. The figure floating in the air, lit by a subdued light and with several threads hanging off it, looked just like a floating jellyfish.

That, however, didn’t do anything to relieve her terror.

Instead, it made things worse.

Even if she closed her eyes, the figure didn’t go away. She saw the threads, and she didn’t want to.

Ultrathin tentacles reaching out to grab her. That was what she could see. She couldn’t think straight through the visceral fear.

If this had gone on for just a bit longer, it would have left a deep scar on her heart.

Her mind may have broken before her body was violated.

What saved her was a torrent of glittering psions.

The same light she’d seen half a year ago in the lab classroom was reproduced before her eyes with power more overwhelming than before.

It had been an instant thing, but it was impossible for there to be a lack of psion activity during magical combat. Tatsuya’s right hand was the one that used dismantling-type magic, but unlike Program Dispersion, he could fire Program Demolition from either hand even without a CAD. Tatsuya collected psions to his right hand and mustered to the limits of his instantaneous output.

As he’d thought, being seen by Mizuki had made the thing into a concrete existence in this world. The closer the parasite got to her, the less its positional information distorted, and the more its distribution converged.

Before, he’d been able to see it as information but not know where it was or where to access it from. But now, Tatsuya understood the parasite clearly.

However, there was no time to tell the others. The tentacle—closer to a primitive amorphous organism’s filopodia in his mind—that Mikihiko struck away had already re-formed and was reaching for Mizuki.

It frustrated him, but he had only one chance.

He narrowed his eyes a little,

set his sights, imagined a line pointing,

and released the clump of compressed psions from his right hand.

The psionic current of Program Demolition, the emission point of which he’d set as his palm, shot toward the parasite and blew away both the tentacle and its main body.

“Shibata, are you all right?!”

As he heard Mikihiko’s voice—the boy seemed about ready to flip out at how shaken up she was—Tatsuya lowered his left hand.

He wrestled with a feeling of bitterness at the result he’d expected to get from his own typeless magic.

Despite its name, Program Demolition was at heart a means to use a psionic current’s pressure to sweep away information bodies, not one to demolish them. If the target was a magic program, then using it to rip the program away from the eidos made it function as an anti-magic spell.

In most cases, the shockwave that occurred when it did the separation would destroy the magic program’s informational structure, hence the name “Demolition.” However, Program Demolition’s psionic current itself wouldn’t destroy the information bodies. If the information bodies had a more robust structure than a magic program, they’d just be carried away without its informational structure being destroyed. It was a very possible result.

Even knowing that, he made the decision to use Program Demolition there.

To save Mizuki.

Because he couldn’t think of anything else.

“It got away…”

Tatsuya didn’t give a response to Katsuto’s remark. By only blowing the parasite away with Program Demolition there, it was highly likely that it would flee without them being able to finish it off. Tatsuya had expected that, and that was how it turned out.

“That’s fine. It may have gotten away, but it can’t be unharmed. We should be thankful nobody got hurt this time.”

Katsuto’s comment wasn’t only to make him feel better. The parasite had counterattacked in a way they hadn’t expected, but their side did indeed have zero injuries. But they were the ones who had staged the encounter. It might not have even been planning to fight here.

They’d picked a battle that wasn’t necessarily unavoidable, which meant the absolute minimum was everyone getting through unharmed. Their first objective was to capture the enemy, and the next best victory condition was to destroy it. In lieu of that: finding a new, powerful clue that would allow them to discern the full picture of the enemy’s forces.

In other words, from the perspective of combat objective completion, this ending gave them close to zero points. They’d just barely managed to not go negative.

What a disgrace…

Only Tatsuya’s pride made him keep that thought to himself.

If he’d said it aloud,

Miyuki would be concerned.

Mizuki would fret over it.

Erika would be hurt.

For Tatsuya, that would only be more disgraceful. That was the last sort of parting present he’d want.