Lina had outright denied any connection between the micro black hole experiment leak source and the humanist movement.

Tatsuya, too, had concluded that Lina’s conjecture was an appropriate one.

However, as if to ridicule them both, the humanist-driven anti-magician movements had become the trend, and they were eroding the North American continent from east to west.

It was only a matter of time before the trend spread to the rest of the world, too.

Winter, three months after the season began, was about to arrive.

In the past, diplomacy either meant the gunboat kind or the behind-closed-doors kind.

Eventually, after the age of global power balances, diplomacy’s fundamental direction had shifted toward major alliances, and diplomatic styles simultaneously saw conferences and ceremonies become the norm, but that didn’t mean gunboat diplomacy and secretive diplomacy had disappeared.

Secretive diplomacy was an indispensable preparation for making such ceremonies succeed, and those involved in it changed from diplomatic superstars to diplomatic artisans, active even now in the world’s shadows.

No matter when, and no matter where.

The seeds of the world’s conspiracy would never run out.

Not tonight.

Not even in this country.

“…I must say, these fanatics are simply incorrigible.”

“Ha-ha-ha, yes… It’s easy to make them act but difficult to take the reins.”

On one side of a table, a suit-wearing middle-aged man encouraged the man across from him, also a middle-aged man in a suit, though a Caucasian one, not a Mongoloid.

As though he’d been in Japan for some time, or perhaps because of his hobbies or education, the Caucasian man let the other pour the clear liquid out of the sake bottle he’d extended and into the small sipping saucer, then, following proper etiquette, brought it to his lips.

“Now that I think about it again, this alcohol you call sake is quite mysterious and—how should I put it—refined… It’s undistilled, and yet it has no color.”

And flawlessly, he remembered to interject flattery toward the other nation.

“Oh, not at all. I cannot deny that it lacks beauty when compared with the vivid reds of wines. Of course, when it comes to the flavor, I believe I’ve provided something that will satisfy you.”

The one on the receiving end of the flattery also remembered to make a display of modesty.

The thing the two facing each other had in common was that neither would reveal what they were really thinking.

“And you have indeed… As much as I would like to get comfortably intoxicated, those fanatics I mentioned before never seem to get tired of lawbreaking, so I cannot take too much time.”

“I cannot thank you enough regarding your special consideration for the safety of our countrymen who reside in your nation.”

Their tones of voice remained the same. Their faces, too, still held slight smiles. But anyone who lived in their world would have sensed that the air had changed since just a moment ago.

“Not at all—it’s our natural obligation. Still, these people are mad, and logic will be ineffective… For example, you could explain to them that the massive explosion that decimated the Great Asian Alliance fleet was the work of scientifically systematized magic and not the work of the devil, but they would never listen.”

“Yes. After all, they may turn a deaf ear, but that doesn’t excuse any harm befalling foreigners who need to be kept safe… I humbly ask for your empathy here.”

The two men each tilted their bottles at the other, and as though that were a signal, they gulped down the contents of their sake cups at the same time.

“I want you to take what I’m about to say as a complaint. If you would even reveal a thin outline of that Great Bomb, I think we would be able to calm them down.”

“…Likewise—please take this as a complaint of my own. The military has complete control over information regarding the weapon used on the Korean Peninsula’s southern end. No matter how confidential it may be, civilian control is the basis of democracy…but why must military men be so obstinate?”

Sparks flew between the men’s gazes for an instant, and after that instant, both their eyes had turned into empty smiles.

“You heard them.”

Fujibayashi stopped the wiretapped conversation recording and brought her face up.

“Our diplomats seem to be trying pretty hard this time. Even they understand how important and singular the strategic-class is.”

“And besides…”

Tatsuya stopped before he said it. Fujibayashi angled her head and said, “Hmm?” to get him to continue.

“…And besides, ma’am, I’m sure the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has its own honor to uphold. Three years ago, Japan faced an unprovoked invasion. Even facing criticism for information leaks from within, the government made every effort to find a nonmilitary solution. And now they’ve been mocked to their faces for that effort.”

“You mean the Great Asian Alliance did, right…?”

To Fujibayashi this was preaching to the choir, but Miyuki didn’t quite seem to grasp it.

Even Tatsuya had enough common sense to know, well, that was normal. “Japan and the USNA are allied nations, but we’re also potential rival nations in the Pacific Sea,” he said. “A moderate weakening of Japan is in the USNA’s interests.”

After seeing his sister nod slightly, Tatsuya continued his explanation.

“On the other hand, while the Great Asian Alliance may be big, they’re not strong enough to face the Japan-America alliance directly. It would be a big gamble, and not one their nation is in a desperate enough state to take… Why, then, did the GAA commit to the reckless Yokohama invasion?”

Tatsuya paused for a moment to give Miyuki time to think about it. He didn’t want her to be only a pretty doll at the end of the day.

“The GAA isn’t strong enough to take on Japan and America at once… America is allied with Japan, but they’d be fine with Japan being a little weaker than it is now…” she said to herself. Then her face lit up, and she put a hand to her mouth. “Wait, then… The GAA and the USNA have secretly joined forces?”

Tatsuya gave her a satisfied smile for a job well done. Seeing them, Fujibayashi let out a dry grin.

“Saying they’ve joined forces might be going too far,” Tatsuya said, “but I think it’s very possible for them to be in some sort of conspiratorial relationship.” He looked over at Fujibayashi before she lost her smirk and nodded slightly.

“Conspiring to, for example, make the USNA’s Pacific fleet deployment late to respond to a GAA military invasion,” she offered, affirming Tatsuya’s speculation. “And when you think about it in hindsight…the USNA’s fleet movements were unnaturally slow at the time.”

“In all likelihood, the GAA’s objective wasn’t to occupy territory or destroy crucial facilities—it was to kidnap scientists and steal technology, wasn’t it, ma’am?” asked Tatsuya.

“Probably, yes. Considering the location and their combat strength, they couldn’t have hoped for anything more. Mobilizing their fleet was a backup plan in case the operation failed. Of course, that came back to bite them. They poked the grass, and the snake came out.”

“I don’t believe the pheasant would have been shot if it hadn’t cried. After all, we’re actually the ones concerned about the snake now.”

Tatsuya maintained his poker face, but…

“That’s really something, coming from the one who was most involved in it.”

…Fujibayashi seemed to see through it.

“Anyway… I should get going,” she said. “I might be here under the pretense of early recruitment, but a soldier staying too long in a civilian household is an unnatural thing.”

“Thank you for coming all the way here today.”

As Fujibayashi stood up, so did Tatsuya, who offered his thanks.

He didn’t express any modesty by saying something along the lines of though we didn’t offer much hospitality.

She wasn’t aware of it, but Miyuki had been the one offering the hospitality, so there was no way anything would have been less than perfect. That was how Tatsuya processed it in his head.

When they followed her to the front door to see her off, Fujibayashi said, “Oh, right,” and reached into her purse. Though the suddenness was all an act, of course.

What she took out was a small, thin, neatly wrapped box.

“Here you are. I know it’s two days early, but some friendly chocolate.”

“The obligatory kind, ma’am?”

It was a refreshing honesty, without a shard of expectation involved.

For obligatory chocolate, it had a very stylish wrapper. But Tatsuya knew as well as she did that she never cut corners with anything, so he didn’t misunderstand things for his own convenience.

“Are you unhappy with it?” Fujibayashi smiled mischievously.

That moment, Miyuki’s eyes shone with a sharp light, but…

“Not in the slightest.”

…at Tatsuya’s immediate response, the light vanished entirely as though it were nothing but an illusion.

After saying their good-byes and closing the door, they heard the young woman burst into laughter from the other side, but the siblings pretended nothing at all had happened and quickly returned to the living room.

Ever since the war (World War III), there had been a strong impression that cultural trends had changed completely in this country.

But in reality, it wasn’t that major a change, and many so-called frivolous customs had continued unabandoned to this day.

One of those was Valentine’s Day, which was coming up the next day. One could argue all one wanted about St. Valentine’s Day originally being far from frivolous, or the whole chocolate-giving thing being a sweets company conspiracy, but it wouldn’t matter. Young people were fully aware of all that, and they jumped into it anyway.

With Valentine’s Day coming up the next day, the First High campus was also laden with a giddy air. In this respect, magicians (in the making) were normal boys and girls, too.

“…Mitsui, you can get going early today if you’d like.”

They were in the student council room after school.

An error noise had been repeatedly going off for a while.

Azusa had asked the question of Honoka, its source, not because she thought Honoka was angry, but because she thought she wasn’t feeling well.

“She’s right, Honoka. You should go home for today.”

Lina, who was acting as a temporary council member, stressed the point, her vivid blue eyes clouding. Despite her identity remaining unknown not only to normal students but to Azusa and Isori as well, it was quite a bold move—but of course, she also had no other option to choose at this point.

“No, I’ll be fine,” answered Honoka bravely, seeming clearly not fine.

…She knew why she wasn’t fine. Part of it was that she would have been embarrassed to take them up on the considerate offer. But everyone who knew her as the opinionated girl who felt too much responsibility and tended to go overboard only worried even more.

“Mitsui, I think it’s great you have such a sense of duty, but taking a break isn’t a bad idea.”

Honoka still couldn’t say Okay, I’ll take a break, then when Isori said it, so Miyuki had to be the one who drove the point home.

“Honoka, you really shouldn’t push yourself. No matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to do any work, right?”

Miyuki, too, was (on the surface) making a deeply concerned expression. Her beauty was mystical, and it made you forget she was a real person, but when she made that sort of face, it very much suited her, enough to make Azusa, Isori, and Lina all nod in unison.

But for Honoka, who realized that Miyuki had guessed why she wasn’t fine, it was a very uncomfortable suggestion. Especially the part about her not being able to do any work.

“I…I guess. All right…”

After a moment’s hesitation, Honoka energetically rose to her feet and gave a bow. “I’m terribly sorry! I’ll be going home early today. I’ll work hard again tomorrow!”

“Yes, do your best tomorrow,” replied Miyuki in advance (in spite?) of the two upperclassmen. Azusa felt it odd for Honoka to say “again tomorrow,” but the only one here who knew what she meant by it was Miyuki.

After bowing and excusing herself, Honoka spun around on her heel as her cheeks reddened.

“…And that is why Honoka went home early,” Miyuki explained to Tatsuya as they went down the path from the school to the station.

“Right… To get ready for tomorrow, huh?”

“Yes, no doubt.”

While Miyuki nodded confidently, Tatsuya grimaced against a creeping chill.

“She’s definitely the type to put a lot of effort into things like that…”

“Are you happy, Brother?” Miyuki teased.

“It’s not that. I just feel bad.” Tatsuya gave a verbal shrug. “I can repay any gifts, but I can’t return what really matters,” he finished gravely.

Miyuki hesitantly took his sleeve. “…Please, you don’t need to worry about things like that. Honoka and I want only for you to be happy from the bottom of our hearts.”

“…Really?”

“Yes. All you need to do is accept that without comment.”

“Uhh, I don’t want to be a third wheel here, but…” interrupted Lina with some difficulty, her face less reserved than grudging. Tatsuya looked over at her, his sister still gripping his sleeve.

“Third wheel? That’s a strange thing to say, Lina.”

Your brains are what’s strange here! Lina wanted to protest, but she’d already been made plenty aware that she couldn’t beat Tatsuya with words, brute force of tone aside. Lina decided to follow the results of her acquired knowledge: that being forthright and immediate at times like this was the best solution.

“Essentially, Honoka wasn’t looking well because she was worried about giving you chocolate tomorrow?”

“You did well to notice, Lina. I had thought chocolate-giving was a custom unique to Japan.”

Lina had asked the question while looking at Tatsuya, but the answer came back from Miyuki, as though such an exchange were natural.

…However, in this particular case, Tatsuya had no way of answering her question, so Lina wasn’t particularly offended.

“No, not at all,” Lina replied, a little huffy. “Valentine’s Day chocolate is a famous bit of Japanese culture, but a lot of kids do it in the States, too. Plus, our other classmates here in Japan have been talking my ears off about it.”

“Hmm, I see… To whom will you give your chocolate, Lina?”

“Even you’re asking me that, Miyuki…?”

Judging from the unpleasant frown on her face, others must have persistently been asking her the same thing. Regardless of what form it took, such interest (or curiosity) itself was the same as it was a century ago, and it would doubtlessly be unchanged after another century.

“I didn’t plan on giving chocolate to anyone.”

“Oh, but not even obligatory chocolate? Or did nobody tell you how that custom works?”

“Come on, I know what that is.”

“In that case, a lot of people would be happy if you gave them some, wouldn’t they? Like people who helped you out when you came to study abroad.”

Lina frowned at Miyuki, but she couldn’t glean any emotion other than mild interest from her expression. “If I gave individual gifts, it would cause all sorts of problems.”

“Really? It must be difficult being so popular.”

Miyuki’s remark made Lina catch her breath.

She felt like the Shiba sister was putting her popularity ahead of her actual ability, but Lina also understood that this was she herself trying to play the victim.

“You’re amazingly popular yourself, Miyuki. Who will you give chocolate to? Will Tatsuya get the real thing?”

Lina had taken for granted that the object of Miyuki’s chocolate-based affections would be Tatsuya, and that she’d tease them to no end for trading amorous words, but…

“What are you saying, Lina? Brother and I are siblings. It would be strange for me to give him homemade chocolates.”

“……”

So this is what it’s like to be struck dumb… thought Lina, feeling it from the bottom of her heart.

“…Hey, Izumi, what do you think she’s doing?”

“I think… I think she’s making chocolates, but…”

“Well, then… Why is she giggling like that…?”

Kasumi and Izumi Saegusa, twin sisters of the Saegusa family currently in their third year of middle school, exchanged hushed whispers by the kitchen entrance.

“It looks like…she’s having fun. I think.”

“I don’t know if that’s what this is.”

Their eyes were turned to Mayumi as she heated a sheet of baking chocolate in hot water. But though she seemed to be having fun, a girl in love would never be smiling like that on the day before Valentine’s.

“…Who might she be wishing to inflict it upon?”

Mayumi’s giggles had already gone beyond “hee-hee-hee,” turning into something closer to “fu-fu-fu-fu…” or “ku-ku-ku-ku-ku…” It was as though she were planning to poison someone. The twins exchanged glances.

“Kasumi, about the chocolate our sister is using…”

“Ahh, yeah… It’s the ninety-five percent cocoa, zero percent sugar kind…”

Products boasting that they had 99 percent cocoa content had been sold in the past, but currently, the most bitter chocolate available for purchase was Mayumi’s ingredient of choice.

“And that bag…”

“It’s espresso powder, isn’t it…?”

“I wonder if something bad happened to her…”

A compacted psionic bullet appeared in the Idea, flew in a short arc, and collided with the independent information body.

“That one was all right. Let’s call it for this morning.”

“…Thank you very much.”

As Tatsuya caught his breath, turned to Yakumo, and bowed, Miyuki ran over with a towel in her hand.

Large beads of sweat had formed on Tatsuya’s forehead even though it was midwinter. Miyuki, after watching him wipe the sweat, spoke to Yakumo, her gaze concerned.

“Sensei, Brother’s exhaustion seems rather extreme for Program Demolition…”

Yakumo shook his head and held a hand up in front of Tatsuya to stop him from answering her himself.

“Can’t help a little bit of exhaustion. The concepts of ‘movement’ and ‘exclusion’ don’t exist in the true world, and Tatsuya just brought them into it.”

After last Monday, Miyuki had declined attending his training, saying she’d be in the way. Today was Tuesday, a week and a day since she’d last been here. So she didn’t know what things Tatsuya, to whom it had been suggested to devise a new anti-parasite spell (Yakumo had suggested it, and Miyuki had pressed him), was trying until she asked Yakumo. A new spell was one thing, but all Miyuki thought was that he was simply practicing trying to use Program Demolition in the information dimension.

“Is it…an arrangement of some sort that would cause side effects?”

She had complete faith that her brother was the strongest of magicians, but she knew there were plenty of things he couldn’t do. Even if they needed it to achieve victory, if it harmed his mind or body—by shortening his lifespan, for example—then she was willing to immediately do whatever she had to in order to get him to stop, even if it meant persuading him through tears.

“No, I don’t think it is.” Contrary to her feelings on the matter, Yakumo’s answer was a bland one. “Tatsuya is only changing his way of seeing things. Instead of directly striking the target, he sets the coordinates every 1/32nd of a second to be right in front of the target, and by linking that setting through his unconscious region, he created a conceptual bullet of exclusion that moved to the true world—isn’t that right, Tatsuya?”

“That’s right, Miyuki. Since I’m using the full extent of my thinking and cognitive abilities, it’s only mentally…no, neurologically exhausting. I promise there’s no danger of any side effects, so don’t worry.”

“I see…” With Tatsuya putting it so clearly to her, Miyuki seemed relieved for the moment. “Then your prospects for finding a way to attack the parasite are looking better?”

As his younger sister looked up at his face with eyes glittering, as though enamored by his constant successes, Tatsuya accidentally showed her a pained grin.

“Well…”

“It could probably destroy newborn ‘children.’ But it might have trouble against a ‘parent’ whose existence has solidified over many years.”

Tatsuya had been about to shake his head, still grinning painfully.

Yakumo had cut him off and given a delicate evaluation.

Thanks to that, the siblings got through it without needing to feel awkward.

Miyuki hadn’t come with Tatsuya this morning on a whim, nor did she want to check up on his training progress.

This was the third time, after last year and the year before, that she’d come to Yakumo’s temple on the morning of February 14.

The reason went without saying.

After returning to the priest quarters, Miyuki took a neatly wrapped package out of her bag and offered it to Yakumo.

“You may think of it as a heretical custom, but please accept this gift. You’re always taking good care of my brother.”

Right then, Yakumo’s face broke into a complacent grin. “Oh no. Even foreign pagan customs deserve to have their good parts accepted.”

He says the same exact thing every year… thought Tatsuya, and he certainly wasn’t the only one.

“Master, everyone is watching.”

But Tatsuya was the only one able to chide him for his overly careless expression.

“Hmm? Oh, I don’t think it matters. It’ll be an incentive for their training.”

Still, it didn’t seem at all like Yakumo had responded to the candid advice.

“Are desires of the flesh not contrary to your precepts?”

“It doesn’t matter so long as it doesn’t lead to lust.”

He was answering the questions in a transcendental tone of voice, but his face was still locked in that foppish grin.

There’s just no dealing with him. Tatsuya sighed in resignation, and many of Yakumo’s pupils offered wordless agreements.

If the mass-transit commuter trains that had been used until mid-century had any winning point over personal train cabinets, it would be the predictability of arrival times.

Given how they were used, cabinets didn’t have any sort of time schedule. There were also never any traffic jams, so they never arrived significantly late. But there was no legal speed limit on the tracks, so one could arrive quite early. That could make it somewhat inconvenient for meet-ups.

Even Tatsuya and his friends, who had frequently met up at the station to go to school together in their first semester, had fallen into a pattern of meeting up in the classroom instead.

“Good morning, Tatsuya.”

“Good morning, Honoka.”

However, youthfulness still acted as though that inconvenience were nothing.

Or perhaps it was love.

Both were probably correct.

“Oh, good morning, Honoka.”

“Good morning, Mizuki.”

And for a maiden in love, for today, she didn’t like the thought of anyone going with her. Honoka, too, thought there was no helping Miyuki being around, since it was the default.

But other than Miyuki, even though they were friends, they were honestly nuisances. No—it was because they were friends that she wished they’d guess from what day and what month today was.

Her feelings probably showed on her face.

One could say that Mizuki read the mood from the slight change in Honoka’s expression.

She suddenly began to fidget. This was quite uncomfortable, but saying I’m going on ahead or I remembered something I have to do out of nowhere would also be too obvious.

It was a deadlock, where their thought processes aligned but she couldn’t make a move, but rather surprisingly (?), the one to break it was Miyuki.

“Mizuki, is there something on your uniform?”

“Huh?”

Not expecting the sudden comment, Mizuki did her best to crane her neck and look over her shoulder at her back.

There was no way she’d be able to see her back like that, and there was no dirt or anything on it in the first place, so it was no more than fruitless labor, but—

“Come here. I’ll get it off for you. Brother, I apologize, but please, go on ahead. Honoka, you go on, too.”

“Oh, I see,” agreed Tatsuya blandly from next to Honoka. Honoka, for her part, grew flustered; he gave her a simple chin nod to urge her on.

She followed after him, her gait unsteady as she threw a look of appreciation over her shoulder.

Miyuki smiled a little and nodded.

The unexpected turn of events, with just the boy and girl going to school, sent Honoka’s nervous excitement through the roof. Even when Tatsuya said something to her, it was all she could do to nod and respond with “uh-huh.” And hoarsely, at that. Tatsuya was actually walking slowly, and yet, her joints felt so tense it seemed like her feet would get tangled and trip over nothing at any moment.

Her self-assessment told her that it was social anxiety, which was the undeniable truth.

But once they got into school, the entrances used by Course 1 and Course 2 students were different. Even Honoka understood that would mean wasting this perfect chance.

Not making the most of an opportunity a rival provided was the same as betraying them.

“Umm, Tatsuya!”

Once they’d gotten through the school gates, Honoka called out and stopped him.

“Could I maybe take up a bit of your time?!”

Her manner of speaking was stiff and formal, like a subordinate speaking to an officer many ranks higher than her or an executive several strata above.

“Sure.”

Tatsuya accepted it with a reserved smile, not a hint of annoyance, and nodded.

“Please… Come over here.”

Honoka hurried toward the rear yard, sneaking to try to avoid drawing attention (which just made her stand out more), and Tatsuya chased after her, careful not to fall behind or overtake her.

With an expression that said he knew everything.

“Umm, Tatchu—!”

In the shade behind the robotics club garage, known by the school as a tête-à-tête (confession) spot. (Though there were no particular legends about it.) Honoka went out in front of Tatsuya, forcefully held out a small, meticulously wrapped box in both hands—and, with all her might, choked on her words.

After which, she froze.

Her long hair, pulled into two tails that hung to neck length, didn’t hide how red her ears were.

Her downcast face was crimson from the middle all the way to her forehead, peeking out through the gap in her bangs, which hung to either side.

She couldn’t budge. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t advance or retreat like she wanted to. Her arms trembled, and her heart pounded out of control. Similar waves were rippling out from all over the rest of the school, but the ones her heart created were as strong and large as anyone else’s. They were beautiful, unsullied waves, like the tones created by a tuning fork She’d lost her heart, and the waves made her very soul tremble, guiding her to come into herself.

“Thank you, Honoka.”

From Honoka’s hands—still stuck out, as she couldn’t move, constricted by her own too-strong feelings—Tatsuya gently took the small chocolate box, careful not to damage the wrapper. And in exchange, he placed a small, palm-sized paper bag into her hand and closed her fingers around it.

For a moment, at least, her curiosity about the unexpected act overrode her embarrassment. Honoka brought the paper bag to her breast, then looked up with a blank expression.

“Umm, Tatsuya, what’s…?”

“A little something in return. It’s separate from next month, so you can expect something then, too.”

Honoka hastily wiped the tears that suddenly formed in her widened eyes and gave a clumsy smile.

“I, um, is this, I can’t… Umm, Tatsuya, may I open it?”

“Of course.”

Honoka took the present out of the bag and gazed at it listlessly…

“…Honoka, we should get to class.”

…Until Tatsuya said something to her, breaking her out of a standstill.

Tatsuya had been carefully attentive to whether anyone was peeping or listening in on them.

Still, he hadn’t gone so far as to use Elemental Sight. He couldn’t risk revealing a skill designated as top secret just for a Valentine’s Day event.

However, he should have used it.

There had been nobody trying to eavesdrop. Because It hadn’t had a mind until just a moment ago.

Inside a garage built in a corner of the First High campus, It had been dozing within a doll without a heart when It awakened to a wave much like the one that had dragged It into this world.

The term awakened might invite a slight misunderstanding.

Bathed in strong, pure thoughts, similar to prayers, a new ego sprouted for It.

It would probably be more accurate to say Its ego was reconstructed.

As It slept inside the soulless doll, a mind was born for It.

The puppet now had a mind of its own.

After arriving in the classroom, no sooner did Honoka put her things down than she ran into the bathroom—and dragged Miyuki with her.

They weren’t headed for the stalls; instead they went before the mirrors.

With vexation, she pulled out the bands tying her hair, then pivoted and, with careful motions, smoothed it out.

The finishing touch was what she’d just received from Tatsuya—a pair of hair accessories. The elastic hair bands had a simple design, with two small spheres laid into a setting hanging from them. But though the design was simple, their construction and materials were not the cheap sort. For one thing, the bands didn’t tie into a loop but went through the settings to form loops around the entire rear covers. Plus, the silver-colored settings were shaped like tiny nails holding the spheres, and those spheres were perfect crystals with high purity.

Rock crystals were valued more for their use as a magical assistance medium than as a decoration these days (it was said they gave sharper direction to the waves of your thoughts). The crystals were the type of precious stone most familiar to the girls at magic high schools, and Honoka understood their worth as well. Though doubtless she would have been overjoyed even if they’d been cheap glass balls, since they were a gift from Tatsuya. She was all the more touched for it.

“Hey, Miyuki, how do they look? They don’t look weird, do they? Do they look good on me?”

Putting her hands to the hair ornaments, Honoka asked a little uneasily.

Miyuki, without smiling or appearing annoyed, gave her a completely serious answer. “Don’t worry, Honoka. They look great.”

“…Really?”

“Really. Brother would never choose a gift that looked bad on you, would he?”

Honoka nodded, blood rushing to her face.

Too occupied with her happiness, she didn’t notice the strange emptiness in Miyuki’s voice, as though she were reciting a script.

On the short path to his own classroom after parting with Honoka, Tatsuya was fighting against the self-loathing rising within him.

His sense of guilt for what he’d done to deceive her and his regret at making his sister an accomplice were a pain like a toothache, slowly spreading through his heart.

The hair ornaments he’d given Honoka were, in truth, things Miyuki had picked out.

If that was all, then it was just a little white lie. It didn’t change the fact that it was a gift from Tatsuya, and there was no need to purposely disappoint the girl.

But the reason he’d given her that present wasn’t anything so innocent.

Tatsuya had known that if he gave her a gift in return for the chocolate, her mind would be saturated by that alone. He’d predicted that it wouldn’t give her the time to think about anything that went along with the giving of Valentine’s Day chocolate, like words exchanged to express their “feelings,” or “promises” to link them in a relationship—and that’s what had happened.

That was why he’d prepared a return gift for the day of, and Honoka’s response had been exactly as Tatsuya had calculated.

Tatsuya had toyed with her heart.

He’d given up on himself a long time ago.

There was no helping the fact that he was a monster who didn’t understand human emotions, and he knew that if other people’s goodwill ran out or he received retribution because of it, it was well deserved. (If one were to point out that this wasn’t resignation but a so-what attitude, they’d be exactly correct.)

However, when it came to using his sister for an underhanded plan to buy time while knowing she’d never disobey him, he couldn’t help but feel regret.

The very fact that he had these thoughts was proof he wasn’t as far gone as he might have assumed, but unfortunately, there were no adults in his life to tell him that.

“Yo. You look kind of exhausted, and the day just started.”

He must not have switched gears in time. The moment he entered the classroom, that was the comment he got.

Leo, straddling his chair, raised a hand in greeting, and Tatsuya returned it.

“And you seem good as new, even though you just got discharged.”

“You know, the proper greeting is ‘good morning.’”

Then Mikihiko interrupted, making a resigned sort of grin.

“Right. Good morning, Mikihiko.”

“Heya.”

Contrary to Tatsuya, who listened and gave an actual morning greeting, Leo seemed to want to stick to his own way of doing things—though he probably didn’t mean anything by it.

“Good morning. Leo, you’re back to normal, huh?”

When Mikihiko said “back to normal,” he meant “the same as ever,” but…

“You got it. The doctor really didn’t want to discharge me, so I’ve got a ton of pent-up energy.”

…whether or not Leo understood that, he answered the question literally.

His initial diagnosis was that he’d be living in the hospital for at least another month, but Leo had a nonsensical ability to recover from things. The doctor would inevitably have been rather skeptical of it.

But since they could see nothing actually wrong with him, and the patient himself wanted to be discharged, they couldn’t keep him in the hospital forever. With all that, he’d returned today.

“What about you, Tatsuya? You get in a fight with your sister this morning?”

“Of course not.”

That wasn’t Tatsuya’s remark but Mikihiko’s.

Tatsuya wasn’t exactly happy at the immediate declaration, but it wasn’t a misunderstanding, either, so he couldn’t argue the point.

“He’s probably tired out from the battlefield, right? Today is Valentine’s, after all.”

“Oh!” Leo gave a big nod.

That pushed his buttons, too, but if he got mad at that, he’d be stuck in the swamp.

“I don’t have a significant other, so there’s no battlefields for me… Mizuki. You’re late today.”

Tatsuya feigned ignorance, using the girl who had just entered the classroom as an obvious way to divert the topic.

“I just stopped by the club room. Good morning, Yoshida, Leo.”

With Tatsuya being so unsubtle about the change of topic, Mikihiko et al. were making somewhat frustrated faces, but given her qualities, Mizuki didn’t notice it at all.

“You’re coming to school again, Leo? I’m glad you recovered faster than we thought.”

In actuality, they’d heard he’d be discharged yesterday and coming to school today when they visited him last week, and Mizuki obviously would have known.

So normally, this comment would have sounded strange, but Tatsuya, Mikihiko—

“Yep! Thanks for coming to visit so many times.”

—and Leo all grinned it away.

No sooner did Mizuki sit down than she handed small, palm-sized boxes to the three of them. Her attitude about it was very bland, without a hint of haughtiness, nervousness, or embarrassment.

It was the face of someone who saw this special day rationally, as a mere annual event.

There was approximately one boy who looked a little unhappy about it, but he appeared to be trying to keep a straight face, so the other two said nothing.

It was the mercy of the brave.

Incidentally, that one person was not Leo.

However, Leo was simply staring in curiosity at the small box he’d received.

Apparently, this was the first time he’d received chocolate on Valentine’s Day from anyone outside his family.

It felt quite unexpected, but they didn’t know what sort of student he was in middle school, so neither Tatsuya nor Mikihiko made their surprise known.

The one who did was Erika, who had just come into the classroom.

“I thought you were out of the hospital early. You were after the chocolate?”

Although her remark went little beyond an expression of surprise, from Leo’s point of view, it was abuse that he couldn’t let slide.

“Of course not! Don’t be stupid, woman!”

Not only did he retort, he kicked his seat out and stood up.

“Oh, was I right?”

Certainly, if you wanted to read into it, his reaction was extreme enough to interpret that way.

If you really forced the interpretation, that is.

Leo began using a compound skill that combined a growling and a grinding of teeth. Tatsuya, however, had just been teased earlier, and as retribution, he didn’t offer any particular aid to his friend in need, leaving him alone as he addressed Erika:

“Good morning, Erika. You’re late today.”

Erika turned around and responded, “Morning, Tatsuya.”

The natural consequence was that Leo got left behind.

“February 14 is awful every year,” she continued. “It’s because we got so many men around in our dojo.”

Erika didn’t originally intend to mess with Leo—those were her honest complaints—but it seemed like her mind was shifting in that direction.

“More than a few of them get all pouty like children if you don’t give them anything, but they’re also the ones who improve their skills the most, so I can’t ignore them. It’s awful.”

Her repetition of awful probably showed just how strongly she felt it.

“Can’t you just give it to the ones who want it?”

“Then a couple others start pushing their luck, complaining it’s unfair… And then suddenly, they decide to organize. Normally, the word unity isn’t even in their vocabulary.” A truly disgusted expression rose to Erika’s face. “At least my parents pay for it, pretending it’s to foster friendship with the pupils, and the female students come shopping for it with me, but…”

Her face was so annoyed it made Tatsuya want to show her some pretend sympathy. “That really does seem like a lot of work.”

“It is! It’s so annoying… Valentine’s Day can go jump off a cliff for all I care!”

Erika’s stress must have erupted while she was talking. She was seriously indignant.

“Miki, you must have it nice.” As often happened at times like these, she went straight for venting. “You’ve got a lot of girls among your pupils, don’t you?”

This time, she’d chosen Mikihiko as her target.

“You get your pick of the litter every year, don’t you?”

“Yoshida… Is that true?” Mizuki interjected.

She didn’t really know why she’d asked it.

Or rather, she wasn’t thinking about the reason.

And Mikihiko, too, took more damage from Mizuki’s remark than Erika’s words themselves, but he didn’t bother trying to find out the reason.

“That’s not true!”

Instead, he gave a reactionary answer.

This conversation would have been quicker if he’d thought about the context a little more, but maybe it was too much to ask of a sixteen-year-old boy.

“Anyway, if I were that frivolous, I could never do any real training.”

But that was a careless remark.

“Oh no you don’t, Miki. What about our dojo are you trying to say is frivolous?”

“Uh, wait, I didn’t mean that—”

“Then what in the world did you mean?”

With Mikihiko starting to sweat, Erika locked her gaze onto him, and Mizuki made a somehow similar expression as she, Tatsuya, and Leo exchanged pained grins.

The magic high school curriculum was a normal high school–level program, plus a magical program. All modern educational systems, not just magic high schools, promoted specialization at an early stage. In concrete terms, educational practices placed importance on students concentrating on fields such as literary programs, science programs, arts programs, or physical education programs in order to improve their skills in a single category starting at the high school stage. This meant that, excluding certain high schools that boasted comprehensive educational programs, students had a jam-packed curriculum that included both general education and field-specific education. But even so, it was said that magical curricula sported especially little wiggle room.

Consequently, magic high school students were diligent. The kind of “play” that implied wasting time, like gossiping during class or thinking about off-task things, was essentially absent. Perhaps it should be called unfortunate that at First High, this impulse was stronger with the students in Course 1 than in Course 2. Perhaps the reason was that their sense of fear at being left behind was stronger than their fighting spirit to overcome the odds against them.

But here, too, there were exceptions. During the general program’s physical education period, set up to be separate from magic practice, the tense atmosphere had a tendency to settle down. It was especially prominent on days like today, February 14, when students hadn’t been able to fully focus on classes all morning, and a giddy mood drifted among them.

The girls’ school uniforms took more time to change into and out of than their male counterparts’. This wasn’t particular to First High—most schools had the same thing going on. And it wasn’t particular to school uniforms in the first place. Most men and women hadn’t wanted the unisex fashion culture advocated by certain gender discrimination abolitionists.

During the short times between classes, the pre–phys ed changing rooms were constantly filled with a hurried air. In a great rush, but careful not to damage anything, they removed their clothes, hung them on hangers, placed them in their lockers, and changed into their gym clothes. The lockers had biometric authentication, and more than enough of them were available to give one to each person. Each time a student used one, it would register their vein patterns, so the student had to take that time into consideration, too.

Nevertheless, the students were used to it by February, and now they could talk to nearby girls while their hands moved briskly, leaving them enough time to even be worried and reassured by turns (?) over what their classmates looked like in their underwear. Today, the changing room was experiencing a greater stir than usual.

By this time of year, the students had more or less staked their claims upon a locker. As always, Miyuki got changed in front of a locker in the middle of the right-hand wall. To her left was Honoka’s. To her right was the one Shizuku normally used, but at the moment, when class 1-A was having phys ed class, it was an extra locker.

Today, though, Lina had come up on Miyuki’s right side.

“Oh, hello, Lina. Is your usual spot taken?” asked Miyuki as she put her CAD and information terminal away in the compartment in her locker.

The locker Lina usually used was the one close to the entrance. At first, all the girls in class A figured she’d use the same locker Shizuku had been using, but Lina had purposely chosen an unpopular, unused locker near the door. When Miyuki told Tatsuya about it, he had said, “She probably chose it so she can get out in a hurry,” which had been enough to convince her. There was no guarantee his speculation was right. What she could say for sure was that this was the first time Lina was getting changed next to her.

“Well, no.”

Miyuki didn’t ask Well, why then? Instead, with a simple, uninterested “oh,” she put a hand on her outerwear.

But Lina, who maybe thought her answer was a little too unfriendly, supplemented her remark while taking off her own outerwear. “When you asked who I’d give chocolate to… I know you weren’t trying to be mean, but now it’s bothering me a little.”

“Everyone wants to know. You’re cute, after all,” said the Shiba sister seriously as she slipped her necktie off.

Lina puffed out her cheeks, dissatisfied. “Then why aren’t you…getting bombarded with questions?”

Lina’s objection cut off in the middle the moment Miyuki opened her uniform’s dress and was about to take out her right shoulder. It was a very simple action with no real meaning behind it, but it glued Lina’s eyes to it and temporarily stopped her tongue from working.

“Who can say? I suppose I don’t have the sex appeal.”

When Miyuki said that, Lina got mad for no reason—or rather, without knowing the reason. She didn’t consciously pull off her own uniform dress as if to compete with her.

As Lina’s half-naked body appeared from under the uniform, this time it was Miyuki who breathed a sigh of admiration.

“Lina, you have a nice figure. I envy you.” As she said that, she unabashedly stripped down to her own underwear.

“Was that sarcasm? What reason could you possibly have to be jealous of me?” Glaring at Miyuki’s seminude form, Lina put a hand to her hip, drew herself up to full height, and snapped.

“Your waist and your butt have just the right amount of firmness. They’re very sexy. You’re not just skinny, you’re really in shape, you know?”

Miyuki reached out with her right hand and rubbed the narrow part of Lina’s waist. It was, in a sense, an innocent way of touching, without any sort of lust involved at all. But even though Lina knew there was no sexual desire involved, she found it hard to maintain her presence of mind. They heard a few gulps from here and there in the changing room—the scene was enough to make people lose their cool from simply watching.

Of course, Lina didn’t have time to worry about the peanut gallery. “Th-that goes for you, too,” she said, reaching out with a hand. But just before reaching Miyuki’s skin, she hesitated and pulled back. “You have a very feminine body, not muscular at all. It makes me jealous.”

With Lina blushing and her eyes wandering, Miyuki gave her classmate a mischievous smile and released her hand from her waist.

Then they heard a loud slam come from behind Miyuki.

Miyuki turned around, and Lina looked over.

Honoka was clinging to her locker, paralyzed.

Miyuki cast a vague look around and saw her classmates, in the middle of changing, blushing and looking away in their immodest states. She had been naturally ignoring the stares like she always did, so it was only now that she realized everyone’s attention was on the scene they were acting out.

“…We should finish getting changed.”

To this proposal of Miyuki’s,

“Yes.”

Lina, who felt the same way, answered readily.

The giddy mood exploded after school ended. Between classes, the students had probably been exercising self-restraint. Like a dam had broken, bittersweet acts were playing out here and there on campus, some of them the sort you’d want to throw rocks at.

Their aspects were varied, too.

For example, gift scenes with a little too much energy in them, not only between nearby friends but even between parentally approved fiancés. Specifically, the disciplinary committee chairwoman, Kanon, barged into the student council room and used her smile to pressure the accountant, Isori, into eating, right on the spot, the homemade chocolates she’d packed into a thick paper gift box fancy enough to be someone’s high-class bento box.

For example, cases where girls were being a little shy but stubborn. Specifically, the kendo-kenjutsu couple, with the female student, not caring about things like “obligatory chocolate” or “pride,” storming into a Course 1 classroom, a high threshold for a Course 2 student to cross, blushing and averting her eyes as she offered a red ribboned box, and the male student’s eyes widening in an expression of surprise and taking the box with an attitude suggesting he might start to dance right then and there.

For today alone, the First High students seemed to be enjoying the joys of youth not as magicians in the making but as high school students.

For those who couldn’t join in the festive atmosphere, though, it was the last thing they needed to see.

“Oh, Tatsuya. It’s your turn on patrol today?”

Tatsuya, who couldn’t get away without seeing those sights no matter what he did, nodded and responded to the voice across the table, his face unable to hide his mental fatigue.

“All the upperclassmen apparently had plans. It’s just the freshmen today—Morisaki and I.”

Normally, having a fellow would have lightened his mood a little. But when it came to Morisaki, who still had no intention of breaking his unfriendly attitude, it just gave him a downtrodden feeling.

“In other words, they politely made you do it.”

“I wouldn’t have put it so bluntly, but yes.”

His voice was filled with resignation, and Mayumi laughed pleasantly in contrast.

“By the way, Tatsuya…”

As though satisfied with her bout of giggling, the young woman’s face straightened and she addressed him again.

Without, for some reason, looking at the seat across from her.

“I’d like a moment of your time.”

“I don’t mind, but first…” said Tatsuya, glancing at the upperclassman sitting across from Mayumi, slumped over the table. “What on earth happened here?”

They were currently in a corner of the cafeteria, in an area with several simple partitioned meeting spaces.

There was no door or ceiling, so whatever they said would be public information.

But the fact that they weren’t locked rooms probably made them feel more secure, not less.

Because of their popularity, they had essentially turned into private spaces for Course 1 seniors, and underclassmen never really visited unless it was with a senior. Incidentally, Tatsuya had never used one, either.

Then why, you may ask, was he here?

“He couldn’t have been poisoned on campus. What did Chairman Hattori eat?”

During his school patrol, Tatsuya had gotten thirsty and dropped by the cafeteria, which was when he’d heard a very painful moan and went to look.

“Well, I… It wasn’t poison, of course.”

He’d immediately picked out the culprit.

Mayumi had been sitting straight across from Hattori with a rather nonplussed look, after all.

He could call the way she sat, as though at a bit of a loss, unusual.

Even now, she seemed to have an air about her that suggested her gaze might start wandering.

“…Shiba?”

As Tatsuya was unsuccessfully trying to come up with a way to deal with this, Hattori, who had looked unconscious, spoke to him from still facedown on the table.

“…Water…”

It was a frail voice, like that of a desert traveler on the way to an oasis.

“One moment, please.”

His request, though, was clear.

Tatsuya wavered for a moment on whether to get him mineral water or water from the cooler, but the cooler was closer, so he chose that. He filled one of the cups on the attached stack with water and placed it on the table.

Hattori’s hand groped around for the cup. Once he grabbed it, he slowly came up, putting it to his mouth while shaking his head unsteadily, scowling as he downed the entire thing.

He remained stock-still with eyes closed for a time, but after the second hand had revolved about ninety degrees, Hattori finally opened his eyes and exhaled deeply.

“Shiba, you have my thanks.”

Seriously, what on earth had happened? Despite Hattori no longer having the prickliness from the time they’d had their sham of a duel in April, the relationship between him and Tatsuya still couldn’t be called amicable by any means.

For Tatsuya’s part, he had nothing in particular against the boy.

And Hattori had never felt malice or hostility toward him, either, rather seeming like he had an excess of emotion on his hands. But even still, Tatsuya couldn’t help but be surprised when Hattori thanked him so straightforwardly.

“…Are you all right?”

“…Yeah, I’m fine now,” said Hattori, springing to his feet—though Tatsuya couldn’t deny it looked like he was forcing himself. “You’ve saved me the trouble. No particular problems have occurred, so please don’t worry about it anymore. Pres—or rather, Saegusa. I’ll be taking my leave now.”

Hattori bowed politely to Mayumi, then straightened up and left.

When he saw it, Tatsuya thought, What could he possibly be putting on a strong front for?

“Umm, well, could you take a seat for now?”

Giving a smile that was a complicated mixture of feigned ignorance and knowing hypocrisy, Mayumi urged him to sit.

The reason Hattori had ended up this way doubtlessly had to do with her; she was clearly trying to change the topic. But exposing someone Hattori himself had tried to cover for struck him as a tasteless act.

Therefore, Tatsuya decided to do as Hattori said and forgot the whole thing ever happened.

He had nothing particularly urgent on his plate, so he returned the nod with an “all right,” but then…

“Oh, there he is! Subaru, over here!”

…a cheery voice frustrated his plans to get started.

There was a light pattering of feet running to them.

After coming up right next to Tatsuya, she must have finally seen inside the partition.

Amy, the voice’s owner, skidded to an almost audible stop. “P-President!”

“Hey, Amy,” Subaru interjected. “She’s not the president anymore, remember?”

Subaru poked at her head to make the point, and Amy grabbed the spot with an “ow!” When she pegged Subaru with a protest glare, Subaru purposely looked away from her and gave a deep bow to Mayumi.

“I apologize terribly for disturbing you in the middle of something.”

The suggestive tone made one of Mayumi’s eyes twitch. “We weren’t in the middle of anything, so don’t worry about it, Satomi,” she answered indifferently with an unconcerned look.

Her voice, wording, and gaze, if she’d been a normal underclassman, probably would have been more reserved.

And in truth, Amy was a little frozen in place—

“I see. Our matters will be wrapped up momentarily, so please do not mind us.”

—but Subaru was a rather tough one.

She retorted calmly before handing the cloth bag in her hand to Tatsuya.

“Would you be so kind as to accept this?”

“…Satomi? You’re acting more theatrical than usual.”

“For reasons unbeknownst to me, Amy and I were selected as representatives. Even I would be somewhat embarrassed were I to remove this mask of mine.”

When Tatsuya looked closer, her cheeks were slightly red.

Subaru didn’t seem to be lying about the embarrassment.

“Could I ask what exactly you’re representatives of?”

He had a good guess what the answer would be, but he needed to buy time to collect himself as well, so he asked the question anyway.

“This is…right, a gesture of thanks from the Nine School Competition freshman girls’ team.”

The pretext Subaru had chosen ran contrary to Tatsuya’s expectations, but they meant the same thing. In other words, it was obligatory chocolate.

And from the entire team, too—an unexpectedly bountiful harvest.

“Oh, it’s the whole team but not Miyuki or Honoka.”

Amy, who had unfrozen, didn’t seem especially embarrassed, though. With her personality, she never felt daunted, and when it came to male-female relationships, she was (in a good meaning of the word) simple and innocent. For her, maybe she just had too many other things on her mind.

“They most likely wish to give you something personally, after all,” Subaru finished.

“If we did anything out of place, they’d probably get mad,” Amy agreed.

“Not that it fully replaces them, but this includes Shizuku’s part as well. Make sure you call her or text her later to say you received it.”

“That’s it. Bye, Tatsuya. Pres—er, Saegusa, sorry to have intruded.”

Tatsuya had no time to get a word in at the end of the conversation.

Their lightning-fast talking overwhelmed Tatsuya and Mayumi as Subaru and Amy left.

“…How to put this? It’s nice to be young.”

Mayumi, perhaps thrown off her game by the festive gate-crashers, gave her own rather off-the-mark impression.

Tatsuya, of course, didn’t step on the land mines laid before him.

Without a word, he took a seat in the chair Hattori had been sitting in until a moment ago.

At the same time, he reflexively scowled.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, it just smells a little… Did someone spill coffee here?”

The fairly overpowering stench of either coffee or cacao beans had found its way to Tatsuya’s nose. He thought the cleaning robots had deodorizing functions, but… Had she gotten help for this?

And as Tatsuya thought about it,

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

Mayumi, who knew the truth, assumed an air of nonchalance.

Playing dumb didn’t mean a thing, of course.

“More importantly, here.”

After all, the same scent was drifting from the box Mayumi held out to him.

Tatsuya, of course, noticed the smell, too. His gut told him beyond the shadow of a doubt that this was also what had dealt a blow to Hattori. He had planned to forget what he’d just seen, but Mayumi didn’t seem to want to let him.

“…What’s this?”

It was clear what it was, considering the shape, the wrapping, and today’s date—but he still had to ask the question.

“Oh, come on. You know what it is.”

Though her words indicated annoyance, her voice and expression looked very amused.

“…Well, thank you very much.”

Unfortunately, he had no excuse to refuse it.

If not for what had just happened, he might have been able to use the clichéd excuse that he didn’t like sweets much, but now that he’d received a load of chocolate from Subaru and the others, that would have zero persuasive power.

Without a choice, Tatsuya took the chocolate from Mayumi.

It was…pretty large.

From how it felt in his hands, it was five times the weight of chocolate bars from the store.

At this point, Tatsuya got a fairly good idea what exactly his senior was plotting. He didn’t have any idea how he’d earned this spite, though.

“Go ahead, try a piece.”

Mayumi’s words were the ones he’d expected.

“Right now?”

“Yep. I want to hear what you think of it.”

But you just finished testing it on Hattori, he thought, but he managed to hold it back.

He was fully aware saying it wouldn’t get him anywhere.

She probably wanted to see what sort of face he’d make from up close.

I didn’t realize she had such a childish side to her… he thought, glancing at the package. Well, fine.

He had something he wanted to ask Mayumi about anyway. He felt bad holding her up for so long, since her exams were right around the corner, but if she was going to make a plaything out of him, she probably wouldn’t mind him taking up her time.

“In that case, I have something I’d like to talk to you about, so could we go somewhere else?”

His questions were the sort he didn’t want normal people to hear. Of course, that wasn’t the only reason he wanted to change locations. Even Tatsuya worried a little about his reputation. If he ate the chocolate and collapsed, it might not earn him eternal shame, but it would be pretty disgraceful.

“You don’t want others to hear?”

Mayumi seemed to immediately discern one of his reasons.

The smile disappeared from her face. It transformed into a tightly drawn expression almost audibly.

“Yes.”

“…All right. Come with me.”

In the time before she answered, she’d looked at her portable information terminal and adjusted it. She’d probably found an empty room for them. Students couldn’t normally do that, but it wasn’t strange for this senior.

As Mayumi left her seat, Tatsuya followed her, holding the box she’d given him.

He felt at least ten people staring at him, but he shook them off. He’d get nowhere if he let them bother him.

Using a disposable key code she downloaded to her information terminal, Mayumi unlocked the door to one of the conversation lounges used for meetings with parents, siblings, and traders. It wasn’t as strictly formal as the drawing room, but it was made so that students would hesitate just a little to use it for themselves.

The thought of whether it was okay to use didn’t escape him, but the question would have been a bit late after she’d been able to download a key code for it. The room featured a fully automatic tea server—she had picked one where they could eat and drink.

“Is black tea all right?”

“Please, don’t trouble yourself.”

“Now, don’t embarrass a woman.”

Put that way, all he could do was nod and watch.

The fully automatic machine wasn’t the cheap type where a paper cup would come out on its own. It needed you to place a teacup under the dripper and prepare a saucer for it.

Mayumi seemed to enjoy herself as she went through the motions.

“Here you are.”

“Thank you.”

Out of politeness, Tatsuya took a sip from the cup, then sat up straighter.

As though drawn by the motion, Mayumi sat down as well and straightened her back.

“Did you want to discuss the vampire?”

Mayumi was the one to spark the conversation. Maybe she’d wanted to talk to Tatsuya herself.

“Yes. It hasn’t been appearing in the media lately. Has the damage subsided?”

It wasn’t only the media. Even his information stream from the Independent Magic Battalion had given him zero damage reports after that day.

If you thought about it simply, you could see it as Tatsuya and the others having exterminated the parasite and resolved the incident. But they now knew for sure that there were several of the demons acting in the shadows. Even if they had been able to defeat the vampire back then, it couldn’t possibly have resolved the entire incident. That was how Tatsuya thought of it.

“On the surface, yeah.”

Mayumi, or rather the Saegusa family, had different information routes than Tatsuya. But even she didn’t know the details of the current situation.

“But the number of missing persons this year is high compared to other years, so we should probably interpret that as them getting more careful with their actions. Maybe taking one down put them on their guard.”

This was a view held by the entire Saegusa family, but the truth was different. Only a very select handful of people knew that all the parasites had been temporarily exterminated one week ago.

So the conversation Tatsuya and Mayumi were having here was, in reality, off the mark. But it was nearly certain that they hadn’t beaten the parasite’s main body, and that it would eventually gain a new host and revive. So the sense of danger they entertained wasn’t wholly meaningless.

“We don’t know for sure it was taken down, but they are probably on their guard against us. It could be that they possess coperception between them.”

“Co…perception?”

Mayumi tilted her head at the unfamiliar term.

“It’s a shortened form of common sensual perception. It’s a form of ESP observed frequently between identical twins. ‘Frequently’ as in ‘relative to rare examples,’ of course.”

“In other words, if one sees or hears something, the entire group shares the experience?”

“Yes, but it’s nothing more than speculation.”

Mayumi fell into thought, a difficult look on her face.

Tatsuya quietly drank his black tea so as not to bother her, and—

“…I hate not understanding anything.”

—heard the former president mutter.

Personally, Tatsuya agreed completely, but if he went ahead and said that, this would end up being a joint complaining session. That seemed far too unconstructive.

“When it comes to situations with a lot of unknowns, all we can do is hope we stumble onto ways to deal with them.”

Hence, his words, not of consolation but for ease of mind, which he spoke without a choice.

“…”

Tatsuya knew he wasn’t actually saying anything, either, which made the serious gaze on him several times more uncomfortable.

“…Not exactly.”

But it seemed like Mayumi’s stare meant something completely different.

“The fact that I had no clue what the term common sensual perception meant… That won’t be on the entrance exams, will it?”

“…ESP is treated as a separate academic field from the magic sciences, so I don’t think it will.”

The uncomfortable feeling reached its peak.

After managing to collect themselves and finish trading information, they took a breather when Mayumi announced, “That about does it.”

Tatsuya, with an air of innocence, then tried to leave, only to find his sleeve clamped by a reaching hand.

If he’d really wanted to, he could have gotten out of this, but he restrained himself. It seemed like it would only invite more trouble.

“It’s time for tea, wouldn’t you say?”

Mayumi repelled his (purposely, of course) dubious gaze with an impregnable smile of her own, and with her free hand, she poked at the box he’d left on the table behind him.

It looked, unfortunately, like she hadn’t forgotten.

And with her attitude, she wasn’t even trying to hide what she was plotting anymore. Tatsuya sighed a little.

She didn’t call him out with her words.

Instead, she watched him with anxious, excited eyes.

Did the exams give her a nervous breakdown and make her regress to childhood? he thought, an impossibility in two senses (with Mayumi’s grades, she’d never have a nervous breakdown), before taking off the wrapper on the small box.

He didn’t purposefully take a long time doing it, since she would have seen right through it, but he still took it off neatly, without tearing any of the wrapping paper, as his sole form of resistance.

What appeared before him was a thick paper box, covered on the top by a matching lid.

Inside was a container layered with vinyl, made by someone who preferred to do things by hand. Its size was, so to speak, perfect for “the genuine article.”

Of course, Tatsuya didn’t make that misunderstanding.

The stench wouldn’t allow it—it was either cacao or coffee, he couldn’t tell, and it threatened to make him dizzy.

Black cubes were packed inside the box. At the very least, this was not “chocolate” as Tatsuya knew it.

The smell alone gave him a good idea of the taste, too.

He could say all he wanted that he was fine with bitter foods, but there was a limit to that in terms of quality and quantity.

He wanted to call it medicine, not food, but Tatsuya resigned himself and tossed one after another into his mouth, then bit down.

As for the result—here it shall only be stated that Mayumi grinned in satisfaction.

On a job for the student council, Honoka cut through the schoolyard and headed for the prep building, carrying a large notebook terminal.

The sun was already low on the horizon, and the temperature had fallen significantly. If she relaxed her attention, her body might start to shiver.

But in her current state of mind, this cold was nothing.

Her hair, tied into two tails, swayed with her step.

The crystal balls swung with them, and her attention accidentally ended up on them.

She knew herself that her mouth had relaxed into a smile, but that was fine today, so who cared?

Honoka was aware she was not Tatsuya’s girlfriend.

She hadn’t forgotten the fact that she’d already confessed and been rejected.

She’d already been turned down.

Nevertheless, she stuck with him, taking the fact that he didn’t push her away as a good thing.

Sometimes, she thought of herself as a terrible girl for it.

There were some nights where she got mad at him, thinking that if he’d just spurn her completely, she might be able to get over it.

But today, she felt as though all those negative emotions had flown away somewhere.

The logic that “small objects were too cheap to appease” her was powerless in the face of her true feelings.

“Honoka!”

As she was about to enter the prep building with a spring in her step, she stopped at a voice calling to her from the side.

“Oh, Amy.”

A short girl with strikingly vivid red hair with a ruby-like sheen trotted over to her.

“You don’t come this way very often. Not since getting onto the student council, right?”

“I’m here in place of Isori,” she said, lightly bringing up the notebook terminal to show her. Amy gave an understanding expression. “Did you not have club today, Amy?”

The hunting club Amy belonged to wore a uniform with slender pants, boots, and a short jacket over a long-sleeved shirt, but she was in her school uniform right now. Her club wouldn’t have ended by now, either…

“We just had a meeting today.” Amy understood the question when she saw Honoka looking at her uniform, so she didn’t bother asking Honoka why she asked. “Wait, are those crystals?”

Instead—though that wasn’t exactly the right word for it—she sharply caught sight of the light swaying with Honoka’s hair and asked in a deeply curious tone.

“Oh, yes.”

As though Honoka’s bashful expression made complete sense, Amy lofted a happy-looking grin. “You got them from Shiba, didn’t you?”

“…Yeah, in return…for the chocolate.”

Honoka continued to smile, cheeks red, as though Amy’s celebratory attitude had infected her. Amy’s eyes widened. “Really… Shiba’s pretty good, getting a present for you ahead of time. He seems unfriendly, but he really can show consideration like that. What an adult!”

Honoka’s smile broadened even more happily.

But the next thing Amy said cast a shadow over the smile.

“I see why he’s so popular. The president was trying to give him chocolate before, too, and it might have been the real kind.”

“…The president?”

“Oh, sorry. The former president. Saegusa.”

“She did?”

“Yeah, but it seemed like she’d grabbed him by force. Shiba was making a sort of annoyed face, so I don’t think you need to worry.”

Amy was speaking absentmindedly, so that was probably an honest impression. Nevertheless, Honoka’s heart wasn’t peaceful.

She’d suspected for some time that Mayumi might have special feelings for Tatsuya. If it came down to a battle against her, Honoka wasn’t confident she’d be able to win.

Miyuki, her current biggest rival, was shackled at the final line by the fact that she was blood-related to him. Somewhere in her mind, she found relief that they’d ultimately never end up getting together.

But Mayumi had no such restrictions.

With both her looks and magical abilities surpassing Honoka’s, the only advantage Honoka had was that she wasn’t older than him. But Tatsuya didn’t seem the sort to let a year or two difference bother him.

Little waves began to ripple inside her heart.

The waves spread, showing no sign of settling.

The waves didn’t stop within her heart.

Honoka’s jubilation this morning had shaken that which resided inside the puppet.

And now, through the passage that had connected them before, Honoka’s thought waves shook It once again.

This time, the newborn napping consciousness was really trying to wake up.

By the time Tatsuya left the school gates carrying a large cloth bag, the sun had already gone down.

During February, the days reached their shortest point, and sunset grew later and later.

However, the cold was still in the peak of its severity. Without the sun’s light, the temperature began to plummet.

Perhaps it was inevitable to naturally drift close enough to touch shoulders.

In reality, for the students who had stayed until the gates closed and were now hurrying home as though they’d been evicted, several of them could be seen walking side by side at zero distance This was limited to couples, though.

Miyuki and Honoka had both been repeating in alternation the motion of drawing close to him from either side, then stopping right before touching.

Part of it was certainly that they were wary of each other, but…

“Would it be better if I went on ahead?”

More than that, they seemed to be wary of their third companion’s eyes.

“Not at all.”

To Lina’s words, too monotone to be called “consideration,” Tatsuya shortly returned a negative.

Tatsuya, Miyuki, Honoka…and Lina.

Those four were the ones together right now.

His classmates in Class E had actually been considerate and gone home ahead of them.

But Lina was a student council member, if only a temporary one.

With Miyuki and Honoka both doing their jobs, she couldn’t exactly go home before them. Autonomous high school activities were like playtime compared to regular military missions—well, they were actually playtime—but she couldn’t neglect them. It went beyond her sense of responsibility or the necessity of her undercover mission. It would be a waste to spend her time as not a captain, not an executioner, not the Sirius in a halfhearted manner.

Although as a result, on today of all days, she had ended up walking to the station with Miyuki, Honoka, and Tatsuya as the sole observer. She was presently feeling deep regret over it. Tatsuya and Miyuki were designated observation targets, so regardless of the date, she had to keep her eyes on them as much as possible. But the mood was so difficult to withstand that it almost made her forget about that.

“Really?”

Tatsuya said he didn’t mind, but she couldn’t help but feel like the other two were wordlessly rebuking her. Just as she was tormenting herself with the option of going on ahead anyway, the station came into view.

Still, there was considerable distance to it on the straight road, but…

“We’ll be at the station soon anyway. You don’t have to think about going on ahead.”

Hearing Tatsuya say that with a super-serious expression made Lina want to kick him off a cliff.

As already explained, modern light rail cabinets had no schedules.

However, those going one way and those going the other were still separate.

Tatsuya’s house and Lina’s apartment were both up the train line, and Honoka’s was down it.

On that day, coincidentally, there were no cabinets going up still available.

The waiting time displayed on the platform said about three minutes.

After seeing Honoka off, the other three waited behind a cold-blocking transparent shield for the next cabinets to be sent their way.

It would only be three minutes, give or take—a short time. If they had only just recently gotten acquainted, it wouldn’t be unnatural for there to be no conversation.

In fact, if their relationship was distant to the point where they only knew one another’s faces, it was entirely natural for there to be no conversation.

The uncomfortable air hanging around them was due to the fact that the siblings and Lina were only sort of friends.

It might feel odd to hear that people who had tried to kill one another once each could be called anything close to friends. But neither Tatsuya nor Miyuki harbored any ill will toward Lina. Tatsuya, especially, even felt something close to empathy.

Right now, he was still a magician who couldn’t escape his existence as a weapon. In particular, he’d never forget the fact that this was just how things were.

If he wanted to challenge that, the nation and society would probably try to get rid of him.

After all, his magic could change entire countries into wastelands.

And in that regard, Lina was the same.

Just like him, she wouldn’t ever be able to escape the fact that she was a weapon.

In a sense, Lina was more like him than Miyuki was…

“…What’s wrong?” Miyuki asked.

Perhaps because he was lost in thought, he didn’t notice Lina looking like she wanted to say something until Miyuki tugged on his sleeve and directed his attention toward her.

“…No, it’s nothing,” Lina replied.

If it was enough for Miyuki to notify him, then Lina hadn’t simply been looking at him for a few seconds by coincidence. And considering her unnatural reaction, there was no way it could be “nothing.”

“I see,” he answered back.

But Tatsuya didn’t get in between the two of them and draw out a confession. He wasn’t enough of a busybody to go that far, and if he paid too much attention to Lina, it might ruin Miyuki’s mood.

And besides, the cabinets were approaching the platform now.

“Brother?”

And there was one other thing.

“Did you need something?” Miyuki continued.

“No.”

Tatsuya shook his head and put an arm around his sister’s shoulders.

Miyuki gave a lurch, then hesitantly surrendered herself to his embrace. She didn’t ask anything more.

This was an easy way of keeping someone quiet that only these siblings could use.

Tatsuya decided to keep the eyes he’d just sensed a secret to himself.

“What’s wrong?” asked Colonel Balance point-blank, sharply noticing the tension that ran through her subordinate.

As the operator took his eyes off the monitor, his face was shaken with puzzlement. “Well… I believe our surveillance may have been noticed, ma’am.”

“What? That’s absurd.”

Balance, a tried-and-tested realist, brushed off the man’s confusion as a trick of his imagination. “Sure it’s low-orbit,” she said, “but it’s an observation satellite monitor. There’s no way anyone could see its camera from the ground with the naked eye.”

“But, ma’am, I know I saw Tatsuya Shiba’s eyes look directly to here from inside the monitor.”

That would mean he’d directed his gaze at the camera to peer at it, but…

“It’s not impossible for someone with good eyesight to see a low-orbiting satellite. But even humans enhanced to maximize their perceptions couldn’t pick out the camera on board,” said Balance in an irritated tone of voice, then she eased her expression a little.

“Fine, then. Just in case. Replay the video starting three minutes ago.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The real-time video switched to a subdisplay, and a recorded video began to replay on the main. The high-resolution camera even clearly showed Major Sirius’s gaze wandering right, left, and right in unrest.

That in itself was fascinating (actually, unignorable) for Balance, but she focused her attention on the problem at hand—Tatsuya Shiba.

The boy’s gaze, directed at Major Sirius, glanced upward briefly.

For a moment, it did indeed look as though he were peering into the camera.

But it was to the degree of being able to interpret it that way if one chose.

In actuality, he had probably just looked up at the sky on a whim.

As proof, a moment later, his gaze left the camera.

“You’re overthinking it. It’s better than letting your mind wander, but being too cautious is another source of mistaken judgment.”

Instructing him thusly, the colonel took her eyes away from the main display.

The subdisplay showed Major Sirius as she was about to board a small track vehicle called a “cabinet” in Japan.

What Balance was more concerned about was the unstable actions the girl with the crown of Sirius was showing.

After getting to the apartment she was renting as her base of lifestyle operations in Japan, Lina stood in front of her door and sighed deeply.

Belatedly, she thought about the wrapped box of chocolate still sleeping, tucked away in her bag.

She’d gotten some obligatory chocolate just fine but never found a good excuse to bring it up, and in the end, she went home with it. She’d reflexively lied and said “it’s nothing,” but she’d actually thought of giving it to him before they separated.

…I didn’t have to lie about it. It’s just obligatory chocolate.

It certainly had no deeper meaning. Society itself defined obligatory chocolate as having no deeper meaning.

But it had still been a momentous decision for her. She’d told herself many times over that she went through all the trouble of getting some, and she’d tried to somehow smile over her drawn face.

Their relation was of people who had tried to kill each other once, but at the same time, they were allies who had fought together once as well.

Plus, he’s keeping quiet about my identity for me…

So there was a reason to give him a professional gift. It wouldn’t have been strange. She had no fear that he’d mistake it as something else.

She’d mustered her willpower and almost took the box out of her bag.

And yet…

She couldn’t give it to him.

When she saw Tatsuya suddenly put his arm around Miyuki’s shoulders, her hands stopped moving.

Why did that happen…?

She was in twofold shock: partly from seeing Tatsuya embrace Miyuki but mostly from her hands ceasing to function.

What on earth happened with me there?!

It was a shame she’d let the chocolate go to waste, too.

But that doesn’t matter.

More importantly, it was as though I…

The real problem according to Lina was…

As though I was in love with Tatsuya, and that’s why I was so shocked!

This has to be some sick joke! she shouted at herself, severely shaken by her own thoughts. I won’t allow that! Me, illicitly loving that sarcastic, sister-obsessed philanderer? I will never allow that!

…Though I will admit that he’s on my mind, Lina declared to herself, not sure who she was saying it to. I have him on my mind. And not a little but a lot.

She snarled at the thought. But she still had no idea who she was snarling at.

But there’s a good reason! That man humiliated me! I can’t put him out of my mind until I avenge my loss!

Normally, she’d have retorted that she should have prepared a white glove instead of chocolate in that case.

But right now, she didn’t have the presence of mind.

Her emotions still unsettled, Lina opened the door and sensed something strange.

Her mind was suddenly frozen.

Silvia had returned to the USNA, so Lina currently lived alone.

But she felt someone’s presence.

Cold tension shot through her spine.

It had been too careless of her not to notice it until opening the door. The idea was enough to get her moving, and she carefully slid her body inside.

At this point, she also thought it was too late, but she closed the door quietly without making a sound anyway.

She wondered for an instant about what to do with her shoes. It didn’t deserve any serious consideration, but she’d accidentally thought of the work she’d have to do cleaning up.

Reprimanding herself again, she drove those asinine ideas from her mind, set her bag quietly on the floor, and crouched down in order to charge in.

“…It seems you weren’t just being modest when you said your perception magic wasn’t your strong point.”

And when she heard the amazed voice of her superior come down from overhead, she was left with nowhere to run.

“If you needed me for something, ma’am, I’d have been more than happy to attend you.”

After preparing tea (and refreshments) with motions that couldn’t exactly be called “smooth,” Lina nervously addressed Colonel Virginia Balance, seated on the other side of the simple dining table.

But the colonel didn’t give Lina’s suggestion a direct answer.

“You may know this already, but most of my military history is rear service work. Human relations, in particular, has been my main career.”

Lina, of course, knew all about the histories of famous people like Colonel Balance. Lina knew that she’d graduated from an elite business school at the top of her class and had displayed sharpness worthy of the title, and that even in the few frontline jobs she’d had in her career, she’d done meritorious services that nobody could begin to complain about.

“This is my experience talking, but, Major Sirius…”

“Yes, ma’am?”

Lina answered stiffly, straightening her spine. She half-instinctively understood this wouldn’t be something to listen to with a smile on her face.

“I’m concerned that during this mission, you feel an overabundance of sympathy toward your target, Major.”

Lina had no words. She thought she’d gotten her mind ready for it, but when it came to it, her preparations had meant nothing.

“No, ma’am, I’m not…”

“Really? If I’m making too much of it, then all the better,” said Balance as she looked at Lina’s bag on the chair.

Lina’s shoulders tensed.

If she managed to see what was inside, she’d realize that Lina was telling a lie. Her suspicions would turn into something stronger, something close to conviction. No matter how much Lina pleaded that it was a misunderstanding, she might not be able to get the colonel to believe her…

“I understand the unusual circumstances you’ve been placed in.”

But Balance didn’t order her to show her what was in the bag.

“You’re the only one who has assumed the post of Stars commander in her teens in its entire history.”

But her gaze was a little bit different from simple criticism.

“Magicians developed with the technology and theoretical system of modern magic have high enough magical potential to usher in a new age, but more than a few people have said that they’re too young. If they’d asked my opinion, I would have offered opposition to your appointment as commander.”

However, Balance’s tone was different from the other opposition in the past.

“You’re only sixteen. I remember when I was sixteen. I know how hard it is to control your emotions.”

She knew her superior officer was sincerely concerned for her from the way she spoke and carried herself, so Lina conducted herself properly and bent her ear to what Balance had to say.

But upon seeing Lina’s somewhat stiff expression, Balance’s turned to a slightly sulking one for some reason. “…I may be an old lady from your point of view, but I was a teenager once, too.”

“I can assure you, ma’am, I was thinking nothing of the sort!”

Balance’s words were utterly unexpected, and Lina jumped up to frantically explain herself.

But at the same time, surprisingly, Lina felt amused and relieved. The sight of the colonel, who had no negative points and seemed to have no openings, doing something so “cute” was enough to lighten Lina’s tension.

“…Well, fine. Forget I said anything.”

It was written all over her face that she’d misspoken, likely a guileless expression rather than conscious acting.

“…As a soldier of the USNA, ma’am, I do feel an undesirable sympathy toward Tatsuya Shiba.” That was probably why Lina was able to open up a little. “However, it’s certainly not a romantic feeling or anything similar. What I feel toward him, ma’am, is actually a sense of competition toward a rival.”

“A rival?”

“Yes, ma’am. As I’m sure you’ve read in the reports, I took a loss to Tatsuya Shiba once.”

“I see. That was the first time you’ve lost in magical combat since being appointed Sirius, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

In fact, thanks to the other captains, beginning with Major Canopus, she’d drunk from the bitter cup of defeat several times. But all of those were one-on-many situations, so she didn’t feel the need to correct the colonel’s remark.

“All right. If that’s the case, I’ll be short.”

The colonel’s tone changed subtly, and a chill mixed into the air.

That was all it took for Lina to realize that her moratorium was over.

“Major Sirius. As of this moment, I order you to temporarily suspend pursuit and elimination of the deserters and return to your original mission.”

Lina had straightened her posture again already without realizing it.

“Make the securing of the matter-energy conversion spell or its user your top priority. If securing is impossible, you will need to disable the spell.”

Disabling a magic spell meant making it so nobody could use it. In other words, killing the caster.

“For now, assume that Tatsuya Shiba is your target. As the first wave, tomorrow night, you will take the Stardust and launch an attack on the target. You are to equip the Brionac and intervene when you judge it necessary.”

“…Yes, ma’am!”

Lina erased her expression, stood up, and saluted Balance.

Erika’s commuting time was the longest at First High. When she enrolled, they recommended she get an apartment close to school, but she’d insisted on commuting from home.

Not because she couldn’t be independent from her parents yet.

It was the opposite.

Her father had prepared an apartment for her (he’d said he’d buy it for her, not rent it for her), so she’d gotten stubborn and said she’d commute from home.

The inconvenience wasn’t something easily ignored, but it was nothing compared to how unpleasant it would be to always do as her father and oldest brother requested.

Erika walked home down the now completely dark road from the station without using a commuter. It was not an act one could recommend very much for a pretty girl like her, but her family didn’t worry about her one bit. Nobody with the skills to cause harm to Erika would bother with low-level villainy like molesting or pickpocketing.

It wasn’t familial partiality—it was the objective truth. With nothing happening again today, Erika passed through their gate.

Her room wasn’t in the main building; her “house” was an annex built next to the dojo.

As soon as she entered her room in the annex where only she lived, she tossed her bag aside and flopped onto her bed in her uniform. She didn’t usually act so slovenly. She had been sick and tired of this yearly event since this morning, and then she had to be exposed to furtive glances all day, and now her mental state was dissolute.

Erika was aware her physical appearance was somewhat excellent (which was, from an observer’s point of view, a rather modest assessment). So given what today was, she understood she couldn’t do anything about the boys her age (and a few girls) being interested in her, but…

But they know I’m not the type to give out obligatory chocolate.

When Erika came to the conclusion that they were really only looking at her outward appearance, her exhaustion started to intensify.

She didn’t hate the way she looked.

She’d rather be beautiful than plain.

She thought that way independent of advantages or disadvantages.

She figured that if she was too beautiful, like Miyuki, there would be more trouble than benefit, so she was just about perfect.

But she didn’t like others judging her solely on her appearance, either. She actually hated being fawned over by people who wanted her to look at them. When it came to goodwill directed only at appearances, if it was too strong, it would be the cause of misfortune not only for the one falling in love but the one they fell for, too.

She was convinced of that.

Her eyes tracked over her wardrobe.

A small framed picture adorned it.

The printed photograph, not a digital one, showed a woman even more cheerful than Erika, one with brown hair almost light enough to be blonde, with very similar features to her own. The resemblance was so striking it seemed like after another ten years, Erika would look exactly like the lady in the photograph.

It was a picture of her mother, who had passed away when she was fourteen.

She’d given birth to her, and she was also the one who caused her to live in a separate building by herself like this.

Anna Rosen Katori.

That was her mother’s name.

One could guess it from her name and appearance—she was half-Japanese, half-German.

And her last name wasn’t “Chiba.”

Erika’s mother was, in contemporary terms, the lover of Erika’s father—the present head of the Chiba family of the Hundred—and, in old-fashioned, blunt terms, his mistress.

Erika had been allowed to take the name Chiba only after her mother had died, and until right before enrolling in high school—in concrete terms, taking the entrance exam under the name Erika Chiba—they’d only let her use it in secret.

Which was why Tatsuya didn’t know of any Erika Chiba.

Erika had been born before her father’s lawful wife had died of illness. He’d been off doing those things while his wife was on her sickbed, so she felt that neither of her parents had any room for excuses. It might seem cold, but on this point, she understood that some blame lay with her mother as well.

Not that she would ever accept only her mother being treated as a bad person, though. After all, most of the blame lay with that father of hers.

There was a time when she spent her days lying low, making that small body of hers even smaller, without knowing why people looked at her with such contempt.

There was another time where she did nothing but frantically swing her sword in order to make them accept her and her mother That was around the time she became the idol of the Chiba dojo. The young students in their teens and twenties who were especially skilled got together and formed the Erika Royal Guard, and when it looked like Erika had lost her passion for kenjutsu after her mother died, they looked after her in all sorts of ways.

When she looked back on those days, it made her realize again that her current life was the most fun, most fulfilling time she’d ever had.

Girlfriends she honestly knew she couldn’t match up to, and a boyfriend she couldn’t see to the bottom of no matter how hard she looked.

A classmate who always treated her warmly,

a friend worth teasing and getting into fights with,

and a childhood friend who was also worth teasing.

Comrades who saw her strength for what it was, and chances for her to wield that strength.

Right now, she was having fun wielding a sword. It was a waste to spend all her time being cynical toward everyone.

With them, she felt like she could go as high as she wanted.

And that was why she wished others wouldn’t bother her with their stupid romance games.

While she was thinking and looking idly at the ceiling, the door chime suddenly went off. It wasn’t a summons but a signal that the door had opened. She hadn’t locked it, so they’d probably come in on their own; it wasn’t like whoever it was had been peeping, so she didn’t intend to get that sensitive about it.

She checked the clock. It was still too early for dinner.

Her two brothers (both half brothers) aside, her older sister (also from a different mother, of course) overtly disliked sitting at the same table as her, so Erika always went late. She was fully aware that if they met, it wouldn’t only be her sister who got unhappy but herself as well, so there was no need to be stubborn about it.

Wonder who that is, she thought as she got up, when a knock came at the door.

The footsteps she heard, the smooth breathing, and the controlled presence limited the possibilities to one of her two brothers. Her oldest brother was always at work on the current incident and wouldn’t be coming back until late that night, so…

“Brother Tsugu? Please, come in.”

By the time she’d answered, she’d already moved from her bed in front of her desk.

“Sorry for bothering you during your downtime, Erika.”

Erika had spun the chair in front of her desk toward the door, straightened up, and placed her hands in her lap, but her brother Naotsugu cast a single glance at the bed and spoke in an apologetic tone.

Well, it wasn’t a surprise, given the insightfulness of the one praised as the Kirin Child of the Chiba.

Erika didn’t move even an eyebrow.

“No, I was only resting my body for a moment. Did you have something you needed from me?”

She’d accidentally blown her lid when she saw him with that woman during summer break, but aside from that, being at this brother’s side had always been a place where she felt at ease.

The only time she’d ever yelled at him was when he was with that woman.

“Right… I wasn’t sure whether or not I should tell you this, but… I thought I would anyway. There’s a boy named Tatsuya Shiba in your class, right?”

“Yes. What about him?”

She didn’t show it on her face, but she was fairly rattled. Hearing Tatsuya’s name from her brother so suddenly had been completely outside her expectations.

“He’s being monitored by the JDF.”

“…What?”

“I know you might not believe me, since it’s so sudden. But it’s the truth.”

It was certainly sudden and unbelievable, but the reason she couldn’t believe it was probably not what Naotsugu assumed.

Erika knew that Tatsuya was an outside member of the Japan Defense Force.

The military officer who had taken him away that one time told them that the fact that he belonged to the JDF was a state secret. It was perfectly feasible that a rank-and-file soldier wouldn’t know.

Still, Tatsuya was part of her circle, if only irregularly. Erika felt that using members of the same JDF to monitor him was so absurd she couldn’t even laugh.

Of course, the reason she was able to remain merely exasperated was because it was a mission given by a third party with no connection to her…

“I’ve received unofficial orders, too.”

…but when her family became involved, she couldn’t stay so casual about it.

“They need to use you for this mission when your official position is still just a University of Defense student? What on earth does it entail…?”

“To monitor him and, if necessary, protect him.”

“Monitor him…and guard him?”

“Yeah. It seems like Shiba is wrapped up in some trouble on a level that could cause the military itself to move.”

It’s a little late for that, thought Erika, and he wasn’t so much wrapped up in it as he was the number-one concerned party. But for Tatsuya’s sake, she decided she shouldn’t tell that to Naotsugu, and she kept quiet.

“Erika, I think it would be best to stay away from Shiba for a while.”

“Do you mean inside school as well? We are in the same class, you know…”

She respected her brother, but she couldn’t follow this instruction—if it had been her oldest brother, she would have laughed him out of the room for sure. Still, this all sounded pretty shady, too, so she’d decided to casually put a question to him.

“Of course not—I’m sure he won’t be attacked at school.”

In other words, it was someone other than Lina who would be the main attacker, and even if she did launch an attack, hopes were high that they could coordinate with other units, Erika decided.

“In that case, you needn’t worry, Brother. I only go to the station with him—we’re not good enough friends to meet up after getting home to go out somewhere.”

“I see. To tell the truth, you should probably stop leaving school together, too, but… We don’t want to make him uneasy, either.”

With those words, she understood that the main goal of the faction giving orders to Naotsugu was not to protect Tatsuya but to use him as a decoy.

“Anyway, be careful, Erika.”

“Thank you for the consideration, Brother.”

I’ll do as you say and be careful—alongside Tatsuya, added Erika to herself.

The first thing Miyuki did when they returned inside was swipe the cloth bag filled with chocolate from her brother’s hands and throw the whole thing into the freezer.

Until last year, he’d gotten one gift, two at most, so he’d been worried about how his sister would react once they were alone, but she dealt with it more calmly than expected, which was a relief to him.

“Brother, I’ll get started on dinner right away, so please relax in your room for a little while.”

When Tatsuya came to look into the kitchen, Miyuki turned around and, with an unnaturally broad smile, warned him away.

He translated that as Don’t come to look in here until I call you. Feeling a touch uneasy regarding this developing differently from years before, Tatsuya did as he was told and shut himself in his room.

And then, about an hour later…

“I knew it…” muttered Tatsuya without meaning to.

The sweet scent filling the dining room. Unlike Mayumi’s fake medicine stuff, it was the unmistakable smell of bona fide chocolate.

With a smile—a natural one this time—Miyuki gestured for him to take a seat.

Her appearance, too, was enough to dumbfound him.

“Is something the matter?”

Her smile changing to a mischievous one, Miyuki tilted her head to the side.

She was clearly doing it because she knew.

“…I was just wondering where you got those clothes.”

“You mean these clothes? These are simple waitress clothes. Why do you ask?”

Now that she mentioned it, they maybe did seem to match that particular usage.

But time and occasion aside, the place didn’t seem very suitable to him.

If this had been a restaurant where people of a certain hobby gathered and not a regular house’s dining room, he might have been able to call it right for the time, place, and occasion, though.

Miyuki’s costume consisted of a blouse with puffed sleeves, a jumper skirt laced up to her chest, and an apron with plenty of frills on it. It was, in other words, in the style of a Tyrolean dress.

He could understand its concept matching the cooking, but wasn’t this going a bit too far…?

“Umm, do they not suit me…?”

“No, they suit you well. You look very cute.”

But even as he thought that, when asked in an uneasy voice by his sister, he unintentionally answered in that manner—and the self that did that, Tatsuya uncharacteristically wanted to bash his head against a pillar.

“Thank you very much!”

Oblivious to his feelings, Miyuki began to line up one dish after another in a great mood. Now that it had come to this, Tatsuya had no choice but to take his place at the table.

And the all-important meal for today?

The main course was beef tenderloin topped with chocolate sauce.

As a side dish, cookies chock-full of nuts with chocolate fondue.

Dessert was fruit plus white chocolate fondue with brandy in it.

Everything covered in humble, modest chocolate.

“Please feel free to eat up, Brother. This is the Valentine’s chocolate that I prepared for you and you alone.”

It was certainly not something she could have done unless they lived together.

To think she would use chocolate as part of her cooking rather than for sweets…

More importantly, even Tatsuya would be able to eat it like this today.

It was the result of Miyuki mustering her knowledge.

Once they were about finished with dessert, Miyuki’s face began to take on a fairly red tone. As they ate the white chocolate fondue, Tatsuya had been worried that she hadn’t cooked off enough of the brandy. Apparently, that wasn’t just his imagination.

Miyuki never ate more than was polite with company, so she would have only ingested a paltry amount of alcohol…

“Miyuki, are you all right?”

“What? What do you mean?” she asked with a blank look as she rose to clean up.

The answer was ever so slightly suspicious in tone.

Miyuki stacked up all the plates and was about to carry them away at once.

Watch out, thought Tatsuya.

Normally, Miyuki would have taken this many things away in two or three trips. Her unconscious desire to get it all over with at once was no doubt a result of the exhaustion that had accumulated without her realizing it.

Tatsuya quietly and swiftly moved around the table.

“Kyah?!”

As he expected, his sister got her feet tangled, and he caught her.

There was no sound of dishes breaking.

At the same time that he’d protected Miyuki with one arm, he’d caught every single one of the plates with his other hand.

He smoothly swung around and returned the dishes to the table.

Finally, he used both hands to support the girl and get her standing up properly.

“I… Thank you, Brother.”

“Miyuki, you go rest for a bit on the sofa.”

Miyuki didn’t try to act tough and say I’ll be fine.

If doing so had given Tatsuya unnecessary trouble, that would have been the worst outcome.

Once he stacked the dishes in the sink, the HAR would clean up the rest for them. She only ended up feeling a modicum of guilt about making her brother clean up dinner, because she knew it wouldn’t take him very much time.

But she couldn’t avoid feeling down about it.

She’d really set the mood there, but at the very end, she’d bungled it up… Those were Miyuki’s undeniable feelings.

She couldn’t help but suspect some power beyond human understanding playing tricks on her.

Actually, if she was going to cry foul play, or interference, or a curse…

“…Why must I be his sister?”

The words made it out of her mouth with an unintentional sigh.

A fragment of the truth she held inside had fallen out.

A shard of the mirror reflecting her heart.

Ever since yesterday, this phrase had been playing like a refrain in her mind.

Miyuki hastily turned around.

What she’d just said was something she could never let him hear.

Feelings that she must never admit to him.

She had no qualms being his younger sister.

That was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Miyuki’s true feeling.

After all, she could remain with Tatsuya because she was his sister.

And because she was his sister, he would always be concerned for her.

However—there was still certainly another part of her that wished for a different relationship.

It was still nothing more than a fragment.

But that fragment of her might one day overtake the part content with being his sister.

Miyuki feared that happening.

She feared her brother finding out about the part of her that wanted it.

As she turned around, she saw that Tatsuya was still standing at the sink.

Even with his sharp senses, he was far enough away that he couldn’t hear her soft words.

Miyuki breathed in relief.

While also, somewhere in a corner of her heart, disappointed that he hadn’t heard.

And while averting her eyes from that part of herself.