The Irregular at Magic High School, Vol. 11: Visitor Arc, Part III

“…Sorry.”

“It’s fine as long as you understand.”

The same words as before. The same light tone as before.

But this time, a cold sweat broke out on Erika’s back.

“Erika, nobody will have anything to gain from you trying to figure out who Sirius is. So please, let’s put an end to that matter.”

“…Right.”

And she knew Tatsuya had changed the subject partly for her sake, so she nodded without resisting the proposition.

“Anyway, what’s the other thing? I think it’s probably about the parasite remnants.”

“Well, it wasn’t that hard to figure out. If you didn’t know that much, I’d assume I was talking to an impostor.”

Erika had finally gotten back into the swing of things—at least it appeared that way, which was probably intentional.

“Was that a compliment?”

“Well, I know I wasn’t trying to run you down.”

Erika seemed to be rapidly getting her feet back under her as she put on the act. Tatsuya was slightly envious of how quick the turnaround was.

“I don’t plan on leaving them alone, either. Don’t worry—once I learn anything, I’ll tell you,” said Tatsuya, casting a meaningful glance toward Pixie.

Erika glanced at her as well, and the corners of her lips turned up in satisfaction. “Promise, got it? In exchange, I won’t keep anything from you about this incident, either.”

And it was very much like Erika to include the “about this incident” condition.

“Yeah, I promise.”

But this level of distance between them was about right for how long they’d known each other.

“Bye then, Tatsuya. Sorry I interrupted.”

“No problem. Give my regards to your brother, too.”

With her hand on the door, Erika’s spine shivered, but she didn’t say anything more before leaving the classroom behind her.

Tatsuya didn’t say anything else to her, either.

After leaving the classroom and her secret talk (?) with Tatsuya, Erika walked quickly down the hallway. Once she’d left the unpopulated lab building and returned to the main Course 2 building area, she rested her back against a hallway wall.

Erika heaved a sigh.

A drop of cold sweat streaked down her temple.

Belatedly, the thought that she wasn’t herself today rose in her mind. Normally, she wouldn’t have ever done something like that, like stomping on a tiger’s tail.

No, that was no mere tiger’s tail—it was a dragon, and she’d rubbed its scales the wrong way.

Thanks to that, she knew.

She now knew that she didn’t need to know.

…I’m the worst.

Erika’s lips twisted into a self-deprecating smile.

Now that she knew what lurked in the background, several things made sense to her. But she couldn’t tell it to others.

He’d warned her not to speak of it, not to let anyone know. She understood that.

And the warning hadn’t been directed only at her, either.

What am I going to tell Brother…?

That was probably what Tatsuya had meant at the end.

At first, Erika hadn’t liked that someone had been so set on investigating Tatsuya that they would use her brother for it, and she’d wanted to take Tatsuya’s side and get in their way.

She’d wanted to protect his secrets.

And now, somehow, she’d been driven into a different position: no longer wanting to but needing to.

She knew Tatsuya probably wouldn’t try to get revenge even if she did spill his secret.

I feel like he’d just smile and ignore it even if I slipped up and said something.

But now she’d changed her mind. There was the worst case to think about.

And she didn’t feel like testing it.

Not only were Tatsuya’s own abilities so incredibly troubling, there was that family to think about on top of that.

Ahh… I really screwed up this time. “Involve yourself not with gods and ye be not cursed,” huh?

And then she thought to herself, How did we even end up on that conversation?

Now that she thought about it, there was almost a sense that he’d guided her into figuring it out.

That can’t be right… Tatsuya may have an awful personality, but I have to be thinking too hard about this.

Erika forced her doubts away with a laugh—while straining to avert her eyes from the thought that yes, he’d probably do something like that.

Did I step on a hornet’s nest? thought Tatsuya, still watching the door Erika had left through.

He’d believed the intervention yesterday by Naotsugu Chiba was the Chiba family putting out feelers, whether at the behest of the Saegusa family or that of a Saegusa-incited Japan Ground Defense Force intelligence division, but it seemed that Erika, at least, hadn’t been involved.

She may have simply not been informed, though.

Well, whatever. She would have figured it out sooner or later anyway.

He’d already shown various things to Erika. Not just his strength but even Miyuki’s Cocytus. With her sharp wit, even if she hadn’t gone overboard today, it would have only been a matter of time.

Consequently, I should be able to get her involved.

Tatsuya hadn’t plotted this development all the way through, but to him, things seemed to have turned out all right in the end.

The presence of collaborators was indispensable in keeping secrets from others.

There were always things the secret holders alone would be shorthanded for. This was because those who would try and ferret out your secrets did so without letting the person know. At times like that, having a third-party collaborator was convenient for appearances in several ways.

After coming to that rather egoistic conclusion, he brought an end to his silent monologue.

“Pixie.”

“Yes, master?”

Tatsuya understood intuitively that during his conversations with Pixie, telepathy wasn’t being used to convey words but rather concepts. That the images trying to be conveyed were being translated into vocabulary that would let him understand.

Servant clothes would have been one thing, but someone in the same school uniform as him calling him “master” made him feel restless. But that’s what Pixie felt, so as long as they communicated via telepathy, it was something he’d have to get used to.

In fact, he was relieved it wasn’t being translated to something like “my lord” or “milord”—though that was mostly his own linguistic sensibilities.

What she (?) was using was active telepathy, so she couldn’t tell what Tatsuya was thinking. She moved directly in front of him, reading from the manual programmed into her electronic brain the proper movement patterns for when her name was called.

“Before you inhabited that body, you all appeared to move as an organized group with a common objective in mind. Does one of you correspond to a leadership position?”

“There exists no command structure among us.”

“Then how did you keep on acting as a group?”

“Strictly speaking, each one of us is not a perfectly autonomous individual. We are both individuals and the whole. We possessed the ability to think individually, but we shared our consciousness.”

“Do you mean that one mind was having multiple thoughts?”

“Yes, but not only thoughts. Perhaps it would be closest to express it as a merger of several lower minds with incomplete egos and isolated thought capabilities into a single higher mind.”

“I understand. But in that case, if a lower mind had a different objective, wouldn’t the higher mind have lost its unity for it?”

“When attaching to a living host body, we cannot avoid the effects of their most primordial desires. We were integrated within a mind possessing both survival and reproductive instincts, and thus did we decide our actions.”

“To survive and to increase your numbers. A simple way of life indeed for living creatures.”

“That is correct. We had been obeying our most prioritized desires as organisms, acting with the goal of survival and self-replication.”

“If you share your mind with the rest of the group, couldn’t you have created a different system of collaboration for purposes other than survival and self-replication?”

“Though we are unified in the broadest sense, we each have our own ego, so we respond individually to the specific desires of the host body. It simply happened that we had been prioritizing a common goal, which I should think is why you felt that way about it, master.”

“I see…” Tatsuya stopped and thought. She didn’t interrupt with anything unnecessary, either because she was a human or because she was inhabiting a machine. “Then since you’ve inhabited an inanimate object, you’re now removed from that shared objective, making you an outcast. When something like that happens, don’t you try to eliminate them?”

“We have no desires relating to the elimination of outcasts. However, it is possible that they will prioritize attacking me if they judge me an obstruction to their goal.”

“I see… One more question. You said you were disconnected from the rest of your group at the moment. You can’t sense their presence at all?”

“I would likely be able to sense them if they were in a state of heightened activity. Conversely, if I were to come within a certain distance of them, they could sense me.”

“I see.” Tatsuya pretended to think for a moment, then immediately gave her a new command. “Pixie, go back to the garage, change into your old outfit, and stand by in sleep mode. I’ll have more for you later.”

“Right away, sir. I eagerly await your command.”

Pixie gave a proper—in other words, stiff—bow, then headed off for the garage.

Mentally listing the equipment he’d need, Tatsuya walked off toward the student council room to pick up Miyuki so that he could return home for the moment.

The world had become smaller in the 2090s. However, that meant it turned into a world that pitted magicians directly against non-magicians. Magicians who were acknowledged as effective military power in the last world war and the sporadic border conflicts after it were then severely restricted from leaving the country, except on official government duties. For magicians, the world had shrunk to the size of their borders.

Meanwhile, those who weren’t magicians could fully enjoy the benefits of advancements in public transportation. Machines meant for transporting people over land, sea, and sky alike had gotten faster, allowing them to more easily visit foreign countries. It was now an age where you could board a direct flight and be on the other side of the planet in ten hours with no layovers. Compared to a hundred years ago, the world had definitely gotten smaller.

Because of the circumstances that led to the global war outbreak, every nation trod very carefully when it came to possible illegal immigrants staying for a long period of time within their borders. In exchange, foreigners who stayed for short periods of time were on the rise in many countries. Even here in Tokyo, seeing people of different ethnicities walking the streets had become the usual state of affairs.

So even when a white-Hispanic man, a young mestizo (half-Caucasian, half–Native American) man, and a young half-Caucasian, half-black woman were walking together at dusk on the east side of the Sumida River, no Japanese person thought it was odd. Nor did a single civilian watch them with suspicion as the group of three entered a certain hospital—a large place but one not often used.

There were beds in the hospital’s basement.

Putting it that way may make it seem as though nothing was out of the ordinary, but these beds were not normally the sort a hospital had in it.

They were black leather and didn’t have much cushioning; rectangular boxes that could be more suitably called bunks than beds. And the nine of them weren’t positioned in two horizontal rows of four and five, but rather all were in a radial pattern. One young man lay on each bunk for a total of nine. All of them had Northeast Asian features, but their faces were pale. Also, they had lain down without any pillows, and their chests weren’t moving—so they were either corpses or comatose. The only ones in the basement room were these nine young men, and the three Hispanics who came down the stairs.

The white man went into the empty space in the center of the beds, with nine heads facing inward. The dim lighting gave him a somewhat conjurer-like mood.

The young mestizo man checked his wristwatch. He held his arm up, waiting for something. After about ten minutes had passed, he looked at the half-Caucasian, half-black woman standing on the other side of the ring of beds. It must have been a signal. The woman nodded slightly, then raised both her hands in front of her face.

The young man assumed the same pose. Between the young man and woman, the man clapped his hands and tapped with his foot at the same time.

The applause went on.

The foot stamping continued.

The pair clapped their hands and stamped their feet along with the older man, moving around the outside of the circle of beds. When the young man and woman had changed places, the older man gave a much stronger clap.

As his clap echoed, the human bodies resting on the beds rose.

One, then another.

Eight apparently dead people on those black bunks had been revived.

A buzzing noise like the wings of bugs began to fly across the dim basement room, through not the physical dimension of Fact, nor the information dimension of Idea, but the mental dimension.

If their words were to be translated…

“I/We have finally awoken.”

“I/We are still lacking.”

“Is it one person/thing I/we lack?”

“Have I/we not enough vessels?”

“No. As you can see, the collaborators have arranged the vessels.”

“Chinese necromancy is certainly something.”

“Yes, I/we shall have to admit that it is beyond my/our level.”

“The longing to live in the face of death. A suspended ego.”

“I/we could not think of a way to assimilate with my/our hosts while in suspended animation.”

“Therefore, I/we learned. Now I/we know how to move into a host.”

“Next time, even if my/our flesh is destroyed, I/we can quickly resume activities.”

“It is also easy to retake the one person/thing I/we lack.”

“Let us retake what I/we lack.”

“Let us go and search for what I/we lack.”

That was the kind of conversation they were having—the three individuals who had come here across the ocean and the eight parasites.

After returning home, Tatsuya went to the phone before changing. He wouldn’t be using the one hooked up to the big screen in the living room but the one with enhanced security features in his bedroom. Normally, the phone did real-time encoding, even with some of its functions dedicated to video processing, but Tatsuya made a voice-only call to the Yotsuba butler, Hayama. It was pretty much in sync with the time he’d been sent in the message.

“Mr. Tatsuya? Right on time.”

“Thank you for last night, Hayama.”

They both did away with the normal prefaces. Tatsuya had done it because Hayama had. It wasn’t that the old butler was busy and wanted to get this over with, though. Tatsuya could sense there was something he wanted to tell him.

“As I said last night, there is no need for thanks. Protecting Lady Miyuki is the second-highest priority for the Yotsuba, after all.”

“Hayama, with even you speaking so imprudently, I find myself at a loss.”

“It doesn’t pose an issue, so long as one considers the time and the person. Besides, unlike that one, I do not possess the nerve to be hostile to you, Mr. Tatsuya.”

He did, at least, seem to have the time to go along with meaningless chatter.

But Tatsuya didn’t have that much time himself. He decided to ask why Hayama had directed him to call specifically on a secret line—and he couldn’t exactly respond to Hayama bringing up the trouble with Aoki from months ago anyway.

“What did you need to talk about? You couldn’t send it through a text message, and you didn’t have the kind of time for me to go there personally, so it must be something urgent.”

“Oh yes, that’s right,” responded Hayama in a voice like he’d just now remembered. But Tatsuya knew it was an act. Even if he couldn’t make the judgment based on the elderly butler’s voice, he knew it because of his nature.

“Mr. Tatsuya, it appears Section Three is getting involved with our little demon episode. I wanted to make sure you were aware of that.”

“Section Three… Section Three of the Japan Ground Defense Forces counterintelligence department, the funny team? They’re part of the Saegusa faction, right?” asked Tatsuya.

He heard a laugh come through the receiver. “I’m sure they’d hate to hear someone belonging to a certain Independent Magic Battalion calling them funny, but yes, you are correct.”

“If they have an interest in this, I expect they’re not trying to exterminate them. The Saegusa must be going through them to investigate…no, to try to capture the parasites, aren’t they?”

“I would like to commend you on your correct answers as always, but unfortunately, we still don’t know their goals. It is likely, however, just as you’ve described, Mr. Tatsuya.”

Sounds like a huge pain, thought Tatsuya from the bottom of his heart. There were already so many factions and influences intertwined with one another—and now another player had appeared on the stage. And to make things worse, they might have been on the Saegusa’s side, but they seemed to have a different goal from Mayumi.

“Thank you very much for the vital information.”

Still, he couldn’t just flip over the game board and end it all. However much of a bother this got to be, you couldn’t reset reality like a video game.

“I judged that this, too, was necessary to protect Lady Miyuki’s well-being. Never forget that fact, Mr. Tatsuya.”

“I understand perfectly.”

Yes—he couldn’t risk the world where Miyuki lived. Hayama’s admonition hadn’t been much more than a reminder, but Tatsuya accepted it without resistance.

Seven PM.

The students had already left school, and very few faculty remained, leaving the school building to wallow in silence. The gate was shut as well; until tomorrow, save for a few exceptions, nobody would be let in or out. Even the teaching materials and school store products, as well as the students’ meals, had been transported out the rear gate via an underground tube.

The only ones allowed in or out were faculty members on night duty, security personnel from the contract company, system maintenance engineers who couldn’t do their work except at night, and those with special dispensation from the school or student council.

It seemed like a slight overstepping of student autonomy, but this was something Mayumi had introduced when she was student council president. No shortage of ideas and authority from the Saegusa family seemed to be wrapped up behind everything, but if you were in the position to take advantage of it, those secret circumstances didn’t matter. Tatsuya was truly grateful to not have needed to submit an application with logical reasons to be in school after dark to the faculty room.

Tatsuya had arranged several things on his way back to his home, and by the time he’d arrived at the school again, it was with a filled bag on his shoulder. He showed his nighttime entrance permit, which had a student council president–approved pass code embedded in it, to security, then received three visitor ID cards. Without these ID cards during the night, the security system would flag him as suspicious.

As to why he had received three—

One was, of course, his own. He handed the second to Miyuki, who was following behind him. She accepted it with a satisfied smile on her face.

Tatsuya hadn’t actually planned on bringing her here. His plan was to have her watch over the house in his absence.

Unfortunately, when he’d been issued the nighttime entrance permit, Miyuki had placed a condition on it: He had to bring her along.

The authority to issue the permit lay with the student council president, Azusa. However, Tatsuya then had to sit through about three hours’ worth of a heated debate that seemed to lend credence to the gossip that the vice president was actually the one with the power in the current student council.

After failing to convince his oddly stubborn sister, Tatsuya had no recourse but to allow her to come.

Miyuki—and one other person.

He handed the third permit to Honoka, whom they’d met at the station. Perhaps it didn’t deserve mentioning, but Tatsuya never planned to bring Honoka from the start and had given the thought even less consideration than he had with his sister. Unfortunately, the permit-issuing conversation had occurred in the student council room, meaning Honoka was there, too. He could truly call it nothing if not careless of him.

But refuse her as he might, he couldn’t state his true goal out loud with Azusa and Isori listening as well. If it had only been Honoka pleading with him, he could have dealt with it, but when even Miyuki took her side, it was impossible to keep denying her. And unlike Miyuki, Honoka took the ID card from Tatsuya’s hand with an obliged look on her face.

The reason he’d given when applying for the permit was to check on the 3H type P-94, which was still behaving oddly. But his real reason was to take Pixie and use her to lure out the parasites.

There was one thing he’d learned from questioning Pixie—that the parasites wouldn’t leave Pixie alone. It was still no more than conjecture, but Tatsuya had confidence in this particular deduction. If the link with one of their mind-melded “parts” had been suddenly severed, they should want to recover it. They would doubtless come to contact her in some form or another. That’s what Tatsuya’s idea was.

He had no way of searching out the parasites, and he didn’t need to do a thorough search anyway—until the day before yesterday, at least. But now that he owned the parasite possessing Pixie, he couldn’t stick to his detachment. He could see some major problems coming if he were to neglect Pixie in her current state. More importantly, he wanted to finish this business with the parasites. He’d been expecting a rematch against them from the start. That was why he’d asked Yakumo to teach him—why he’d been training with him. He’d done nothing more than create a chance to change his stance regarding Pixie from passive to active.

Even he didn’t expect to reel in all the parasites tonight in a single net. But if he could lure out even one or two, he was sure he’d be able to get a clue as to where the rest of them resided.

Considering the danger of what he was about to try, perhaps Tatsuya should have been firmer and denied Miyuki and Honoka’s request to join him. Several things about him were probably just a little bit numb when it came to danger.

Tonight’s plan hadn’t been more than an independent action from the beginning. Considering the events leading up to this point, as well as the necessities, he’d asked for support from Erika and Mikihiko. He’d accidentally decided, with a slight lack of thought, that if those two were going to be helping him, then it would be fine for Miyuki, who knew the circumstances about as well as he did, and Honoka, who was in a way related to the whole thing, to come as well.

First High rules said you had to be in uniform when you came to school even if it wasn’t a school day, but that rule didn’t apply to nighttime entrance. You needed to have a communicator-embedded ID card on you, but that meant you didn’t necessarily have to wear your uniform. At least, that was the official reason. Behind it was a desire to prevent students from loitering about in the city in their uniform at night.

For the school, it was a kind of risk prevention—also known as “playing it safe”—and Tatsuya understood that. He was dressed for fighting in his usual blouson. Miyuki, taking a page out of his book, wore an activewear-style outfit, with half coat, stretch pants, and tall boots.

However, Honoka was wearing her uniform under her coat. It made Tatsuya doubt whether she understood what they were about to do, but he wasn’t one to let that show in his voice or expression.

“Honoka, did you not go home today?”

It was instead Miyuki who spoke for her brother’s doubts using an inoffensive expression.

“Huh? No, I did.”

Honoka lived by herself; the room she was renting was closer to the school than the siblings’ house. She would have had plenty of time to change.

“Umm, should I…should I not have come in my uniform…?”

“It’s not a totally bad thing…” said Tatsuya. “It just might be a little inconvenient.”

He didn’t want to say anything to criticize her, but he could predict a variety of accidents happening tonight. And Honoka didn’t seem to have thought about that. With a bit of regret, he reflected that he should have explained this to her more properly.

As though sharply picking up on Tatsuya’s thoughts, Honoka began to look down as they walked through the hallway.

“Brother, would it be possible for us to stop by Honoka’s apartment?” Miyuki was the one who set to work dissolving the awkward mood. “You can wait here while Honoka gets changed.”

She probably wasn’t consciously assisting her rival. She’d only suggested a solution because Tatsuya was worried.

“Yeah. It’s a little late to visit, so… If that’s all right with you, Honoka, that’s what I’ll do.”

“No, not at all! Um, I don’t really mind it at all if you come with us. If you have the time to spare, then please come and visit.”

Unrelated to Miyuki’s intentions, this was the best outcome Honoka could ask for.

While they were having a conversation that had begun with them at odds before coming full circle to the point where they meshed like well-fitted cogwheels, the three arrived at the robot club garage. It was locked, of course, but the thing about locks was that you didn’t usually need to do much to open them from the inside. Tatsuya booted up his portable terminal’s close-range communication mode, then sent the encoded message plus encryption key he’d created just that day.

The response came back immediately.

“Did you call for me, master?”

A single door, even an armored one with strength unbefiting of its thinness, was no obstacle to telepathy.

“Open the entrance for us, please.”

“At once, sir.”

There was an answer, and immediately the garage door was opened.

Just inside was the figure of a doll in maid clothes, bowing deeply from the waist. Though an evil spirit resided within, its preprogrammed basic movement patterns seemed to be strictly observed.

Tatsuya waited for Pixie to raise her head, then took out the first item from his bag.

“Pixie, please change into this.”

Even so late at night—actually, precisely because it was night, in a sense—he couldn’t bring her along for a walk in this outfit (namely, the maid clothes). Nevertheless, a student uniform would be no good, for the previously stated reason. For their mission tonight, the first thing Tatsuya had procured was clothing for Pixie to wear.

Pixie must have decided a response was unnecessary for this level of thing. She abruptly began to take off the balloon-sleeved dress she had on.

Tatsuya watched, eyes implying it was natural. This was the second time he’d watched her change clothes, the first being after classes had ended, and he wasn’t possessed of the sort of propensity to confuse dolls with people. For him, Pixie getting changed was almost like taking the seat cover on or off his motorcycle.

“Brother?! How can you watch that so calmly?!”

But for Miyuki, it seemed to be something impermissible.

When he looked, Honoka, too, was directing a criticizing gaze at him.

“Why? Miyuki, Pixie is a robot, you know.”

“She may be a robot, but she’s still a girl!”

“Well, she may be shaped like a person, but she isn’t modeled that precisely to resemble the human body…”

As Tatsuya said, a 3H was a humanoid robot built to be mistaken for a human with clothes on, and the details hidden under the clothing were entirely different from a woman’s naked body. The cheap dolls people used for pseudo-sexual acts had a much higher degree of reproduction for those kinds of parts.

For instance, Pixie’s upper body was close to that of a woman wearing a skin-colored leotard but only down to her waist. The exterior of her torso from the waist down was clearly something one would recognize as robotic, and if one made her wear tight bottoms, one could tell even just from the back that she wasn’t human. The default of a skirt with a wide hemline was for that very reason.

But for the two girls, her subjective appearance was a higher priority than that objective truth.

In the end, Tatsuya was forced by his sister to stand facing away from Pixie, while Honoka stood between them in order to conceal the robot’s modesty.

It wasn’t to say he didn’t feel like it was unfair, but at the same time, it also wasn’t as though he needed to see her changing. Tatsuya obediently kept his back turned until the two gave their permission.

“It’s okay now, Tatsuya.”

Addressed by Honoka’s voice, Tatsuya first confirmed his sister’s expression just in case, then turned around.

The outfit Tatsuya had brought here was a highly elastic sweater under an open jacket with a standing collar and a knee-length skirt with three layers of frills to hide her waistline.

Alongside a longish scarf wrapped twice around her neck.

He had purposely omitted any type of hat that would hide her face. He also had her wear thick tights and boots, which emphasized her legs’ silhouette while concealing the finer details… It was an effect for which he’d made full use of the advice from the female petty officer who’d lent the clothes to him and was in charge of the Independent Magic Battalion’s supplies.

Honoka was messing with Pixie’s hair using a brush she’d taken out of somewhere, but Pixie didn’t mind it, not budging an inch while standing perfectly upright. Regardless of how much they faked the outside, it served to indicate she was a doll, not a human, but Tatsuya had no intention of making such advanced demands of her.

He didn’t mind as long as she didn’t elicit questioning walking down the street.

With regards to that point, Pixie’s current form earned passing marks.

“Pixie, come with us.”

Instead of declaring that their mission had started, he gave her an order.

Arrogantly, as if commanding a slave.

Indifferently.

Erika stood riveted to the floor in front of her older brother’s room.

From her perspective, this hesitance was completely unexpected. She couldn’t believe such a timid part of her still remained.

She had no diffidence entering the main building, though she had wanted to avoid meeting her father and older sister. She didn’t feel like seeing her eldest brother, either, though she didn’t have as much resistance to seeing him as she did toward the first two. Fortunately, at this hour, the eldest son wouldn’t have been back home yet.

In any case, getting this over with quickly and going back to her own room would be best, and standing around doing nothing in the hallway was the worst. After all, she had plans after this today.

Erika energized herself, then said, “Brother Tsugu, it’s Erika.”

“Come in,” came the answer after a slight pause.

His voice didn’t sound displeased, but it wasn’t very welcoming, either. Actually, he was probably forcing himself to suppress his less-than-stellar mood.

Fighting the impulse to turn and leave that very moment, Erika opened the door.

“What could be the matter at this hour?” he asked.

Naotsugu was sitting in front of his writing desk. He had his chair turned and was facing Erika with his whole body. But Erika glimpsed signs that someone had just been sleeping in the bed across from the desk.

The two siblings were in opposite positions from the day before yesterday, but Erika didn’t bother pointing that out to him.

“I just had something I wanted you to know.”

Erika’s tone of voice was an inarticulate one. The smile Naotsugu was forcing himself to make caused it.

“I’m all ears.”

Her brother’s response was not a very enthusiastic one. In less subtle terms, it felt like he was only listening out of obligation. But that didn’t mean he was making light of Erika; it seemed like he was preoccupied with other things.

“I have a name I wanted to see if you knew: the 101^st Brigade’s Independent Magic Battalion.”

“How do you know a name like that, Erika?”

Erika had managed to rally her spirits at the door, but then she nearly crumpled under the weight of her brother’s unenergetic responses. But now, Naotsugu showed intense interest in the name she had mentioned.

“Actually…”

Even after coming this far, hesitation coiled insistently around Erika’s legs. But she couldn’t think of a cleverer way of doing this.

“My classmate Tatsuya Shiba—the one you’re protecting—is a special-duty soldier in the Independent Magic Battalion.”

“What…?”

Naotsugu couldn’t conceal his surprise at the truth Erika had revealed after willing away her hesitation—or rather, her fear.

“I apologize. I should have told you this earlier when I heard of it, but someone calling himself Major Kazama strictly forbade me from talking about it, saying it was a matter of national security.”

“Major Kazama…? The ‘Great Tengu,’ Harunobu Kazama?!”

“The…Great Tengu?”

This time, it was Erika who tilted her head in surprise.

Exaggerated nicknames were often given to magicians, mostly as a bluff to make opponents cringe in fear, but “Great Tengu” was conspicuous even among them. It was so overblown, it made her think there was an actual story behind it.

“You’re familiar with Major Kazama, then, Brother Tsugu?”

“Yeah… He’s an old magician known as a world-class expert on mountain and forest warfare. He’s currently known as the best commander Japan has when it comes to leading paratroopers.”

Naotsugu’s face and voice contained a mixture of excitement and reverence.

“You know about the Dai Viet conflict, right? At the time, he aided the Vietnamese military in guerrilla warfare against the Great Asian Alliance, who planned to advance south to the Indochinese Peninsula. Apparently, the GAA forces—mainly the Goryeo advance party—feared him as a demon or a god of death.”

Naotsugu exhaled slightly. His excitement turned to yearning, and his reverence became a sigh.

“That was in his midtwenties… He wasn’t much older than I am now, so in a way, he’s a legend. Of course, the nerve center of our military at the time had wanted to avoid a direct clash with the GAA. They were angry with him, and apparently his path for advancement went off course because of it.”

Forgetting even the problem in front of her in her brother’s story, Erika felt like heaving a fed up sigh.

They had their own example of a meritorious man who would become a sacrifice for the peace-at-any-price principle. Maybe it would destroy the nation in the future. Erika knew that was not something a teenager like herself needed to think about, but she couldn’t help it.

“So the rumored Independent Magic Battalion was the force Major Kazama was leading… Well, several urban legend–type stories about him make sense now. And if you’re saying Tatsuya Shiba is one of them, I understand a little more how he has such skill despite his age.”

As Erika monologued to herself, Naotsugu sounded like he was speaking to himself as well.

Thanks to that, Erika was able to pull her mind back to her original goal.

“Brother, I met Major Kazama during the Yokohama Incident. If it hadn’t been the emergency it was, Shiba would have never revealed his secret. That was how important and confidential it was. I could feel it.”

“Hmm… Well, the battalion itself acts like a secret unit. If a high school student is an unofficial member, then yes, there must be quite a good reason for it.”

“The reason I broke my oath and told you about Shiba was because I wanted you to understand exactly that.”

“Then you want to tell me not to tread any deeper in his personal affairs than this, right?”

“Yes. If we poke the bush and the snake comes out, I’m sure it won’t do you or the Chiba family any good. Especially if the snake might turn out to be a venomous cobra.”

“Hmm… Yes, you have a point. Still, I may be a student, but I’m already in the military. I can’t disobey an official order.”

“Then couldn’t you only obey your orders as they were given? Keep acting the bodyguard, and if an attack on him happens, you could deal with it and stop there.”

“I see… I get it. I’ll try considering it from that angle.”

…It seemed she had managed to successfully convince her brother without letting the name Yotsuba slip. Erika bowed to hide her relief, then left the room without meeting her brother’s gaze.

After returning to her own room—which was in a separate building—Erika read the message on her information terminal, which was on her desk with a blinking message notification light.

“Aoyama Cemetery, huh?”

Without the time to settle into her chair, Erika took off the clothes she was wearing and threw them aside. The act was ill-mannered, unbecoming of a “young woman of a good family,” but her mind was so exhausted from persuading Naotsugu that just energizing herself was all she could do.

She put on her under-armor—underwear made of multifunctional synthetic rubber that was bulletproof and bladeproof—then put a fake leather rider’s jacket and shorts on over them. Knee protectors that wouldn’t hinder movement, and synthetic fiber gloves with an ultrathin layer inside the palm and finger areas. After checking that she had everything in her jacket pocket, she got her weapon and headed for the separate building’s front door. Her outfit, with the shorts and boots ending below the knee, was stylish and meshed well with her coquettish good looks, but she wasn’t off to the shopping district tonight.

The members of Erika’s “royal guard” were waiting outside her building. They were the core of the Chiba unit for the vampire incidents—in other words, they acted as Erika’s arms and legs.

“Let’s get going,” she announced casually.

The men followed behind her, not a hint of unhappiness to be seen.

The apartment Honoka was renting was a really snug lease. In terms of the floor plan, it had a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen, but it wasn’t actually as big as that would sound—there was only a small, obligatory dining room next to the kitchen.

Still, having her own room separate from the living room was probably something nonnegotiable as a girl. Opening the front door and immediately being able to see the bed you slept in wouldn’t feel very good even for Tatsuya, a man.

In that living room, Tatsuya and Miyuki were having tea together. Honoka had hastily thrown it together after stopping Pixie from trying to help in accordance with her original production goals. They’d gotten coarse tea, which was probably Honoka’s preference.

Speaking of Honoka, she was currently changing in another room. The soundproofing was perfect, but a vague air of commotion still got to them. Of course, both the siblings had enough good manners to pretend they didn’t notice.

When Honoka appeared next, the siblings had just finished drinking their coarse tea.

“Sorry for the wait!”

She burst out of her room, her outfit the same general style as Miyuki’s.

A half coat on her upper body. A turtleneck sweater visible underneath it. But instead of long stretch pants for her legs, she’d combined a mini culotte skirt with thick leggings. They were also called stirrup pants, the sort where the hems flared out, leaving only the toes and heel visible.

Her half coat’s hem came exactly down to hide her culotte skirt, and at a glance, it might have looked like she wasn’t wearing anything on top of her leggings.

Her outfit coordination was quite eye-catching—particularly to the male eye.

Still, it wasn’t completely impractical. Her leggings were heat retaining, woven with fibers that made the material especially tough. Tatsuya knew that the same type of fibers were used in field battle–use coats. After a quick top-to-bottom glance of what she was wearing, he nodded slightly.

“All right, let’s head out.”

He didn’t know how she’d interpreted the action, but she followed him, her expression one step away from breaking out into a grin.

In her hair, to the left and right, were the two crystals she’d received from Tatsuya. For a slight moment, Pixie acted as though she were drawn to their glow, but neither Tatsuya nor Miyuki, nor Honoka herself, noticed.

“Brother, where are we headed to now?” Miyuki asked at the top of the escalator that led to the train platform, judging that there was nobody around at the moment. Miyuki would follow Tatsuya wherever their goal happened to be, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t curious about where they were going.

“Aoyama Cemetery.”

Honoka was curious in her own right, but when she heard the answer, her face became taut. Considering the time of day, and setting aside affection and trust, maybe she couldn’t help it. Miyuki, who didn’t so much as bat an eye, was surely in the minority of teenage girls.

“I’m sure we’re not going there for an off-season test of courage. Is it just that ghosts tend to crop up in places like that?”

“You’re quick on the uptake.”

There was a slight tinge of happiness, though suppressed, on Tatsuya’s face as he indirectly affirmed his sister’s guess.

“Well, it was something you thought of, Brother.”

Miyuki returned the not-altogether-not-a-smile with one of her own.

“Umm, Tatsuya,” Honoka mumbled, feeling a little thorn in her chest at that. “It’s late, so won’t the park be closed…?”

Until the day before yesterday, Honoka would have flinched at the pain from the thorn and backed off. But the prodding from a good friend last night was still there—not in her mind but in her heart. So she squeezed herself into the conversation, from one stair up on the escalator.

Miyuki looked surprised, but Tatsuya didn’t appear bothered. “We probably can’t get inside. But even so, it wouldn’t matter. If we get close, they’ll come out for us. That’s why we brought Pixie along.”

As a result of questioning Pixie, his idea was that the other parasites wouldn’t tolerate her current way of being.

For the other individuals, who moved in concert as living beings, Pixie, who had lost her desire to self-replicate, was something removed from that. If there were extremely few individuals, they would try to recapture her from her prison inside the machine Pixie. If they were controlled by the basic impulses of self-defense and species preservation, their movement patterns to do so should be the same as humans’.

“And if anyone stops and questions us, you’ll be here to do something about it, right?”

Tatsuya knew more than just hearsay about her skill at optical camouflage—he’d seen it for himself. The Blackout Curtain, used by the USNA’s backup personnel, was far less advanced a technique and required far less skill in comparison. Honoka was the perfect magician to conceal them.

Although, this was simply lip service on Tatsuya’s part. He couldn’t imagine a situation in which they’d actually need to hide themselves.

However.

There was something Tatsuya still didn’t fully understand.

Honoka didn’t get that sort of joke.

“Please leave it to me!” she said confidently, almost peacefully, pounding her chest.

What an overreaction, thought Tatsuya, in an awful misunderstanding.

Underground, in a medium-rise building on a street corner in Ichigaya: Here was where the JGDF counterintelligence department’s Section Three had its headquarters.

If their HQ in the Ministry of Defense was the front-facing core of the JGDF’s intelligence activities, this underground room was the one behind the curtains, one of the true cores. It may sound strange to have more than one core of something, but this was a product of risk analysis, set up so that if their HQ went down, their functions could keep running.

Of course, using an abnormal organizational structure brought with it some major side effects.

Intelligence groups always came with the concept of the left hand not knowing what the right was doing, but that concept was strikingly conspicuous here. People refraining from doing whatever they wanted on their own would have been a saving grace, but the reality of it was that each section had its own backers and operated in many arenas at once according to those backers’ wants. The JGDF’s intelligence department in particular contained an ugly disunity in its organization.

“Observation target currently moving toward the city. Sister and two others with him.”

The patron of this underground room was a major conglomerate of electronics manufacturers, which was also the second-biggest munitions industry group in the nation. And the Saegusa family was deeply embedded in their federation. It would be apt to say the Saegusa were the true patrons of counterintelligence Section Three. And right now, apart from Mayumi and the others in the Saegusa-Juumonji alliance, they were also acting on the will of the Saegusa’s current leader.

“Running video verification… One of them is Honoka Mitsui, first-year student at NMU’s Affiliated First High School.”

“A classmate. Odd tastes, bringing his sister along on a date like that.”

The person in charge gave a response that seemed scornful, but depending on how one interpreted the words, it could have also sounded envious.

“The other one… No, she’s not a human. It seems to be a type P-94 Humanoid Home Helper.”

“A humanoid HAR terminal? Where could he be bringing it?” The man tilted his head in confusion and said to another staff member, “Have we gotten into the cabinet service systems yet?”

“No, sir, it has tough protection… My apologies, sir!”

The man in charge didn’t scold his subordinate for the almost whining remark. He understood that if the public transportation system’s control brain allowed hacking that easily, terrorists would be the bigger worry.

“Chief, the train with the target on it has changed course.”

“Akasaka…? No, Aoyama?” muttered the chief, predicting the cabinet’s course from the monitor display. After a pause, he gave the order.

“Position operatives disguised as police officers along Aoyama Road. If the target group uses magic, pretend to arrest and capture them.”

As affirmatives to his commands and communicator-aimed instructions were flying about, the chief continued to stare at the monitor.

Colonel Balance sat, exhausted, in an embassy-prepared, rent-by-the-week, fully furnished apartment.

She had allowed a break-in to their operational headquarters, if only a temporary one, and on top of that, she’d been kidnapped without the chance to put up any real fight, and then she’d been humiliated when a foreign vessel had rescued her as she was drifting out at sea. The huge failure was a deep blow to both her career and her pride.

Surprisingly, neither her home nation nor the military officials staying at the embassy had any particular criticisms. This mistake had humiliated not only her but also the special team dispatched as temporary HQ security, as well as the navy, for allowing the seajacking of a small vessel in the first place. (The USNA Navy’s pride, however, was in much worse shape than hers.) So she understood the situation didn’t allow them to blame her alone.

But she had enough energy left to guess that wasn’t the only reason. Still, she couldn’t deny that she was in a malfunctioning state.

When the doorbell rang suddenly and she looked up, only then did she realize that night had long since fallen.

She heard the female sergeant assigned to be her bodyguard answer the doorbell. Then she heard a sharp intake of breath from the woman.

“Excuse me, ma’am.”

Both the footsteps approaching the living room Balance occupied and the voice asking her for permission to enter sounded rattled.

“Enter.”

Balance straightened her posture on the sofa, making sure to give her reply in a firm tone. She couldn’t show weakness to someone of lower rank—the officer training within her, more than her own intent or emotions, made her act that way.

The living room door opened and closed carefully. In front of her, a tall woman in a pantsuit saluted. A noncommissioned officer chosen for her personal combat abilities over her appearance or education, her skills and courage were both some of the best. Balance rated this sergeant so highly she believed things might have turned out differently last night had she been present.

And yet—her face was pale, drawn back.

Sensing this was no trifle, Balance rose from the sofa. “What’s going on?”

“There is someone who wishes to meet with you, ma’am.”

“What…?”

It was a secret that Balance was staying here. But if it had just been someone from the military (the USNA military, that is) coming to see her, her sergeant bodyguard wouldn’t have any reason to be this nervous. Not even for the embassy staff. In other words, the visitor was an outsider, despite the USNA military’s information control—and what’s more, an outsider who knew that she was here.

Too impatient to give a command to the sergeant, Balance used a remote control to transfer the video monitor on the doorbell to the large screen in the living room.

A young girl stood there on the display—pretty, wearing a classical dress and a mysterious look on her face.

Balance’s surprise exceeded its limits. She froze for five solid seconds.

“…Who is that?” she asked, finally managing to reboot her mind, then becoming aware of two well-built men waiting behind the girl. One courteously held a coat, probably the girl’s. They were probably her attendants—bodyguards.

A girl, probably in her midteens, with two bodyguards, all clearly out of the ordinary.

Balance knew she had to be careful here—but she couldn’t stop the situation from feeling surreal.

“Her name is Ayako Kuroba, ma’am,” declared the sergeant. She made a gesture, as though gulping, but after hearing her next words, Balance couldn’t blame her.

“She says she’s an agent of the Yotsuba family.”

“It is an honor to make your acquaintance, Miss Balance. My name is Kuroba Ayako. I’m sorry to intrude. I’ve come today as an agent of the Yotsuba family.”

The girl introduced herself in clean, crisp English.

Without, however, using any honorific tones normally expected when addressing a soldier—a high-ranking officer.

If she’d learned such perfect pronunciation, it was hard to imagine she didn’t have the vocabulary necessary for it.

In other words, the slight was on purpose.

Ayako having given her own last name first was probably just as deliberate.

“Colonel Virginia Balance, USNA military JCS. I apologize for my rudeness, but I’d like to ask a question of you before hearing what you’ve come here for.”

“Oh, what might that be? I do hope I am able to answer.”

She seemed even younger in age than Major Sirius, but she appeared to be a better negotiator.

Even better than the one with all kinds of experience as commander of the USNA military’s top-class force of magicians, despite what had happened.

This girl before her was no ordinary one. Balance made sure, once again, to keep that in mind.

“The Yotsuba family… Are you referring to the Yotsuba?”

She purposely made her question ambiguous, on the slim chance that she’d misunderstood.

But despite her fluid way of asking, the girl smiled pleasantly. “Yes, you are correct. I’ve come here today to make a request as an agent of Maya Yotsuba, leader of the Yotsuba family, one of the Ten Master Clans.”

Even though Balance was prepared—already knowing that the chances of being mistaken were roughly zero—the way the girl had said it so easily made it quite difficult to accept.

The Yotsuba—of Japan.

For anyone related to magic, they were, in a sense, Untouchables. Especially to those concerned with magic usage in the military.

It wasn’t as though each individual had destructive power rivaling an entire army, like Major Sirius did.

The Yotsuba’s way was the opposite.

Right now (and for now), they acted in accordance with the Japanese government, but some even said that if they were to go underground and become terrorists, it would be the trigger for a fourth world war.

The group treated the concept of magic so radically seriously that they went beyond respected and were instead simply feared.

“A request?”

“Yes. I would very much like it if you were to hear it out.”

“Please go on.”

Belatedly, Balance realized that a guest had visited and they hadn’t served her tea.

But far more belatedly would be diverting the conversation now to prepare drinks.

Balance focused on the words about to come out of the girl’s mouth.

“Very well, then. Miss Balance, we would like you to cease the interference with our country’s magicians being carried out at your command.”

“…”

It was more than plain interference she was commanding—it was an intelligence war, a mission to investigate Japan’s unofficial strategic-class magician, then secure (read: kidnap) or disable (read: assassinate) them. Balance had, of course, thought of the possibility that her “request”—the Yotsuba’s demands—would involve it. Actually, she’d predicted it as a high chance.

But the “cease” demand was more unreserved than she’d expected, and she couldn’t immediately react to it.

“I believe you are aware of what Japan’s Ten Master Clans system is and how it works, Miss Balance.”

The girl’s tone suggested she’d be glad to tell her if she didn’t know. Feeling a sense of antipathy, Balance nodded. Feigning innocence would be meaningless.

“Our leader, Maya Yotsuba, has concerns over your excessive interference. She has said that since our nations are allied with each other, she did not want to make this affair into a trigger for any sort of conflict.”

“…Is that a warning? Will you light the trigger if we don’t withdraw?”

Instead of answering Balance’s question, Ayako gave another pleasant smile.

“Miss, did you sleep well last night?”

“That was you?!”

Before she knew it, Balance had risen from the sofa and leaned forward. Were the table slightly narrower, she might have grabbed the girl’s collar.

“Umm, what do you mean? Respectfully, your face doesn’t look well, so I simply offered my concern.”

Ayako said that, but there wasn’t a hint of worry on her face.

She was smiling. Without trying to hide her I-know-how-it-is look, informed about everything.

“Miss Balance, please allow your nerves to settle. If at all possible, we would very much like to build a friendly relationship with you.”

“A friendly relationship…?”

Balance realized, though not because the girl had told her, that throttling her now would be not only pointless but actively harmful. She returned to the sofa. The words the girl had then said only served to rub Balance the wrong way even further.

“You are aware of the Yotsuba’s power. And we are well aware of yours, Miss.”

Balance’s emotions were hitting rock bottom, but her logic told her to listen to what the girl had to say.

This girl, who named herself an agent of the Yotsuba family, hadn’t said she knew the USNA military’s power or the Stars’ power. She said they knew Balance’s power.

Which meant…

“The leader has said that if you would arrange things to withdraw from this incident, Miss, we will not forget our gratitude to you personally. And that, should there be an opportunity in the future, we would be able to assist you.”

It was an attractive proposition.

If she created a personal connection with the Yotsuba, it would be a weapon that would make up for all the position she’d lost last night and then some. She’d just learned of their true strength firsthand.

The girl smiled gracefully.

The discordant scales tipped toward logic—the logic of avarice.

The devil, in the form of a beautiful young girl, had handed her a contract. And Major Balance intended to sign it.

As soon as Tatsuya alighted on the walkway outside the Aoyama bridge station, he sensed eyes observing him, clinging to him like wet paint. Not just one or two pairs, either. During his conversation with Hayama on the phone right before leaving, he’d predicted surveillance. Still, such a passionate investment of manpower exceeded his expectations.