Saturday morning, October 20.

Five-day weeks were still used in some liberal arts schools, but six-day weeks were standard for most high schools. Magic high schools were no exception, with their classes filling every day from Monday to Saturday.

Normally, a student would be focusing on their terminal in their classroom, practicing magic, or in a lab, but at the moment, Tatsuya was on his way to Kyoto with Miyuki and Minami.

They weren’t skipping out on classes, of course. This trip was being treated like a paid holiday, the pretext of which was to prepare in advance for the Thesis Competition. They were moving via trailer this time, rather than a linear express train.

A trailer, in simple terms, was a two-story, linked train, with a cabinet on the first floor and a passenger amenity area on the second. It didn’t levitate, but it still used a linear motor, so its speed wasn’t much slower than that of a linear express.

Its wheels were metallic, and it ran over a metallic track—a system that, compared with linear expresses and cabinets, loyally retained the sense of a railroad.

In order to board, a parking pallet would first slide out of the trailer, slipping between the cabinet and the track. The trailer was faster than the cabinet, so it would approach the cabinet from the rear. Then, the parking pallet would scoop up the cabinet’s wheels from behind. After that, the pallet would once again slide back into the trailer. Through this method, passengers would board the trailer while inside the cabinet. This was possible because a cabinet’s wheels were only there to hold it up—they weren’t hooked up to the power mechanism.

As soon as they were in the trailer, Tatsuya and the others exited the cabinet and went up to the second-floor amenity area. Though the cabinet might have guaranteed more privacy, he’d decided it would be a waste to shut themselves up in its narrow confines when there was a place they could stretch their legs available to them.

Thankfully, the lounge chairs were empty. Tatsuya and Miyuki took seats next to each other, while Minami went to the one in front of Miyuki and turned it around to face them before sitting.

“Want something to drink?” Tatsuya asked, taking an order terminal out of his armrest and showing it to Miyuki.

“…I’m sorry to trouble you, Brother. I’ll have this.”

Apologetic, Miyuki pressed the terminal herself. Tatsuya tried to show it to Minami, too, but she’d already taken hers out of her own seat. And, in fact, she was now trying to show hers to him—but Tatsuya smiled at her and put in the order on his. She didn’t look too happy about it, but she did make a point of ordering her own.

Within less than a minute, their drinks arrived. The robotic arms running along the ceiling lowered a tray in front of each of the three. They worked under essentially the same principles as the HARs (Home Automation Robots) used in most homes.

Tatsuya, Miyuki, and Minami each took their plastic cups, designed to be reused, and the arms holding the trays retracted back into the ceiling. After taking one or two sips, they placed their cups on a side table.

Right after that, someone called out to Tatsuya from behind.

“Wait—Tatsuya?”

He’d set his cup down partly because he’d noticed her approach.

“Good morning, Erika,” Miyuki replied.

“You ended up in this trailer too, huh?” Tatsuya asked as Erika took the seat in front of him.

“Yeah. What a crazy coincidence.”

His classmate nodded, honestly surprised. Trailers ran at even intervals on intracity rails, and cabinets moving long distances would board whatever trailer was closest. It was all controlled by the public transit system, and passengers couldn’t choose which trailer to board.

However, it wasn’t actually that shocking. If the destination and estimated time of arrival were identical, cabinets would end up running at the same time in the same area, ramping up the chances of sharing a trailer.

Erika followed their lead and ordered her own drink, then took a big stretch in her lounge chair.

“Wow, it sure is nice to be able to stretch your legs, huh?”

“Erika, are you the type who thinks cabinets are too cramped?”

Cabinet interiors were made to be spacious compared to cars, but a certain segment of people felt that they were uncomfortable.

“Huh? No, not really. Not compared with the hours of sitting on my knees I do in small rooms for training.”

“I didn’t know kenjutsu involved such a thing,” Miyuki said, surprised.

Erika scowled bitterly. “My shitty dad says it’s for kenjutsu anyway…”

Tatsuya and Miyuki exchanged looks. Erika only seemed crude at a glance; oftentimes, she’d give off an impression of being raised to have good manners. Calling her older brother stupid was one thing, but using swear words was probably not something she enjoyed doing.

“So it doesn’t have anything to do with training?”

It made Miyuki curious, but the brief eye contact led her to the conclusion that she shouldn’t ask a personal question like that. Neither she nor her brother wanted to be interrogated about family affairs.

Instead, Miyuki asked something else. From the way Erika put it, perhaps sitting formally atop her knees was training for something else? That didn’t seem to suit Erika, and yet, at the same time, it did.

“Tea stuff. You know, ceremonies.”

Her guess happened to be right on the mark—which only surprised her even more.

“It wasn’t that uncommon in the olden days to combine tea ceremony with martial arts.”

Tatsuya immediately followed up, though, so Erika didn’t realize Miyuki was so surprised that she didn’t know how to react.

“I guess not. Dad’s probably trying to imitate that… But don’t you think he should make his son and heir do that first?”

“Well, maybe.”

“I think that’s a little severe, though, Erika,” chimed in a rebooted Miyuki with a smile. “Students in tea ceremony classrooms are almost all female. Wouldn’t that hurdle be a little high for your older brothers?”

“And unlike them, it’s not strange that you’d be learning it,” added Tatsuya.

Erika looked away. “Huh. Really. You don’t think I’m not suited for that kinda stuff?”

“Not at all. I’ve been invited twice to a class Miyuki attends, and I think the atmosphere suits you.”

“…But I bet you think it doesn’t suit me as much as her,” muttered Erika, shying away.

Tatsuya let out a grin. It was pretty obvious she was pretending to sulk to hide her embarrassment.

When they emerged from the ticket gates at Kyoto Station, Leo and Mikihiko were waiting for them. The pair hadn’t coincidentally been on the same trailer, but that was only natural. Tatsuya, Miyuki, and Minami also split up with Erika in the trailer and returned to their original cabinets, arriving separately.

After the six of them grouped up in the station, they decided to head straight for the hotel they were planning to stay at. But Tatsuya, who was heading for the commuter boarding platform, noticed a familiar presence approaching from behind. He stopped walking and turned around.

“Tatsuya, Miyuki, Minami.”

“Oh, is that you, Minoru?”

The one who trotted up to them was, as Miyuki had named, the youngest son of the Kudou family they’d met two weeks ago: Minoru Kudou.

He must have also noticed that they’d noticed him. There was no hesitation in his voice when he’d called out; a smile was gracing his almost radiant features.

Tatsuya suddenly sensed someone to his right was visibly shocked. He glanced over and saw Erika’s eyes had gone wide. Her mouth was even open a little—she must have been quite taken aback.

“Wow.”

And as he was thinking that, the girl herself admitted that very thing.

“He’s like a male version of Miyuki… I can’t believe there’s anyone besides her with such attractive features.”

Tatsuya agreed on that point, but he also didn’t think it was the sort of thing to say about someone who was standing right there. “Minoru, did you come to pick us up? The plan was to meet up at the hotel, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was, but I was on the lookout, since I figured you’d be arriving about now…”

Commenting on how Minoru was clearly happy they hadn’t missed each other might have been interpreted as being insensitive so Tatsuya decided to keep to himself.

What he said instead was a few words of introduction to acquaint those who had never met. “This is your first time meeting everyone, right?”

When he said “everyone,” he meant his friends to his right side. Miyuki was to his left, and Minami was waiting behind her.

“This is Minoru Kudou, son of the Kudou family.”

“Good to meet you. My name is Minoru Kudou, and I’m currently a freshman at Second High.”

After Tatsuya spoke, Minoru introduced himself, focusing on his school instead of his family out of a hope that they’d treat him not as part of the influential Ten Master Clans, but as a fellow student like themselves.

“I’m Erika Chiba, a junior at First High.”

Erika, quick to recover even after her initial shock, was the first one to introduce herself.

“And I’m Leonhard Saijou. I’m a junior at First High, like her.”

“Mikihiko Yoshida. I’m also in my junior year at First High. It’s nice to meet you, Kudou.”

“The pleasure is all mine.”

Minoru’s eyebrow moved a little upon hearing Erika’s and Mikihiko’s names; based on name alone, he’d probably realized she was a swordswoman of the Chiba family and he was a mage of the Yoshida family. It seemed he wasn’t as skilled at hiding his thoughts as he was with his magical abilities.

Of course, unlike his magical abilities, that inexperience was a little more appropriate for his age.

“Minoru. We’re going to drop off our things at the hotel for now—do you want to come?”

“Yes, if you’ll allow me. That will be a more efficient use of our time.”

“Yeah.”

Tatsuya started off toward the commuter platform again. Miyuki was next to him, while his friends trailed behind him. Minoru walked next to Minami, also following in Tatsuya’s wake.

It still wasn’t check-in time at the hotel yet, but they were able to keep their luggage behind the desk regardless. This type of service remained unchanged from the olden days.

The group of seven, including Minoru, first headed to the Kyoto New International Conference Hall, the venue for the Thesis Competition. Before the war, it had been called the Kyoto International Conference Center, but its name had been changed upon its rebuilding after the Twenty Years’ Global War Outbreak from “conference center” to “new conference hall.”

The location had always been bursting with nature, surrounded by a pond and hills as it was, and that remained the same even after its rebuilding. The construction of large, industrial facilities had been virtually forbidden, and the small stadium a short distance away had been demolished after it got too old to use; in its place was a woody park.

There were no dilapidated buildings—like the ones the foreign saboteurs had set up as their headquarters during the string of events that had occurred preceding the Yokohama Incident last year—anywhere near the New Conference Hall. Aside from the hotel right next door, there weren’t even any buildings close by at all. Only residential housing, two stories at most, making the place seem too difficult for a large group to infiltrate.

“…On the other hand, it’s perfect for a small group to spread out and hide,” mused Mikihiko.

Erika remained doubtful: “Think so? I doubt the mountains around here are deep enough to set up camp while staying hidden.”

“They don’t need to sleep out in the mountains, do they?” argued Leo. “They just have to hide on the day of, right? Seems like there’s plenty of places for that.”

Erika blinked several times. Then, she realized she’d been assuming hiding meant infiltrating.

“And they don’t need to set up a camp in the mountains, either,” pointed out Mikihiko again, though probably not to back up Erika, who had fallen sullenly silent. “They could hide in the houses, too, in groups of two or three. Ancient magicians have plenty of ways to prevent others from catching on, like hypnotizing the residents or putting up perception-blocking fields.”

“Yeah, that’s true. Given the area, there’s probably a ton of ancient magicians,” murmured Erika with nonchalance to fill the air, perhaps concerned that her silence signaled defeat.

Then, Tatsuya, who had been silent until now, proposed something to Mikihiko. He didn’t expect it to fly, but he wanted Erika to feel a little better about the process, at least. “Would you like to split up and walk around? Hypnotism aside, bounded fields should be easy enough to detect.”

“No, that wouldn’t be efficient.” There was no particular script, but Mikihiko gave him the answer he wanted. “If small groups wanted to hide in houses, they’d be keeping their bounded fields to an absolute minimum so nobody outside would detect them. Not that I’m doubting your abilities or Miyuki’s, but without some amazing luck, we won’t get anywhere walking around blindly trying to feel them out. I don’t think we have time to spend relying on coincidences.”

Tatsuya nodded easily. “Makes sense. What should we do, then?”

“I’ll try using a search shiki,” he answered, before looking to Erika and Leo. “Could you two help me out?”

“What’s the plan?” responded Leo, though from his expression, it was clear he would do whatever it was.

“I can’t help it, but while I have a shikigami out, I can’t pay as much attention to my surroundings. I want you two to be on the lookout for things nearby.”

“Right. Leave it to me!” Leo nodded with a grin.

“If it’s the only way, I guess I’ll protect you.” Erika was pretending not to be interested in this, but her voice and face betrayed the eagerness quietly leaking out.

“Thank you.” Mikihiko nodded to Erika and Leo—who frowned a little, either feeling like their friend was being too formal or too standoffish—before turning back to Tatsuya. “As for Tatsuya and the others… Could you, Miyuki, and Sakurai take a look around the city, like we decided last week? And, uh…”

As Mikihiko looked at Minoru, who was standing next to Minami, his expression faltered.

“I can show them around. Second High would be just as troubled if something like last year happened again.”

“Minoru is Ms. Fujibayashi’s cousin,” mentioned Tatsuya.

Mikihiko, Erika, and Leo were all there when it happened on October 30 last year: They’d learned Tatsuya was a special officer in the JDF and been firmly asked to keep that secret. All three of them also remembered the beautiful female officer who had gone with them to the station in Sakuragi Town, including her name.

“R-right…”

“Huh… So the two of you are family.”

“Oh, you’re related?”

They understood they weren’t supposed to look too deeply into the connection between Tatsuya and Minoru, and each gave a different stumbling reaction toward that end.

“Her family’s house is in the area. When we talked about looking around the city of Kyoto, she introduced Minoru to be our guide.”

Tatsuya knew the three would interpret “talking to Fujibayashi” as “talking about something related to a military mission” and gave the explanation anyway so as to amplify the misunderstanding.

“I see,” said Mikihiko, very nearly stammering but stopping himself. “Thanks for doing this, Tatsuya.”

“Yeah, you too.”

“Yoshida, Saijou, Erika—we’ll see you later,” Miyuki called to them.

“Right, see you at the hotel!” Erika answered before the seven split into two groups.

The first place Tatsuya’s group headed to was Oohara, known for its famous temple, Sanzen-in. He had no plans to visit the temple grounds and sightsee, of course; this was the last region in which Gongjin Zhou had been sighted.

Tatsuya had gotten Minoru to bring them here first, since it was in the same direction as the New Conference Hall from the heart of the city. Unfortunately, it was farther away than he’d expected. He’d had a mental image of Kyoto being compact and organized.

According to the information he’d received from Hayama, the skirmish between Gongjin Zhou and the Kuroba search team had occurred near the imperial tombs of Emperor Go-toba Oohara and the Emperor Juntoku Oohara. It looked like even they hadn’t gone so far as to step into a cordoned-off memorial site. Word was that Zhou had gone along a small river flowing between the imperial tombs and Sanzen-in before escaping downstream.

Having heard only that, Tatsuya figured the pursuers must have lost track of their prey somewhere deep into the mountains. Surprisingly, though, the direction in which Gongjin Zhou had fled had its fair share of house-lined roads, with not only sightseers but plenty of locals out and about. When he compared the scenery to his map, he felt like it would have been better to flee upstream instead, toward the Otonashi Waterfall, but remembering the search team’s assault on the man, he shook his head.

Qimen Dunjia scattered the victim’s sense of direction. Putting together all the information acquired so far pointed to the technique being a type of illusion that forcibly confused a caster’s sense of direction. On the surface, it seemed like a spell that truly shined in overgrown mountain forests with dense oceans of trees, but maybe its true value came out when used in crowds of people.

In unpopulated places, sensing Zhou’s presence was an option.

But in crowds, losing track of him because of a spell that ruined his enemy’s sense of direction—if it wasn’t possible to follow him visually—there’d be no other way of finding him.

Before coming here, Tatsuya had assumed Zhou would sneak off to some hideaway in the mountains that nobody ever went near. But he changed his mind after surveying the area. If Gongjin Zhou fled downstream, not toward the mountains but toward a village, he could still be hiding in an urban district with plenty of people in it instead of somewhere relatively empty.

“The closest Traditionalist base in the direction he escaped is in Mount Kurama. Should we go there, Tatsuya?” asked Minoru when they were on the short bridge spanning the Ritsu River.

With Miyuki and Minami looking on, Tatsuya shook his head. “No, let’s go back into the city.”

“The city?” repeated Minoru, sounding a little surprised.

“Do you believe Zhou is hiding somewhere crowded, Brother?”

After hearing Miyuki’s question, Tatsuya nodded. “Yeah.”

“I see. Trees are best hidden within forests, after all.”

Minoru’s comment was slightly different from Tatsuya’s, but not enough for him to correct him.

“A place, populated to a certain degree, with a Traditionalist headquarters… That narrows it down to the street leading to Kiyomizu-dera, the neighborhood around Kinkaku-ji, and the area behind Tenryuu-ji.”

“That’s not as many as I expected.”

He’d heard from Minoru that the Traditionalist bases were scattered throughout Nara and Kyoto, but Mikihiko had said Kyoto was their main base. With that and several other pieces of information, Tatsuya had been under the preconception that the Traditionalists were crowded all over the city of Kyoto.

“In Kyoto, the religious faction dedicated to preserving true traditions is stronger than those in Nara. Groups that are New Age religions in name only have been forced into the nearby mountains.”

“And yet, they call themselves the Traditionalists—do they have some kind of complex about tradition?” Tatsuya jibed.

Minami rolled her eyes at the rhetorical question—but she restrained herself to make sure Miyuki couldn’t see, of course. She doubted it would have angered her master, but she decided she should avoid any unnecessary friction.

Although, in reality, both Miyuki and Tatsuya did notice it.

Meanwhile, unlike her, Minoru seemed to take his muttering literally. “I’m not sure. As you know, the Traditionalists formed around a core of ancient magicians who had participated in Lab Nine’s operations. Their objective must be to take revenge on Lab Nine and the families of the Nine.”

Maybe it was revenge, but the resentment the Traditionalists felt was nothing if not misguided. They were under the assumption that when they took part in Lab Nine’s research, in exchange for providing their own secret arts, they would in turn be provided with newly developed and expanded magic.

Lab Nine had billed itself as a fusion of modern and ancient magic, but it wasn’t exactly a secret that, in reality, it was for developing modern magic that integrated ancient magic techniques and methods. It had been written in the establishment objective in the documents explaining Lab Nine’s purpose given to them when the lab had requested help from ancient magicians. As a reward, they promised only money, facilities, and social status—there was no rule saying they’d provide them with new magic.

The idea that they would receive secret arts in return for offering secret arts was no more than a fiction of their narrow sensibilities, and it could even be said that it was childish to assume it was a matter of course.

“But if all that’s true, then why are they scattered around Kyoto and away from Nara, which is both their birthplace and destination? I don’t have any idea.”

“Really?” Tatsuya asked smoothly. “Their motives for calling themselves Traditionalists aside, the reason they left Nara is fairly clear.”

“Huh?” Minoru widened his eyes.

“The Traditionalists aren’t a monolithic group—you’re the one who taught me that.”

“Well, yes. I did say that…”

“Then wouldn’t there be a pretty massive variation in how they feel toward the old Lab Nine? The ones with stronger, vengeful feelings toward the families of the Nine stayed in Nara. And they’ve been waiting for their chance for over thirty years.”

“How foolish…” Miyuki muttered, in a tone of clear loathing. “If they’d only use that passion for more constructive things, they could contribute to the country and academia.”

“Now, don’t say that,” Tatsuya chided, comfortingly combing his fingers through her hair. “Most people can’t keep looking forward all the time through every situation, can they? At least, not as far as we’ve seen.”

Forefront in Tatsuya’s mind were his own father and the man’s current wife.

“…I suppose not.”

Miyuki’s smile sunk a bit as she nodded, doubtless because she’d envisioned the same faces he had.

His hand movements stroking her hair became a little rougher.

Miyuki puffed out her cheeks slightly and looked up at him. Her eyes, though, were smiling.

Tatsuya, also smiling, removed his hand from her hair.

“But for the ones who stayed in Nara, even though their goals are backward, you could say they’re still trying to move forward with their actions.”

Miyuki gave him a mystified look. And of course, Tatsuya wasn’t planning on ending the conversation on such a high-and-mighty note.

“The ones who moved their bases to Kyoto may pretend to be resisting the old Lab Nine, but I think they’re probably just scared of it and the associated families.”

“They were scared? I don’t recall the Kudou, the Kumo, or the Kuzumi ever making threats or actually attacking any ancient magicians who helped in the research…” Minoru objected, although he sounded slightly uncertain. All this history happened before he was born, and he hesitated to ask questions about it directly. His knowledge was based on hearsay, which was why his attitude was indecisive.

“I don’t think they did, either. The magicians of the Nine were among those experimented on, to boot. They see themselves as the victims when it comes to the ancient magicians, not the victimizers. Since they were all test subjects at Lab Nine together, there wouldn’t have been any enmity.”

Calm returned to Minoru’s uneasy, wavering eyes. Tatsuya’s own viewpoint was also only speculation, but Minoru must have been relieved he’d gotten an agreement to his own remark.

“I think the Traditionalist ancient magicians were scared of their own shadows, to an extent. The government controlled Lab Nine, so if they were resentful about being taken advantage of, it would make sense to turn it on the government. But they decided the families of the Nine, who were test dummies like them, are the enemy. They probably know they’re taking it out on the wrong people just as much as anyone else.”

Tatsuya paused and reflected on his thoughts for a moment. “Either they didn’t want to don the shameful label of rebels or they simply didn’t have the guts to oppose the government… Either way, since they knew, in truth, that their grudge against the families of the Nine was unfounded, they may have been afraid they’d be exposed to irrational violence themselves. They would have personally seen the true power of the magicians that Lab Nine created. And those magicians don’t have a responsibility to oblige them and wait obediently like cannon fodder. If the ancient magicians attack, it’s only natural to expect retaliation—with the magic they helped create, of course.”

Perhaps thinking something was funny, Tatsuya gave a wicked grin. “Or maybe they took the saber-rattling too far and found themselves unable to back down. Maybe, at first, the leaders of each group reined in the extreme discontent of younger mages by blaming the families of the Nine. It could be that one group discovered they couldn’t put their flag back down after raising it and stayed close to Lab Nine, while the other groups left for Kyoto. And maybe the idea that separate denominations have separate bases is just a façade, and they simply changed their signboards based on their differences in viewpoint. The Traditionalists aren’t loyal to true traditions, are they?”

The last question was directed at Minoru.

“Yes…” he agreed, nodding at the assessment. “I’ve heard some of the ancient magicians who participated in Lab Nine’s experiments actually belonged to several different denominations.”

“But is a silly reason like that reason enough to keep this petty harassment up for decades?” asked Miyuki, not with a face of disbelief but with one that didn’t want to acknowledge the sheer ridiculousness.

“They’ve probably only been doing it for such a long time because they’ve kept to petty harassment,” Tatsuya replied, implying that if they’d taken more decisively hostile behavior, these groups would have been stamped out long ago.

His sister seemed convinced by this. In the end, the one who tilted her head at Tatsuya’s answer was Minami.

“However, Big Brother Tatsuya…” There may have been no reason to hide the fact in front of Minoru, but Minami used her outdoor nickname for him just in case. “I agree that what you’re saying seems plausible, but…”

Hesitating at that point was only natural given her position. However, driven by a sort of sense of duty, she didn’t fumble her next words.

“If that’s true, would the Traditionalists in Kyoto really be harboring a foreign magician who caused several disasters in Japan?”

That was sharp of her to notice, thought Minoru.

But Tatsuya’s answer came with virtually no delay. “This is merely an idea, but I wonder if they actually wanted to decline to help. I think they were maybe in too deeply involved with Gongjin Zhou and couldn’t pull out of the agreement.”

“Was there some reason they couldn’t sever ties?”

“I think Minoru would know that better than me, but the Traditionalists were taking in a stream of defected immortalists from Gongjin Zhou. On the surface, it looks like the Traditionalists helped him, but in reality, Zhou was the one helping them bolster their combat forces.”

Tatsuya looked to Minoru, who nodded.

“Some of the attackers the other day in Nara Park were immortalists from China, too. We can assume the defected immortalists wield a certain degree of influence within the Traditionalists. Enough that the organization wouldn’t be able to withstand infighting or splintering.”

Minami silently thanked Tatsuya, a sign her doubts were resolved.

He returned it with a slight nod, then looked at Minoru. “We got pretty far off track, but anyway, that’s why I want to look for the bases in the city. Our suspects are Kiyomizu-dera, Kinkaku-ji, and Tenryuu-ji, right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Tatsuya opened up a map—not by taking out an information terminal, but in his mind.

“Kinkaku-ji and Tenryuu-ji are in the same direction, but Kiyomizu-dera is on a different route…”

“Either way, we should probably meet up with Yoshida and the others for now,” Miyuki proposed, looking at her own information terminal.

She was right—whether they decided to go on the route that had two temples or the other route that only had one, they would end up passing by the New Conference Hall.

But Tatsuya shook his head. “We don’t really have time to join up with them. Thanks to Minoru, we’ve narrowed down the search area, but there’s still only four of us. And it’s also possible I’m reading this wrong and they’re not hiding in the city at all.”

The undeniable fact was that four people was too few to conduct a search like this in the first place. Detectives in stories could solve crimes all by themselves because the criminal conveniently appeared for them; weeding out a hidden suspect in reality required the manpower of an entire police force, or the equipment to match.

Unfortunately, none of the magic Tatsuya or Miyuki had learned could serve as wide-area surveillance cameras. Besides, if cameras were all it would take to find Zhou, Tatsuya wouldn’t have been brought onboard at all.

“I understand. Where shall we go first, then?”

He must have had an answer in mind already. Tatsuya immediately responded to Miyuki’s question.

“To Kiyomizu-dera. After that, we’ll check Kinkaku-ji and Tenryuu-ji.”

After splitting up with Tatsuya, Mikihiko had been walking around the New Conference Hall neighborhood, making a show of using a search spell, as they’d decided on last week. Since the conference hall was made for foreigners to use, hotels had been established nearby, as had a forested park. They looked out on a large pond, though it did not match the size of Takaragaike at the hall; a verdant, hilly copse unmarred by urban development wrapped around the water.

Erika and Leo followed right behind Mikihiko, engaged in idle banter but never neglecting to be attentive of their surroundings while serving as bodyguards.

The situation changed at about the time Tatsuya decided on Kiyomizu-dera as their group’s next destination. Mikihiko had just been observing the competition venue from the opposite bank of Takaragaike.

Mikihiko was the first to notice the stifled presence drifting to them from the slightly elevated mountains behind them, with Erika and Leo sensing it not more than a moment later.

Erika dashed to Mikihiko’s left side, tilting her parasol to look at him from underneath it—it was probably for camouflage, but the action almost seemed like someone about to grab a lover out of affection—and whispered, “Looks like we have company.”

Leo stuck his head in to get between Erika and Mikihiko, then also whispered in a low voice, “From the mountains?” Whether he was quick on the uptake or just had a good relationship with them, the acting was pretty realistic.

Unfortunately, Mikihiko wasn’t as versatile an actor as the two of them, but he still frowned in unease, turned around to Leo, and warned, “I only sense them from the mountains, but that doesn’t mean the enemy won’t come from elsewhere. And it might not only be humans who attack us. Be careful.”

“Look at those kids, all grown-up with their love triangle.”

“They just look like flirting-obsessed students. Do we really need to risk taking them out?”

This sort of conversation was being had among nine men who were hidden behind a grove and looking down at Mikihiko and the others.

They were speaking out loud, normally. Their whispers were faint, just barely audible, but they weren’t using any spell to talk without sound, or a communicator that would pick up lip movements with a camera and convert it into a voice to be sent through an osteophonic speaker; doing that would have increased the danger of eavesdropping, as well as someone detecting the waves—magic or electromagnetic—even if they couldn’t intercept the conversation itself.

They were having such a silly conversation despite all their caution because Erika’s and Leo’s presences—and acting, of course—were peaceful, no different from the boys and girls walking down a busy street.

Some, of course, were still tense.

“You’ve been watching the boy—he’s not trying to hide the fact he’s using a shiki. He may be a child, but he’s a direct descendant of the Yoshida. We can’t afford to let him go.”

A remark to admonish the others of their slipup.

“But I heard the second son of the Yoshida had lost his power.”

At the raised question, a middle-aged man, probably the leader of the bunch, scolded him in a significantly more severe tone. “Old intel. Mikihiko Yoshida has regained his power—power said to be higher than that of the first son and heir. Brace yourselves and get them. Make sure you put them to sleep. You can wound them somewhat, as long as you don’t kill them.”

The man who was scolded certainly didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t say any more. Instead, he took out a scroll, small enough to fit in his palm, from his inside pocket.

The other seven, including the leader, followed suit. The white-haired Taoist waiting at the rear took no action, watching without a word.

“Hah!”

Erika was the one to react to the enemy’s initial attack. She vigorously swung the parasol in her hand toward the presence approaching from behind. A piece of it slipped out, ramming into a pale blue will-o’-the-wisp in midair, bursting into flames. Several more rained down on the three of them, piercing the umbrella, which she knocked out of the air with a weapon hidden inside the umbrella’s handle.

For a second and third successive wave of will-o’-the-wisps, too, she used an armament device—a slender, silver-colored staff; perhaps it could be called a rod—to intercept.

It was an integrated armament CAD that Tatsuya had, in great haste, asked FLT R & D Section 3 create and then lend to Erika for this Kyoto reconnaissance. The activation sequences recorded in it were momentum-control and acceleration spells that focused on speed rather than weight. It was a fiendish thing—because the weapon was accelerated along with the body, it meant that if too much strength was applied, the user’s arm wouldn’t be able to keep up with the silver rod’s movements, leading to injury for bones or tendons. However, Erika had easily mastered it on day one.

The wispy rain stopped. But that wouldn’t mean, of course, that the assault had ended.

Wind blades came for them this time, whipping up the colored red and yellow leaves. Erika had brought down substance-less demonic flames, but could she intercept blades of wind without any color or form?

An intrepid smile worked its way onto her face, but after hearing a voice filled with confidence saying “Leave this to me,” she returned to a one-handed, centered stance.

Mikihiko would challenge the wind-razors in her place.

He chose magic from his spell assistance tool, which was composed of several metallic amulets gathered together in the shape of a fan. His choice of spell was blades of wind, just like the enemy.

Several tiny sparks broke out in midair. Despite having cast the spell after, Mikihiko’s wind deflected all of the enemy’s blades.

Erika and Mikihiko were both intently waiting for the next attack to come down from the air.

Then the shadow of a tree on the ground behind them took human form.

A black shade abruptly stood up.

Without a sound, without adjusting its presence or even the air around it, it closed in on Mikihiko from behind.

“Uryaahhh!”

Leo roared at the shadow. His fist howled, punching into the man in the black sweater.

The man, while being punched by Leo, jumped back himself to neutralize the impact, then somersaulted backward and out of range.

“Are these guys ninjas or somethin’?”

When he looked more closely, the sweater he’d perceived as black was actually dark green. The slim pants the man wore were the same color. The outfit was completely different from traditional ninja garb—it was more modern, more sensible. But he didn’t need to see the kunai ready in his right hand and the scroll in his left to know the person was a trained ninja.

The number of attackers multiplied—three, then five. Leo couldn’t see where they’d come from.

“Heh. Interesting.”

But that wasn’t enough to crush his spirit. Leo didn’t have the problematic habit of purposely seeking out strong opponents, but he did have a tendency to get more fired up the stronger his enemies were rather than grow timid.

And perhaps it was the genes of his grandfather, who had been created as a biological weapon, that made him do that. Leo occasionally thought so himself.

But every time he did, he asked himself,

So what?

It was a lot better than giving up before the fight even started. If his spirit broke, he wouldn’t even be able to run away. That was his creed.

Letting his spirit break was the same as surrendering his life. Escaping was something you did because you believed you could. Because you hadn’t given up on escaping. When faced with a tiger baring its fangs, could a person say to themselves run, then be able to get away? Wouldn’t they either flee blindly without thinking or stand there dumbly having given up survival?

That’s the worst kind of death—and the one I can’t tolerate. I will fight, and I will live.

The sweater-wearing ninjas inched back, widening the distance between them and Leo. Whether consciously or not, they’d withdrawn from him.

At his side, a scream went up.

A ninja who had blocked Erika’s silver rod with his arm was hunched over, grasping at it. His position being so far away from her was the result of two factors: He’d jumped away to get out of her range, and she hadn’t followed up on her attack out of caution.

“Leo, keep your spirit hot, but your mind cool. You’re not fighting alone.”

Erika’s comment made Leo realize he was about to get ambushed from the side.

“Sorry—thanks.”

The sound of wind blades spraying sparks as they rammed into things reached Leo’s ears.

“You too, Mikihiko. Thanks—I was supposed to be the one doing the guarding.”

“You protected me from their shadow-melding surprise attack, didn’t you? The feeling’s mutual.”

“Okay then. Let’s leave it at that.”

Leo took his knuckle-dusters out of his pocket and put them on. They only looked like plastic toys, so even if a police officer saw them, he could pass them off as a fashion statement.

If that was all they were, anyway.

An activation sequence coiled up his left wrist before being absorbed.

This wasn’t his usual voice-input CAD.

It was the activation sequence output of a fully thought-controlled, specialized CAD, the latest product of Rosen Magicraft, a German CAD manufacturer. Leo had obtained it through a certain connection—well, received it as a sign of certain apology—and lately, he’d just been getting the hang of it.

Their current inspection trip demanded they not stand out too much.

That was also why Erika had hidden an armament device in her parasol.

His usual CAD basically gave off the impression to anyone who saw that he was ready for combat, so he’d brought this one along on the trip instead.

The expansion speed of an activation sequence depended on the hardware, while the construction efficiency of a magic program depended on the software. The latest CADs showed exceeding processing speed that made up for the time lag, and since Tatsuya had personally optimized the activation sequences, they could build magic programs so quickly that their effects would manifest at nearly the exact moment he intended them to.

His plastic knuckle-dusters gained the hardness of solid metal.

Then another activation sequence came.

This time, his completely unremarkable long-sleeved shirt and jeans quickly changed into the highest-efficiency bulletproof, stab-proof clothing.

“All right, I’m ready this time.” Leo clapped his left and right fists together with a clank.

“Leave your flanks to me.” Erika waggled her silver-colored armament device and assumed a stance.

“I’ll back you up.” Mikihiko fanned open his spell tool.

“Let’s go! Orahhh!” Leo let out a roar, then charged.

Of course, the enemy ninjutsu users didn’t just sit idly by. The leaves sprang up on Leo’s path, blocking his view—wind magic splashing up the fallen leaves.

By itself, it wasn’t lethal. But instead of stopping, Leo raised his arms and covered his face.

He felt light impacts on his arms, chest, and thighs. Kunai, thrown by the enemy.

They’d possessed speed unthinkable for physically thrown objects, but they didn’t pierce Leo’s hardening magic.

From behind him, another gust blew through.

Thanks to Mikihiko’s magic, his view cleared.

The ninjutsu user standing in front of him put his scroll in his mouth, then used his other hand, now free after throwing the kunai, to undo its seal.

The enemy before him was nothing like the historical ninja, but a magician of the ancient style that possessed real power. Leo understood that, but when the man struck such a clichéd pose, it actually threw him off.

It didn’t dull Leo’s charge, but his attention was elsewhere for a moment.

The ninjutsu user’s chest swelled, then immediately deflated.

A sharp noise came from him, and dizziness assailed Leo.

The man hadn’t actually been holding a scroll in his mouth—it was a flute made to look like a scroll. And not just any flute—it was probably one that activated a spell that interfered with an opponent’s sensory organs via sound.

The ninja pulled out a large knife. Not a katana, but a knife—it seemed even magical ninjas couldn’t fight the flow of time.

Furthermore, the man must have been confident in his technique, as he didn’t hesitate a moment in launching his attack.

His miscalculation came, instead, from how the specs of Leo’s physical body were far above those of a normal person. Leo’s magical talent was low when graded on the general evaluation scale, but on the other hand, he was easily top-class when it came to physical abilities. Even with his sense of balance thrown off, he used his other senses to make up for it, maintaining control over his body.

He punched the enemy’s thrust-out knife with his right hand. His knuckle-dusters met the knife’s tip, and the impact knocked it right out of the man’s hand.

A left hook, slightly downward.

Leo’s fist crushed the man’s jaw.

“Ah, shit!”

That unintended swear was an expression of regret at having put too much force into the attack. It showed his inexperience and was a weakness that one could take advantage of—but Leo was also fast enough at shifting gears to make up for it.

The next enemy appeared from behind his fallen comrade. This one had his mouth aimed at Leo.

On the spur of the moment, Leo ducked.

Flames exploded from the man’s mouth.

The band of fire passed over Leo’s head, then wheeled around in midair to attack the caster. It scorched the assailant’s face, and he fell down after being thrown into a somersault.

The flames had done a U-turn because of a spell Mikihiko had cast.

Behind Leo, Mikihiko frowned at the wretched sight he’d helped create. But he still didn’t hesitate with his next attack. He wove his next spell.

Erika, like she’d said herself, had been intercepting one side of the ninjutsu users who were trying to catch Leo in a pincer attack. Her slender weapon lacked the power of her usual katana, but it won out in speed. After a sharp strike made an enemy combatant drop his knife, his body split into two a moment later.

“Afterimages?!” she cried out as the twin ninjas readied their kunai in an identical manner, smirks and all.

But each look soon changed to shock.

One of the afterimages faded, and the man returned to a single person. Not on purpose, as one could tell from his expression. Mikihiko’s spirit magic had broken the ninjutsu technique.

And Erika would never let go of an opening like that.

Four times, a silver arc trailed through air.

The ninjutsu user, a bone in each of his limbs cleanly broken, fell to the ground before a weak lightning attack flew at him.

The electric light coiled over all the assailants.

The eight ninjutsu users, already having lost the power to fight, then lost their consciousnesses, too, to Mikihiko’s lightning magic.

Mikihiko let out a long breath.

“Is this all of them?” Leo asked, looking around.

Erika, who had remained cautious even after the fighting, lowered her weapon. “Doesn’t seem like there’s any reinforcements at the moment.”

Leo breathed a sigh of relief. “Still. Ninjas? Really?” he asked, letting out a chuckle. He knew they existed, but he’d never thought he’d end up brawling with one.

Erika, though, didn’t empathize with his laughter, instead replying shortly, “More specifically, ninjutsu users. It’s not that strange. This place is crawling with ancient magicians.”

“Yeah,” Mikihiko agreed, “not too far from here are the birthplaces of Iga and Kouga ninjutsu. There’s supposedly an ancient magician base in Mount Kurama, too, structured around ninjutsu users. Maybe that’s where these people were from.”

“Hmm. You think so? That’s interesting. You know, I’m never bored when I’m around you two.”

But Leo didn’t take offense to it. In fact, his smile had grown even more entertained.

“Wait a minute—would you stop pinning things on me? We have Tatsuya to thank for getting tangled up in this incident.”

Not to blame, but to thank. Erika was pretending to complain, but she was obviously of the same mind as Leo.

“You’re not wrong,” nodded Leo with a wry grin. He looked to the side and saw Mikihiko giving one of his own.

“Anyway, what do we do with them? Hand them over to the police?”

Erika had no qualms calling the police. Not just because she had connections there, but because she had zero doubts about her actions being justified this time around.

“The police? Hmm…”

Leo, in contrast, appeared to feel the opposite. But it wasn’t enough for him to oppose her viewpoint.

“Would that be appropriate…?” Mikihiko asked, taking out an information terminal with his free hand. He seemed to be willing to handle the call to emergency services himself.

But his finger stopped right before he booted up his voice call function.

Then he shoved the terminal into his pocket, probably an unconscious move.

With his fan device at the ready, he glared into the woods. A lump of psions leaped from his hands. He’d released a search shikigami.

“Bad guys?!”

Mikihiko didn’t have time to answer Leo’s question.

“Look!” Erika called out at the same time as Mikihiko felt the spell trigger.

Her eyes were focused on the pond.

Leo and Mikihiko looked that way, too.

—Just as four small, watery monsters jumped out of it.

“Compound forms?!” shouted Leo.

“No! Puppet shiki demons made from water—like golems! They have solid form!” Mikihiko cried in response, staring at the monsters without even blinking. “A lingling? A heyu? A changyou? And even a fuzhu?” he muttered, voice rife with surprise.

A cow-like beast with a tiger-stripe pattern on its body—the lingling.

A boar with the face of a man—the heyu.

A long-armed ape with four arms—the changyou.

A deer with four horns—the fuzhu.

All of them were Chinese monsters said to cause flooding—and these were miniaturized versions of them. This was clearly a spell from a Chinese mainland ancient magician.

“The hell are these?!” yelled Leo.

“Enemy spell! The rest doesn’t matter!” Erika shouted back, swinging her silver rod at the changyou puppet, the one that landed closest to her.

It wasn’t a range in which her weapon would reach.

What did reach, though, was a razor-sharp blade of psions.

Erika’s typeless magic carved through the spell holding the golem together. The imitation monster, formed of water, turned back into water and scattered.

But there was no time to be relieved.

The monsters numbered more than just those four.

More lingling, heyu, changyou, and fuzhu continued bounding out of the pond and onto land. Their visual creepiness aside, the monsters, the size of household dogs, weren’t large enough to be threatening. But with this many of them, even small dogs couldn’t be ignored. All the more so when they were magical creations. It wasn’t clear what sort of abilities they possessed.

“Crap. We should get out of—huh?”

Erika, about to propose a retreat, fell silent before finishing.

The miniature monsters weren’t swarming to them, but to the ninjutsu users lying on the ground.

“…Are they friendly?”

Erika wasn’t the only one seized with such extreme surprise that she’d stopped moving. Leo aside—he didn’t have any way to attack from a distance—even Mikihiko had stopped breaking the spells, entranced by the sight.

“…?!”

As they watched for what would happen, all three of them gasped.

The miniature monsters given transient bodies of water had begun devouring the living bodies of the paralyzed ninjutsu users.

“Are you kidding me?!”

Erika, snapping out of it, swung her silver rod, bringing the typeless magic blade around.

Her voice broke Mikihiko out of his own trance, and he shot a demon-slaying technique: Garudaflame.

The psionic blade ripped through the puppet demons, and the conceptual flames scorched the spells giving them shape.

The aberrant beasts reverted to water.

With cautious footsteps, Leo drew near the ninjutsu users, who were moaning in pain. He’d already triggered a hardening spell, of course, but he couldn’t help being a little bit timid since his face and neck were exposed.

“Yuck!”

That was the first thing he said after squatting and taking a close look.

“Those are some nasty bites… Doesn’t look like they got to the bone, though.”

Leo stood up again, then turned to Erika and Mikihiko.

“And they’re all alive.”

Even paralyzed, they seemed to have protected their vital points—their throats and eyes, if not much else. Hearing that, Mikihiko made a look of relief.

But Erika’s face remained stuck in its severe grimace. “That’s weird.”

“What?” Mikihiko tensed again at her unusual behavior.

“Why isn’t the water seeping into the ground?”

The ground here wasn’t paved. The water that had been forming the golems would normally have been absorbed into the earth.

But in actuality, the water, mixed with blood, was flowing into the pond.

“Whoa?!” Leo reflexively jumped back. Over thirteen feet, without any lead-up, preparatory action, or magic—his jumping abilities were staggering, but Erika’s and Mikihiko’s eyes were glued to something else.

A moment after they’d noticed the water’s unnatural movements, the flow toward the pond had suddenly intensified. Leo’s reaction had been to the rush of blood and water pressing up near his feet.

“What the…?” Erika murmured.

“Enemy spell!” Mikihiko’s answer was a warning at the same time.

But maybe it wasn’t necessary. The emergency was clear to Erika’s and Leo’s eyes, too.

The pond water began to swirl.

Slowly, at first, but quickly picking up speed.

And then, with a thunderous noise, from out of the whirlpool came a big, malformed snake made of muddy water, rearing its head.

“Xiangliu?!”

A giant serpent with nine human faces. One of the most prominent Chinese mythical beasts, said to be a minister serving directly under Gonggong, evil god of floods. It was said that wherever Xiangliu appeared, the water would go rancid, transforming the land into a fruitless swampland…

“Dodge!”

Seeing the nine faces open their mouths, Mikihiko shouted to his friends.

At the same time, a barrier of wind expanded. Streams of muddy water shot out of the nine mouths, one at a time.

The three of them each avoided taking a direct hit from the dirty liquid, but only just barely. The swirling wind barrier around them repelled the water splashing off the ground.

But the ninjutsu users, who could no longer move, couldn’t escape the aftermath.

The men cried out with screams of agony louder than when the miniature monsters had been gnawing away at them.

Their bodies, awash in the muddy water spat out by the snake, began to bubble and melt.

“Acid?!” Erika shrieked.

“No, it’s a corrosion curse!” Mikihiko shouted. “Be careful! Unlike acid, it’ll even melt parts it doesn’t touch!”

Considering that the melting was still spreading on the ninjas, there was no room to doubt the warning.

“Gah! Where’s the caster?!”

Given the large crowd of golems under their control, the caster had to have been somewhere nearby.

Actually, though… The spell Mikihiko had thought he’d felt, coming out of the woods earlier—that must have belonged to the magician controlling these monsters. But he hadn’t gotten a response yet from the shikigami he’d sent out before. Either their enemy was extremely skilled or had some special equipment—a Qimen Dunjia curse tool, for example, which could throw even a magician’s sense of direction.

Even with Erika’s and Leo’s physical abilities, it was all they could do to dodge the cursed streams flying unceasingly from the nine mouths. Mikihiko had his own hands full avoiding a direct hit and keeping the barrier up—he didn’t have time to send out another shikigami.

“Erika, Leo, let’s pull back!”

“Totally agree with you, buddy, but—!”

“How are we supposed to do that?!”

Mikihiko gritted his teeth at Erika’s objection.

There was a way. The puppets modeled after legendary, magical beasts drew power from those legends. Thus, using a spell that borrowed the symbol of something higher than them in those legends would cancel out that boost, and the spell itself that maintained the puppets could break. And even if it didn’t, it would end up being a contest of brute force between magicians.

Xiangliu was kin to an evil god, but it belonged to water. If Mikihiko could access the highest spirit of water, Ryuujin, the dragon god, and bring it out…

Am I able to do that?

He felt like he could, now.

But his hesitation lingered.

It was the ritual that had caused him to fall into his slump—a slump so bad that he thought he’d lost his power.

But in the end, Mikihiko never made the decision, because a moment later, the need for it vanished.

A brutal psionic light appeared before their eyes, within the nine heads of Xiangliu, right in the center of their faces.

The projection of a magic program via the Idea. Psionic information bodies, not fired in a projectile arc, but defined to suddenly manifest at those coordinates.

The nine-headed, human-faced serpent’s giant body exploded.

When the space holding the spell materialized, the spell to create the puppet itself also collapsed.

The resulting spray of water was no longer affected by the curse. It had reverted to simple pond water. The corrosion eating away at the ninjutsu users’ bodies stopped as well.

“Are you all right?”

The three of them didn’t need to worry about what had just happened—the answer to that had just appeared in front of them and asked them a question.

A dark-red blouson, slim black pants, black boots, all reminiscent of the Third High uniform. A boy about their age, holding a red, specialized CAD in the shape of a gun. The three, of course, knew who that gallant figure was.

“Masaki Ichijou…”

Leo muttered his name.

The ace of Third High, eldest son of the Ichijou family, which was second highest among the Ten Master Clans, stood before them.

On guard for anyone lying in wait, Masaki was observing their surroundings while trying to sense any presences—any signs of magic being used. But after a while, he determined there were no more hidden enemies and relaxed.

The eight people in front of him were on the ground, all with severe wounds. Masaki had considered the possibility that they were not the victims but the attackers who had the tables turned on them, but they didn’t show any signs of moving, so he directed his attention to Mikihiko and the others, partly to confirm the situation.

“Hm? You’re from First High…?”

And he remembered Leo’s and Mikihiko’s faces from battling them in Monolith Code last year.

“I’m Mikihiko Yoshida. Ichijou—thank you for helping us out.”

But he didn’t seem to have remembered his name in turn. After Mikihiko refreshed his memory, a look of obvious relief washed over Masaki’s face.

“Oh, well, you’re welcome. The Ten Master Clans can’t have malignant magic like that being used in the city. Don’t worry about it.”

“Still, thanks. Things were taking a pretty dangerous turn for a minute there.”

“Ah, yeah… By the way, what in the world was all that?”

Was his sudden change in topic a way to cover his embarrassment? If it was, then Masaki must have been rather shy, much more in line with his youth than Tatsuya—though that particular comparison might not have been appropriate.

“Puppet demons, created with a blood offering, made of water, and modeled after monsters of legend—a kind of golem.”

“Ancient magic?”

“This spell is used by magicians from China called immortalists.”

Erika impatiently butted into Masaki and Mikihiko’s Q&A session. “Hey, can we leave the magic lecture for later? That immortalist could still be hiding somewhere around here.”

Masaki suddenly looked alert, quickly glancing around. He seemed to have forgotten to consider that possibility.

But Mikihiko shook his head at Erika’s words. “No, no need to worry.”

“And how do you know for sure?!”

Mikihiko opened his mouth several times but eventually shook his head again. “…Seeing is believing. Let’s go check.”

“You saying this immortalist or whatever is down for the count?”

Mikihiko nodded, not answering Leo’s question verbally.

“You know where he is?” put in Masaki, sounding like he couldn’t stop himself from asking.

“You coming too, Ichijou?”

Receiving a question in response, this time Masaki nodded.

They climbed the sloped woods, making their way through the sparse underbrush. For the four of them, the route wasn’t a difficult one. They found the immortalist they were looking for before anyone broke a sweat.

“I figured it wouldn’t be a pretty sight—and it’s really not, huh?”

The immortalist was lying upside down on the incline, with his head below, and facedown.

“Is he dead…?” Masaki wondered.

Without any visible fear, Leo squatted down next to the white-haired immortalist and put a hand to his neck.

“No pulse. He’s probably gone,” he announced flatly, unusually impassive. With a dead man in front of him, he obviously couldn’t have stated the truth with a smile on his face; his attitude was the most considerate one he could muster.

But his disquieted behavior crumbled the moment he turned the corpse over.

A muffled shriek came from Erika. Even her usual steadiness couldn’t ready her to see the man’s face in death, which was extreme and shocking.

“…Recoil from his spell being broken,” said Mikihiko. “Ancient magicians who predominantly use puppets maintain a constant mental link between themselves and their spells, even after casting them.”

“Really?” chimed in Masaki. “That’s fairly different from modern magic—when we cast a spell, we cut off the magic program from the magician so that reversal of information flow won’t happen.”

Right after that, though, he realized the true meaning behind Mikihiko’s words and unconsciously frowned.

“You mean since I destroyed that monster along with its spell, he took so much mental damage that he died…”

“It’s not your fault. Those who use this type of magic understand the risks. Especially when using a puppet that huge. It’s only natural the recoil would be similarly massive. It may sound cold, but this mage reaped what he sowed.”

“I see…”

This wasn’t the first time Masaki had ever directly caused someone’s death—killed someone. But all the times he’d taken life were in situations where he’d been forced to do so; and he still considered blowing up that water monster with Burst the correct decision.

But witnessing this old man’s death was so brutal that even he couldn’t fully justify it to himself.

“…Sorry, Yoshida. You were concerned for me.”

“Don’t worry about it. We were the ones who got rescued, after all.”

Seeing that Masaki was doing his best to keep a smile on his face, Mikihiko flashed him a smile as well, waving off the other boy’s apology.

“We can take care of explaining all this to the police, Ichijou.”

Masaki, though, couldn’t agree to the words so you can go now that Mikihiko had left unspoken. “No, I’ll come, too. More importantly, the girl over there—umm…”

“Erika Chiba. No need to walk on eggshells with me. I’m used to this stuff.”

Those words made Masaki’s eyes widen. He froze. But then, perhaps deciding such a reaction was even ruder, he quickly rebooted himself. “Oh. Are you part of the Chiba family…?”

“Erika Chiba, junior at First High.”

Masaki blinked at her brusque reply. Aside from his little sister, he’d almost never been treated so curtly by a girl his age. “My apologies. I’m Masaki Ichijou, a junior at Third High,” he said, realizing he hadn’t introduced himself yet, and determined to quash the awkwardness.

“That’s nice of ya. I’m Leonhard Saijou, a junior at First High.” Then, in a bright tone of voice that dispelled the uncomfortable mood—probably purposefully—Leo introduced himself to Masaki. “Anyway, don’t you have friends to get back to? You don’t need to hold back or anything. We’ll handle things here.”

“No, don’t mind me. I came to Kyoto alone. I’m here to scope things out before the Thesis Competition so that nothing like last year happens again. My schedule lines up.”

“Oh? We’re here for the same thing, actually. We’re staying at—actually, we should call this in to the police first.”

Even as Leo said that—“Oh, hello? I’m Erika Chiba, a junior at the National Magic University First Affiliated High School. I’d like to talk to the Magical Crimes Division… Yes, we just came under magic-based attack… We’re at…”

Hearing her voice, though, Leo and Masaki exchanged wry grins.

At just about the same time as their fierce battle was ending thanks to Masaki’s intervention, on the opposite shore of the pond across from the Kyoto New International Conference Hall, Tatsuya’s party made it to the path leading to Kiyomizu-dera.

Tatsuya hadn’t chosen to visit this temple first for any deep reason. He simply figured that out of the three places, this was the mostly likely place for something to be.

With the first “barbarian-subjugating” shogun, Sakanoue no Tamuramaro, being involved in its creation, as well as an episode in which the temple apparently contributed to the suppression of eastern Japan with magic, it was a natural place for ascetic training, known for miracle-workings. It was of the North Hosso religious sect, but Tatsuya knew from the Kyoto-related information he’d stuffed into his head that, historically, it had connections to esoteric Buddhism. In addition, the Hosso sect itself shared something in common with modern magic—an emphasis on the employment of the unconscious region of the brain. Still, to put it bluntly, it was just one of three choices, so here they were.

The approach to Kiyomizu-dera of Otowa Mountain was a long, uphill slope. It was made so commuters could go partway up, but Tatsuya and the others decided to walk starting from the foot of the mountain. Minoru actually knew there was a Traditionalist base nearby, but not its precise location. And so they’d decided to climb slowly, checking everywhere for suspicious-looking buildings.

The path to the temple was just as lively as it had been a century ago. During the world war, tourism in the area had greatly diminished, but thanks to the catchphrase “Rediscover Japan,” a larger number of Japanese tourists visited when they couldn’t go on overseas trips, so the local economy hadn’t taken much of a blow.

At a glance, the hilly road was mobbed with visitors sightseeing around the temple, some with different skin color, hair color, or eye color.

“Wow, there’s a lot of people here…” murmured Tatsuya in spite of himself.

“I thought Tokyo had more people, didn’t it?” said Minoru, tilting his head in mild confusion.

That moment, a human pileup occurred. The source was several female tourists entranced by Minoru—and, even more impressive, not only young women, either.

People had thankfully been giving Tatsuya’s group a wide berth for some time now, so Miyuki and Minami didn’t get wrapped up in the minor commotion. The roundabout, peeping stares were annoying, but fortunately, they had both been keeping an eye on the other, leaving enough distance between them.

Of course, Miyuki was clinging to Tatsuya’s side, so even if they were being swarmed by people, she wouldn’t get caught up by them. He’d resort to brute force before letting that happened.

After checking to make sure Miyuki was okay anyway, Tatsuya answered Minoru. “We technically live in Tokyo, but we’re pretty far out. Anyway, I don’t remember Kyoto Station being this crowded.”

“I wonder about that… Maybe it just looks more crowded since there’s less room.”

“I guess you could say that.” Tatsuya had been referring not to the total number of people but to the density, but it wasn’t anything worth arguing about, so he didn’t object again. “By the way, Minoru—should we be aiming for the Kiyomizu-dera grounds for now?”

“Yes. This close to a city, being in the mountain forests would be more conspicuous. I expect they’ll be disguised as a gift shop or an eatery.”

“Then we’ll have little need to go inside.”

As soon as Tatsuya said that, a heavy pressure settled down over top of him like thick snow clouds. A gaze of unmistakable disapproval.

He turned to his left.

“Is something the matter, Brother?”

And there he saw Miyuki smiling modestly.

Any other boy might have chalked it up to an overactive imagination, but Tatsuya wasn’t fooled. He’d never mistake her gaze, nor that of several others for that matter.

“Do you want to visit?”

Miyuki’s eyes wandered, but it only lasted a moment. “We came all the way here, after all…”

No matter how she beat around the bush, she meant one thing.

I might have to rearrange today’s schedule, thought Tatsuya.

From the world-class cypress stage set in front of the famous Kiyomizu-dera’s main building, the quartet looked out on the scenery of Kyoto.

To Tatsuya’s eyes, it looked like the streets were covered in a thin haze of psionic light billowing from the people and the land. Any other magician should have been able to see the same, though the haze might have been lighter or darker. But even narrowing his focus to where psions ran thinner and using Elemental Sight, there was no telling how long it would take to find the data they needed. Tatsuya had never met his target, Gongjin Zhou, after all; and a photograph was an insufficient search key.

Stopping his pointless “sightseeing,” Tatsuya spoke to Minoru, who was peering down onto the city in the same way. “See anything?”

“No, not with this many people… Have you noticed anything?”

“Nope, I’m in the same boat,” Tatsuya said, as he turned to glance over to Miyuki and Minami.

They were leaning slightly over the stage’s handrail, reveling in the view below. Neither of them was the type to cry with glee, so from another person’s point of view, it may have only looked like they were nervously gauging the height of the stage. But Tatsuya could tell they were both having fun, innocently having forgotten all about the job they were here for.

“I tried checking every set of eyes on Miyuki, but none of them were suspicious.”

“Wait, all of them?”

“Yeah. I’ve noticed a heap of indecent looks, but that goes for you too, Minoru. None of them seemed to have anything to do with our job.”

“That’s… I’m sorry for making you do all that.”

Innumerable men gazing with desire at Miyuki.

Innumerable women gazing with desire at Minoru.

Minoru was aware of the attention he drew to himself. That wasn’t narcissism speaking—it was objective fact. Because of that, he found it hard to tell when someone was actually hostile. He also understood that the amount of information someone would need to process this was ludicrous.

“No, I’m used to it. Happens all the time.”

But for Tatsuya, this really was a daily occurrence. Still, the only thought waves he filtered were the ones focusing on Miyuki. Even in this state, he could discern hostility directed at him, but he wasn’t confident at all that he could tell if someone was directing emotions other than kindness and desire toward Minoru.

And worryingly, the one with the highest chance of the Traditionalists seeing as an enemy was Minoru.

“I don’t know if we’ll get anywhere like this,” Tatsuya murmured.

Minoru visibly shrunk in place. He felt, reflexively, that he’d been criticized, but his making a face like a scolded puppy only made the eyes on him more intense.

With emotions this strong coming in, Tatsuya would notice them even if they weren’t meant for him. And he’d certainly notice the shift in emotions of the younger boy who caused them, too.

“Hey, I wasn’t criticizing you. You’re really helping us out here. I was just thinking we have fewer clues than I thought we’d get.”

Minoru responded with a bright smile.

Clap-clap came the sound of staggering footsteps and people grabbing hold of railings and pillars. Tatsuya had a pretty good idea of what was happening without looking, so he didn’t bother glancing over, but Miyuki seemed interested in the noise. After moving her gaze from outside the stage to inside, comprehension immediately came across her face.

She went over to Tatsuya and Miyuki, then faced Tatsuya as if to defend Minoru.

“Brother, you mustn’t bully Minoru.”

Tatsuya probably hadn’t meant any harm, but this was like pouring oil on a flame.

Actually, considering what had happened, maybe it was the opposite.

This formation, a girl unequaled in beauty defending a boy unequaled in beauty.

The men looking at Miyuki and the women looking at Minoru all froze at once.

The strange air propagated to the temple visitors who were actually there for regular sightseeing as well.

They wondered what was going on, looked this way—and hardened up, all the same.

Time froze on the Kiyomizu-dera stage.

Tatsuya looked around in bewilderment. His honest impression was Okay, come on, you’re all exaggerating, but it didn’t matter how much he tried to reject the reality happening before his eyes.

The female tourists were looking at Minoru. But there were several exceptions.

The male tourists were looking at Miyuki. But there were several exceptions to this, too, and these gazes were more persistent than the female exceptions.

Perverts, thought Tatsuya in disgust. He was a man with a warped sense of morality—he didn’t feel any aversion to killing others. But his opinion on same-gender sexuality was stereotypical: Platonic relationships were one thing, but physical desire was altogether off-putting.

Not only to ease the situation, but to escape from these unpleasant stares—even the ones directed toward his acquaintances and not him were still unpleasant—he decided to leave the place at once.

After making his decision, he checked the faces of all those who warranted caution. He wouldn’t be able to stand getting mixed up with them later, and he wanted to avoid it before it got to that.

As he did so, he spotted a different stare.

Not an unusual one, but a different one.

One man was looking at Minoru.

Just like the other people frozen in place.

However.

It was not kindness,

nor desire,

nor admiration in his eyes—

but annoyance and mild shock.

It was written all over the man’s face: They made me keep an eye on a kid like this?

And what came up in the back of Tatsuya’s mind was an out-of-place thought: Is this what they call a lucky break?

“Minoru, Miyuki, Minami. Let’s get out of here.”

Without waiting for an answer from his traveling companions, he proceeded back to the approach that lead to the temple.

Perhaps having deduced his intent from only that, Miyuki silently obeyed.

Minami made a look of confusion for a moment but quickly followed Miyuki.

But Minoru couldn’t resist asking a question. Hurrying to follow Minami, he went past her and Miyuki and next to Tatsuya. “What’s wrong all of a sudden?”

The person shadowing them hadn’t used magic, so of course Minoru hadn’t noticed him. And with his looks, you could say it was inevitable he’d be less perceptive when it came to noticing who was watching him.

In all likelihood, the man watching them—or rather, Minoru—wasn’t just not using magic; he couldn’t use it. They’d probably hired a private investigator instead of a magician or something, predicting that Tatsuya and the others would be on their guard against Traditionalist magicians. Tatsuya thought it was a pretty interesting perspective.

Instead of answering Minoru’s question, Tatsuya took an information terminal and stylus out of his pocket. After opening the terminal, he wrote on the screen with the stylus. The handwritten characters were converted into digital, one phrase at a time. When Minoru peered at the display, he saw what Tatsuya had written:

“I think I spotted a tail. I’ll lure him in. Pretend you notice but don’t know where.”

Minoru cocked his head, probably because he didn’t get what the last sentence meant. But a moment later, he understood—he was supposed to pretend he’d noticed something but couldn’t spot them—and began his act of looking left and right uneasily and turning in wrong directions.

Frankly speaking, his acting was bad. So bad that Tatsuya, watching out of the corner of his eye, decided he clearly hadn’t ever been trained in anything but magic.

Pretending not to notice would have been one thing, but even their tail didn’t seem to think his target would be pretending to notice. Either the man Tatsuya had marked was confident in his abilities or simply second-rate—he was following Minoru at a fixed distance.

As Tatsuya descended the hilly road from the Inner Shrine to the Otowa Waterfall, he stopped at the fork in the road that led to the Tower of Safe Childbirth.

He turned around to Miyuki and the others. Indeed, with the mannerism of discussing which way they should go, while keeping the tail in the corner of his vision.

The man must have thought it would be unnatural to stop with them; he took out a small camera and began taking pictures of the stage at the main temple. That wasn’t a particularly unusual thing for a sightseer to do, per se. But it was unnatural to keep taking the same picture over and over again. Perhaps not realizing Tatsuya was spying on him, the man made a bitter expression and began to walk toward the Otowa Waterfall.

“Hey, you,” Tatsuya called at the man’s back, pretending to be annoyed.

A jolt ran up the tail’s spine. But then the man moved to leave, pretending not to have heard him.

“Did you not hear me? You, you there!”

Tatsuya quickly walked toward the man from behind. Tatsuya’s features were sharp to begin with, so his fake display of anger had a visual impact. The tourists nearby looked over at them, wondering what was happening.

“Did…did you need something?”

The man turned around, a timid look on his face. At a glance, the scene looked like an upstanding citizen getting involved with a delinquent student. The tail’s face made him seem like nothing but a regular working-class man; his acting skill was decent. Had Tatsuya been alone, the onlookers might have sided with the tail.

“You were secretly taking pictures of my friends, weren’t you?”

But with that, the gallery’s hostility immediately turned on the tail. Without a doubt, they now believed that snapping peeping photos of a beautiful girl like Miyuki and a beautiful boy like Minoru was definitely something this sort of unremarkable older man would do.

“That’s not true! What proof do you have?!”

The man loudly proclaimed his innocence, but an array of cold, scornful glares began to coil around him. Noticing the onlookers’ gazes on the camera he was holding, the tail hastily shoved his small camera into his shoulder bag. The act made the suspicions look even more truthful.

“We’ll let the police decide if it’s true or not,” asserted Tatsuya decisively. The peanut gallery was now completely on his side.

Suddenly, the tail began to run, pushing through the crowd. Exactly what Tatsuya wanted him to do.

Before he’d even escaped more than a few steps, Tatsuya had easily taken him down.

Tatsuya brought the tail into the shadows. A few in the peanut gallery had tried to report it to the police before that, but Tatsuya stopped them by having Minoru tell them that he felt sorry for the man, since he didn’t want to ruin his life by unnecessarily involving the police.

The man’s timid-looking expression immediately warped into a hateful one as he looked at Tatsuya.

Tatsuya looked back impassively.

The man wavered; looking into the young boy’s eyes were like staring into a machine’s.

“What do you plan to do with me?”

“With you, personally? Nothing.”

Suspicion surfaced in the tail’s expression.

“I know this goes against work ethics, but I’m asking anyway. Where is your employer?”

The man’s eyes wandered left and right. Probably looking for an escape route out of reflex. Tatsuya and the others didn’t exactly have him penned in, but Tatsuya reacted to his scanning gaze—purposely, to make sure he had seen it—which made him give up on flight.

“…What are you talking about?”

The option he chose instead was to play dumb. Which was what Tatsuya expected.

“You know he’s a direct descendant of one of the Ten Master Clans—the pinnacle of magicians in Japan, right?”

The man’s eyes betrayed nothing. But that was the same as admitting he did know.

“He would have detected magic usage. Having a non-magician detective keep an eye on us was one correct answer.”

As he spoke, he reached for his wristwatch.

The man visibly shivered. Tatsuya, still with a total lack of any emotion on his face, smiled with only his lips.

“If you use magic without permission, they’ll throw you in a cell instead!”

Miyuki giggled. She probably found the man’s outdated expression amusing. But to the man’s eyes, it looked like the smile of a cruel witch.

Though CADs were as familiar to a magician as clothing, they were basically OOParts to a non-magician. A normal person with only a cursory knowledge of modern magic only knew that CADs were tools for using magic that magicians often put on their arms. One couldn’t decry the man as ignorant, even though he’d mistaken Tatsuya’s gesture of going for his wristwatch to be preparing to use magic.

“I’m only asking one more time.”

Tatsuya energized his psions. If that’s all he did, the sensors might pick it up, but they wouldn’t figure out that he’d used magic. But the energized psionic wave was like a strange pressure to those who weren’t magicians, something that whittled away at their nerves.

“Where is your employer?”

The man didn’t answer. Even if he was just being stubborn, it could be praised as some impressive work ethic.

But even that was reaching its limit. Humans couldn’t endure unknown horrors for a very long period of time. They could endure the fear of something with recognizable form, but fear of something completely alien would easily incite panic.

“I see. That’s too bad.”

Tatsuya moved his fingers, already riding on his wristwatch, and made sure the man saw it. It was a multifunctional watch linked to his information terminal, but it was just an informational device in the end. It had no ability to assist with magic—

“Okay, okay! I’ll tell you where!”

—but this man, who was not a magician, had no way of knowing that.

“This the place?”

The man, his nerves shattered, had brought them to a tofu restaurant on the path to the temple.

“Yes. I’m not lying,” added the man quickly, directing an imploring gaze on Tatsuya. “This is enough, isn’t it? I’m just a humble private investigator, like you figured, and the guy in there told me to report on what you were doing if you got close. I don’t know anything else, I swear!”

“You’re pretty sure about where your employer lives considering you’re just a humble private investigator.”

If someone had requested a third party to do this, they would have kept their identity and location secret. At least, that’s what Tatsuya would have done.

“I just don’t want to cross any dangerous bridges, you know? Detective work isn’t all fun and games these days.”

“Must be a tough world for a hard-boiled type to live in.”

“You’re telling me…”

Tatsuya let out a little grin. He couldn’t seem to hate this guy. He may not have been reliable for tougher jobs, but maybe he was still suited for gathering information.

“All right. Thanks—you can go.”

The man looked at him in disbelief. He was the one who had suggested it—he apparently hadn’t thought Tatsuya would listen.

“…Really?”

“Really.”

“You’re not gonna stab me in the back, or…?”

“You watch too much TV,” answered Tatsuya, shaking his head, a dry grin on his face. Neither that mannerism nor his expression belonged to a boy in his teens, but that actually seemed to set the man at ease, almost like they were friendlier now.

“Oh…okay. Bye, then.”

But Tatsuya wasn’t so kindhearted that he’d let the man go without saying something first.

“I know who you are now. If you try to go somewhere, I’ll know right away—so if you have anything to say, now’s your chance.”

The man’s face twisted in fear. “Hey, look, you might be a magician, but you can’t…”

“Why do you think I can’t do?”

The man shook his head frantically. “I’m not lying! I’m telling the truth—please believe me!”

“If you’re not lying, then you have nothing to fear.”

The man began to run down the hilly street that led up to the temple, almost getting his own feet tangled up as he did so.

Leaving Minoru to the side, who just watched the whole thing in a stupor, Miyuki addressed Tatsuya in a chiding tone. “Brother, don’t you think you went a little far with your joking?”

Tatsuya turned around with a face of surprise. “I wasn’t playing around. I can’t actually use magic to get him to talk, and I don’t have an affinity for mental interference-type spells in the first place.”

“Is that why you purposely made a big show of threatening him like that?”

“Yeah.”

“…Even so, you seemed to be having quite a lot of fun.”

“More effective if it looks that way, isn’t it? Anyway, let’s go in.”

Miyuki still looked like she had something to say, but Tatsuya went into the shop without waiting for it.

“Welcome!”

A bright voice greeted Tatsuya. It belonged to a waitress in a kimono, in her late twenties to early thirties. He felt that a slightly calmer tone would have suited the location better, but he decided that was just his own preconception.

“Will it be the four of you?”

Tatsuya almost shook his head and said no to the waitress before he realized Miyuki and Minami were gazing passionately at the menu and that it was already lunchtime.

He’d already caught sight of an eidos he believed belonged to the magician in question in the back of the restaurant. For whatever reason, the person didn’t seem to have any intention of hiding it. He took that to mean the person wouldn’t flee while they were eating.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding to the waitress.

“I’ll show you to your table,” came the voice in return, bright like before.

Tatsuya followed the restaurant employee, who had started walking and only spared a glance at Minoru—not being entranced by him was some amazing professionalism—while Miyuki and the other two trailed behind. The waitress brought them to a low floor table.

“Is this all right?”

Tatsuya would have rather sat on a chair, but a cursory glance revealed those tables were all full. He looked to his companions for an answer, but none of them responded particularly unhappily. Tatsuya gave the green light to the waitress.

“Please call me once you’ve decided what to order.”

Tatsuya nodded, and the waitress left.

“Why don’t we have some lunch for now?”

“Um, is that okay?” Minoru asked, expression uneasy.

“Judging from what it looks like, this is a proper business on the surface.”

“Yes, but…”

“If there’s any poison in the food, I’ll be able to tell, no matter what kind it is. And I found who I think is that man’s employer. If he tries to run away, I’ll know immediately.”

Minoru let out a breath of admiration. “You really can do anything, huh…”

Tatsuya couldn’t help but give a pained smile at such a frank response. “I can barely do anything. More importantly, is it okay for you to believe everything I say that easily?”

“I don’t believe you,” he muttered to the I can barely do anything part without thinking very deeply, before realizing he’d just answered the actual question instead. Hastily, he added, “No—I believe you, of course!”

Miyuki let out a giggle.

Minoru reddened considerably.

“Big Sister Miyuki…” Minami said in an unusually admonishing tone.

“I’m sorry, Minoru. It’s just that I don’t really know any boys who react as normally as you—not my brother, nor his friends.”

“You make it sound like I’m some kind of weirdo,” retorted Tatsuya immediately, his complaint utterly monotone.

Miyuki began giggling even more. “Brother, you make it sound like you’re supposed to be a normal person.”

Tatsuya gave a shrug in Minoru’s direction.

His face still red, Minoru burst out laughing.

Tatsuya and Minoru ordered the boiled tofu, while Miyuki and Minami ordered the tofu skin soup.

Speaking of the boiled tofu—Tatsuya, mired in preconceptions about the temple Nanzen-ji, had wondered about it before entering the shop, but after an explanation from Minoru, he realized he just hadn’t done enough research. He hadn’t come here for sightseeing anyway, so in a sense, it was only natural he hadn’t investigated that far.

They spent a good amount of time enjoying their lunch in a lively manner. So much that Tatsuya had to mentally revise their entire schedule. The main cause was the soup: The dish consisted of heated soy milk that was eaten with a bamboo skewer, which was used to pick up the film that formed on the surface. The process itself simply took a long time. If Tatsuya had known before they’d ordered, he’d have made them pick something else from the menu, but it was too late now. As a result, he’d only managed to say one thing to the waitress, even over an hour after entering the shop:

“We actually came here on a recommendation from a Mr. Kudou from Ikoma—is there any chance we could see the owner?”

“Kudou from Ikoma? I’ll go check the owner’s availability. Please wait one moment.”

After giving a fake name, he requested that she convey a message to the owner. As though such a thing wasn’t unusual, the employee went into the back without seeming particularly dubious.

They weren’t made to wait very long.

“The owner has told me to show you there. Would you mind…?”

“Not at all—thank you.”

Without letting the waitress finish her formal expression, Tatsuya stood up from his floor cushion.

They were ushered not to a tatami-floored reception room, but to a semi-Western parlor. Instead of the usual sofa and table, a lacquered table and wooden chairs with intricate openwork backs furnished the room. Everyone, including Tatsuya, could tell these items were far more expensive than the average high-class sofa set.

The owner—the ancient magician Tatsuya had detected—was not sitting in a chair. After making sure the sliding door was closed, he bowed deeply. No hostility was visible in his attitude.

He wore a tea ceremony master’s hat and an article of monk’s work clothing. Tatsuya couldn’t tell if his outfit showed the proper courtesy for receiving guests, so without reading too far into things, he sat down at the man’s suggestion.

The table was wide, made for six people, but three on one side would leave one leftover. Tatsuya sat in the middle, with Minoru toward the back, Miyuki at his side, and Minami in the seat sticking out of the table’s corner, which was in front when viewed from the door.

Once again, they faced the owner. The man’s face had fine wrinkles; he was perhaps in his early fifties. Among magicians, there were some who aged particularly quickly and others whose age never stood out, so his age wasn’t a very good trait to go by, but age wasn’t a very important factor in the first place. The older magicians stood at the top to keep organizations running smoothly, the same as normal society, but even non-magician organizations would prioritize actual ability. And in reality, neither Tatsuya nor Minoru nor Miyuki showed any signs of caring about the man’s age.

“I certainly hadn’t thought a member of the Kudou family would come to visit like this.”

The Traditionalist magician suddenly began the conversation. None of his words were to pry into the identities of Tatsuya and the others. The attitude was, perhaps, straightforward, but Tatsuya saw in it a lack of give.

“I will not ask the name of your companions, so I would prefer not to introduce myself, either.”

Miyuki and Minami widened their eyes at the insensible request.

Tatsuya, on the contrary, narrowed his eyes sharply, as if he was trying to ascertain the truth. “…Does that mean you don’t intend to be our enemy?”

“I don’t intend to deal with those of the Nine any further.”

“This may be rude of me, but you are a Traditionalist, yes?”

The hatted magician breathed a sigh. “Yes—I lead a faction of the Traditionalists as a conjurer.”

“A conjurer?” asked Minoru, wondering about the meaning of the word.

“A failure who could not become a priest of esoteric Buddhism, nor an onmyouji, nor a shugendou practitioner,” said the man in a tone of slight self-deprecation. Sensing the shards of a ruined pride in them, Tatsuya hesitated to pry.

“Why would a Traditionalist magician not be hostile toward magicians from the old Lab Nine, especially one of the Kudou? And in the first place, didn’t the Traditionalists come together based on their mutual enmity toward the old Lab Nine?” Tatsuya brought the topic back around; it didn’t matter to him who this man was specifically.

“Yes, at first, I harbored anger at how Lab Nine did things. I thought one day, I’d really give them what they truly deserved. My fury was especially strong even among my comrades, so I believe that’s why they raised me up to act as a bridge that unites mages belonging to no religious faction.”

“You almost make it sound like you were a leader in name only.”

“That’s how I think of it… But that isn’t what you’re here to talk about.”

After the man expressed his intention not to argue, Tatsuya silently waited for his next words.

“At first, I seriously considered vengeance. None of it had any reality behind it. But it was only toward Lab Nine, who had taken advantage of me—I never had any intent to betray my country.”

“Are you referring to taking in defected immortalists?”

The middle-aged man calling himself a conjurer nodded to Tatsuya’s question. “I can no longer abide by the methods of those in Nara. They took magicians from the mainland in when they knew they would be traitors within the walls… Even though, just as Japanese magicians’ loyalty belongs to none other but Japan, their loyalty belonged only to their own nation.”

Minoru looked down as he listened to the conjurer’s words, doubtless because he knew what his father had done.

“Did they not defect because their country’s political system didn’t fit with their own beliefs?” Tatsuya prompted.

Earnestly, the conjurer shook his head. “It wasn’t a matter of loyalty, but of state of mind.”

Tatsuya could only nod a little at those words. “I see. And so you’ve cut ties with the Traditionalists in Nara and stopped opposing the old Lab Nine?”

“Yes. Time is the great panacea. It heals all wounds. Even if you never go back to exactly the way you were before.”

“I would think there are wounds even time can’t heal.”

“Wounds like that simply had new wounds added to them before they had a chance to heal. Like a flame—without a constant source of fuel, it will eventually burn out.”

Tatsuya gave a theatric-sounding sigh. “Let’s leave the generalities at that,” he said, peering straight into the old magician’s eyes. “What proof do you have that you’re not a threat?”

His words, at least, seemed distrusting, and this time, the middle-aged magician gave a sincere sigh. “You don’t even look a day older than twenty. What sort of education would one need to become that unfeeling…?”

Miyuki’s and Minami’s expressions shifted slightly. Tatsuya was certainly under twenty, so what this magician was saying wasn’t wrong. But the phrase a day older than twenty wasn’t exactly meant to be flattering, was it?

The person in question, however, didn’t mind it at all. “You only gave us a meeting with you because you yourself started seeing things realistically, didn’t you?”

The restaurant owner hung his head, suddenly looking a lot older. “I was just starting to think my decision wasn’t a mistake. The detective was highly rated, but perhaps the rumors and the Kudou family were too heavy a burden for him…”

Tatsuya certainly didn’t think the detective could be called skilled. But he didn’t say anything about it. Instead, he commented on something more practical. “You mentioned earlier that you couldn’t accept them taking in the defected immortalists. Would you mind showing us those words weren’t empty?”

“…What would you have me tell you?”

“We’re looking for an overseas Chinese magician who escaped Yokohama. His name is Gongjin Zhou. He’s a dangerous man, one who caused several disasters in this country.”

The conjurer looked up, his expression resigned. “All right. I’ll give you what information I know.”

“Please, tell us.”

Tatsuya responded not because he was impatient, but to put pressure on the man.

“The one you’re looking for, Gongjin Zhou, is not currently in Kyoto. The last time we confirmed his presence was on Friday, October 12. He’d just left the stronghold of another faction, composed of former esoteric Buddhist priests, close to a promenade called the Bamboo Grove Road, north of the temple, Tenryuu-ji. We believe he headed south, but we haven’t found anything to say he gotten as far south as Uji.”

But the hints they got from this magician calling himself a conjurer were unexpectedly detailed.

“How do you know he hasn’t gone south past Uji?”

“To be more specific, we know he hasn’t crossed the Uji River. There is a bounded field set up on the river to protect Kyoto.”

For the first time today, Tatsuya was actually surprised.

“Set up along the entire Uji River? How on earth would you use a spell that was continuously applied over such a massive area?” It was Miyuki who asked that question, in place of her dumbfounded older brother.

However, his sister’s question prodded him back to reality, and the answer flashed through the back of his mind. “…No, you didn’t set up a bounded field along the Uji River—you used it on the river, right? Mixing things that can be mediums for spells into the river water and letting them flow would apply a magical effect to the river itself.”

“Wonderful! Ninety points.”

The middle-aged magician broke into a smile and clapped. The eyes of the conjurer who had been watching Tatsuya as an equal rival, for this moment alone, had turned into the eyes of an adult watching a child, of a veteran teacher watching a good student.

“…As for the last ten points, you’re not mixing anything into the water, but changing the properties of the river water itself—sanctifying it, right?”

“Oh! I must say, it is amazing that you’re still a high school student. I suppose I should expect nothing less from a direct descendant of the Kudou.”

After hearing Minoru’s additional input, the old magician let out a bout of admiration.

“The bounded field’s origin is at the Amagase Dam. We spiritually purify the river water there. Not all the water in the dam, of course. To do that, we’d need hundreds of mages stationed there at all times.”

Tatsuya and Minoru knew without being told that something like that was impossible.

“Still, we can’t set up a bounded field strong enough with the tiny bit of water we can continuously purify. At most, we can only give it an alarm function that detects when an enemy has crossed the river. But unlike mechanical alarm devices, we can assign different settings depending on which mage retrieves the data. And we can set it to respond to specific people as well.”

“You mean you’re one of the people managing the Uji River field?” Tatsuya inquired.

The conjurer nodded slowly. “I only learned of the field’s control incantation by coincidence. The other administrators probably don’t know I have administrative privileges on the field. I also don’t know who the other administrators are. But in this case, that presents no difficulty.”

The old magician paused there, probably because he still had enough pretense to. It was, without a doubt, him showing these youngsters unconsciously that he hadn’t rotted away just yet.

“Only those with links to this land of Yamashiro and the land of Yamato can work the bounded field. And I’ve been watching for Gongjin Zhou to cross the field again ever since he appeared in Kyoto.”

“Why?”

“Because that man is a danger to this nation,” he answered succinctly. “I was up on my high horse earlier, saying time heals all wounds, but if I were to speak plainly, I haven’t fully shed my reserves when it comes to the old Lab Nine. If you had barged in here no questions asked, I probably wouldn’t have told you anything about this bounded field or where Gongjin Zhou was.”

The conjurer shifted his gaze from Minoru, to Tatsuya, then to Miyuki and Minami, before finally settling it on Tatsuya.

“That was why I maintained a modicum of courtesy to all of you. In my eyes, it was a very impetuous way of going about things, but not enough to spill needless blood over.”

As he listened to the conjurer, Tatsuya reflected on this fortunate coincidence. The main reason he hadn’t forced his way into the back of the restaurant was simply because Miyuki and Minami had wanted to eat lunch. The only reason he didn’t spill blood was because there were no mages here who could set up a bounded field like Mikihiko.

Of course, he wasn’t about to reveal something like that. That wouldn’t be honest—it would be foolishly honest.

“We thank you for the valuable information.”

“One more thing—be careful of the groups from Kurama and Arashiyama. The Chinese magicians have won them over completely.”

Tatsuya stood and bowed. Miyuki followed suit almost without delay.

Minoru and Minami hastily got up and lowered their heads, a sight the middle-aged magician watched warmly.

By the time they left the restaurant, the sun had started to set. It was still a while until dusk, but it would get dark quickly once the sun went down, given the season. On the west side, where they were in the mountains’ shadow, that effect would be even more pronounced. They’d gotten results, which meant they wouldn’t have worry about wasting their efforts—but still, there wasn’t much time left in the day.

“What should we do now?” asked Minoru to Tatsuya as they went down the hilly path. If they were to believe that “conjurer’s” words, the only place they’d be heading for now was where Gongjin Zhou was.

“Five people isn’t enough to search the entire area north of the Uji River. I want more clues.”

“Will we go to Arashiyama, then?”

“Hmm…”

What came to Tatsuya’s mind then was the news about the murder of Mayumi Saegusa’s bodyguard. The article had said the crime had occurred along the Katsura River.

The following day, he would be looking into that homicide with Mayumi. He was meeting her in front of the police station that held Nakura’s remains for safekeeping, but after asking the police to show them the remains, they’d naturally be going to the scene. If there were any clues, they’d be in Arashiyama, so obviously, a thorough investigation was the better option. Still, their stay only amounted to two days. It seemed too inefficient to visit the same place two days in a row.

“Let’s take a thorough look through Arashiyama tomorrow. Today, we’ll go to Kinkaku-ji.”

“All right. I’ll contact Kyouko about the Uji matter.”

“Would you? Thanks.”

As Tatsuya’s party headed for the commuter boarding platform at the bottom of the hill, they garnered attention from the crowds, which were just as big as earlier—and it went without saying the ones getting that attention were Miyuki and Minoru.

After the police questioning was over, Mikihiko, Erika, Leo, and Masaki were released on grounds of justified self-defense. The names Ichijou and Chiba undeniably affected things, too, but the deciding factor in proving their innocence was the recording from the street cameras set up in the area. Ancient magic was said to be harder to pick up on sensors than modern magic, but that only meant it was harder to match spell with caster; the fact that magic had been used was recorded all the same. If the magician showed themselves, it didn’t matter if they were modern or ancient—they couldn’t escape from psionic radar and the sensors attached to it, all operating in tandem with the cameras.

The questioning had still taken quite a bit of time, but in the end, the four of them returned to the New Conference Hall.

“Now what? I kind of doubt anything else will happen today, so should we look around some more?” asked Leo.

Mikihiko shook his head. “No, let’s get back to the hotel for today.”

“Well, the moron’s right,” Erika quipped. “Nothing else is gonna jump out at us today.”

“What? Who are you calling a moron?!”

“Who knows? Anyway, why are you so angry?”

“Youuuuu…wiiiiitch…”

Leo glared at Erika; she looked away, expression cool.

Masaki glanced at Mikihiko, wondering if it was okay to leave them be, but Mikihiko shook his head in response—they were best left alone.

“By the way, Ichijou, what hotel are you staying at?”

Still, possibly feeling awkward watching them in silence, Mikihiko turned to Masaki with a conversation about something completely different.

“O-oh. The K.K. Hotel.” Masaki seemed taken aback by the sudden question, but he answered honestly.

“Oh? We’re staying at the C.R. Hotel.”

“Really? That’s right next door.”

“Yeah, what a coincidence. Is Kichijouji at the hotel?”

If Tatsuya had been the one who was asked this casual question, Mikihiko would have received a sigh in response. And maybe with an added explanation of how even he and Miyuki were in different places sometimes.

But Masaki answered Mikihiko’s question more straightforwardly. “No—I think I said this before, but I came here alone. George is Third High’s rep. He’s focused on the presentation.”

“Oh.”

Their school’s Thesis Competition representative being absorbed with the presentation was an incredibly reasonable thing. Neither Mikihiko nor Erika nor Leo asked about Kichijouji anymore after that.

“We’re going to get back to the hotel now. What will you do?”

“Hmm…”

The pause wasn’t intentional—he was actually thinking about it. Like Tatsuya, who was elsewhere, Masaki had planned on checking around a few more places. Unlike them, he’d come alone, so he couldn’t split up the work. And he didn’t have a guide like Tatsuya did. Kyoto wasn’t that far from where Masaki lived, so he visited rather frequently. He didn’t need a guide just for getting around, but he didn’t have anyone to lecture him on what places should be avoided, so he had planned to ride around the venue in a spiral pattern.

The police response had burned up some time, though, and above all, the troublesome investigation had sapped him of all his motivation.

“Guess I’ll go back, too.”

“Want to come with us, then?” Mikihiko offered, inviting Masaki to ride in their commuter, even though he felt like he might be acting nosy.

“That would make four people even.”

Erika, who was focused on teasing Leo and seemingly hadn’t been listening to their conversation, interrupted suddenly with an I-don’t-really-care tone.

Masaki faltered at her inconsistent attitude. Thinking she was someone who threw everyone off their game, he politely offered his refusal. “No, I actually came on my motorcycle.”

“Really? You ride one of them, too, huh?”

A lot of girls would be interested in hearing this factoid. Many of them clung to the odd aspiration of riding double, and he had a faint awareness of that. But he didn’t understand the reason why.

Even in this age, riding double on a bike was illegal. The two-person robotic scooters had each person standing up next to each other, and those were popular enough, but motorcycles stimulated the hearts of dreaming maidens with a clichéd situation—only with a motorcycle could a girl be satisfied clinging to a boy’s back.

“Too?”

But the way Erika showed interest was clearly different from such “dreaming maidens,” and even Masaki felt something off about it.

“Tatsuya—er, you know Tatsuya Shiba, right? He’s got a motorcycle, too.”

“He does?”

An image formed in Masaki’s mind. A girl riding in the tandem seat of a motorcycle driven by a boy. Not sitting astride it, but sitting in a more elegant sideways fashion. Her arms looped around the boy’s waist, her body pressed tight against his back.

The boy’s face hidden behind the full-face helmet was Tatsuya’s. And the girl’s face, of course, belonged to Miyuki. Masaki almost scowled in spite of himself.

His focus moved to the boy’s face again. The smoke shield steadily dissipated. The face hidden behind it was Masaki’s—and on his back, the sensation of Miyuki’s soft body…

“…What are you thinking about?”

Erika’s mystified voice broke Masaki out of his thoughts. “Oh—er, nothing.”

He set his jaw again and shook his head. Erika was looking at him with a somewhat…disgusted expression, possibly, but he ignored it and turned to Mikihiko.

“Anyway, I can’t ride with you, but I’ll follow you guys.”

“Yeah, that’s fine with me, I guess…”

Mikihiko wondered what the point of that was, but he didn’t say anything.

And Erika, noting pretty clearly he’d looked away from her, traded glances with Leo, head tilted slightly.

Leo gave her a little shrug.

Around the temple grounds of Kinkaku-ji, officially called Rokuon-ji, where they visited just to be safe, Tatsuya and the others were unable to turn up anything. Feeling a sense of exhaustion at not even being able to find a Traditionalist stronghold, they returned to the hotel, even though it was a little early.

The hotel they were staying at was a little bit far from the Thesis Competition venue, the Kyoto New International Conference Hall. Though inconvenient, the plan was for First High’s representatives and staff to stay here during the event, too, so given their pretext was conducting reconnaissance for the school, they’d needed to spend the night at the same place as well. Though the students coming to cheer for their school would be leaving the day of, every year, many of them would pay out of their own pockets to stay over the previous night for sightseeing.

Furthermore, Minoru was staying here for the night as well. Considering his transit time, it wasn’t too necessary, but the decision seemed to be that his proximity to home was all the more reason to have the sickness-prone Minoru stay out overnight.

Private out-of-country vacations were severely restricted for magicians, and they seldom got to experience a trip overseas while they were minors. Inside Japan, though, they had a reasonable amount of experience going on trips with friends. But because of Minoru’s poor constitution, it was difficult for him to leave the house for long periods of time, and he didn’t have any friends who were close enough for him to go on a trip with. Tatsuya and the others hadn’t come to Kyoto for pleasure this time, but it wouldn’t be strange if Minoru’s family had considered it a good opportunity for him.

As an aside, he’d be sharing a room with Tatsuya’s group. Minoru had turned it down at first, but Tatsuya had pressed the issue—since they’d booked a two-to-five-person Japanese-style room for boys and girls, there wasn’t much difference between having three or four people.

After checking in, Tatsuya retrieved the luggage he’d left with the hotel staff. He was just about to head for the room when he saw a crowd of familiar faces coming through the entrance—his friends who had been in the other group. They hadn’t decided on any particular meeting time, but it was about time to return to the hotel anyway, so while it was a coincidence to see them here, it wasn’t strange.

But when he spotted a surprising face among them, even he couldn’t help but say something.

“Ichijou?”

“Shiba?”

The same went for the other boy as well, it seemed. Tatsuya wasn’t the one Masaki had spoken to, though.

Tatsuya and Miyuki exchanged glances; the former gave a pained grin, and Miyuki responded Masaki with a formal smile. “It has been a long time. I wasn’t aware you were in Kyoto as well, Ichijou.”

“Yes, it has, hasn’t it? I came to do some reconnaissance for the Thesis Competition next week.”

As always, when Miyuki was around, Masaki quickly turned into a pure-hearted youth.

“Oh, is that so? That’s what we’re here for, too.”

“Yes, I heard as much from Yoshida and the others.”

Still, he was able to have a smooth conversation with her, either because he was somewhat used to it or was trying really hard.

“Did you meet everyone at the New Conference Hall?”

Perhaps finding it hard to brag about his accomplishment and say he saved them from danger, Masaki made a gesture as if to yield the answer to Mikihiko.

“He got us out of a pretty dangerous situation.” Erika, however, snatched the answer away.

Masaki and Mikihiko, as well as Leo, shared a wry grin over that. Masaki had only wanted someone else to answer, so he wasn’t unhappy. But it was very much in character for this girl to behave so freely. Insofar as he was able to think that way, Masaki already understood Erika himself.

“Mind telling us about it in the room?” Tatsuya asked, putting a stop to any more standing and talking. It was an unexpected interruption, but Masaki quickly realized the necessity of it, nodding along with Erika and the others.

“Ichijou, are you staying here as well?” Miyuki inquired, probing his convenience in a roundabout manner.

“No, I’m at the K.K. Hotel next door. But I did want to know more about what was happening.”

Masaki had parked his bike and then followed Mikihiko’s group without going back to his own room because he wanted to know the background behind the earlier attack. His thoughts aligned with Tatsuya’s.

“Let’s go to our rooms, then,” prompted Leo.

“Okay, right after I grab my luggage!”

“Wait a second—”

Erika and Leo headed for the front desk without waiting for an answer, leaving Mikihiko to hurriedly chase after them.

Masaki didn’t know Tatsuya was a JDF special officer. Tatsuya had to carefully tiptoe around that part during his explanation—at least, that’s what Erika, Leo, and Mikihiko thought.

“We learned that the man who guided the GAA invasion force here during last year’s Yokohama Incident is being sheltered in the Kyoto area. I came here on a mission to search for him.”

“A mission?! Shiba, you’re…?”

“I’m both a student at the National Magic University First Affiliated High School as well as a special officer serving in the Independent Magic Battalion of the JGDF’s 101st Brigade.”

But hearing Tatsuya explain it all so smoothly made all three of them blink in surprise.

“I…what…?”

The fact was so startling that even someone like Masaki, next in line to lead the Ichijou family, couldn’t help but be shocked.

But it didn’t allow Masaki to claim he was lying. He swiftly came to the realization it was most likely the truth—by looking at Miyuki, who was waiting beside her brother, and by seeing the unwavering expression on her face.

“Ichijou—I know I don’t need to tell you this, but this is secret information.”

Masaki nodded, clearly not over the shock yet.

Erika was making a face like she was staring into the distance, thinking things like So this is how Tatsuya does things… and He always drags people into his business whether they like it or not…

“There’s a possibility the operative will cause interference during this year’s Thesis Competition, too. I’m having Mikihiko and the others help me with this, because it should help ensure the Thesis Competition’s safety, too.”

This was the first Erika and Leo had heard of this—how this trip wasn’t just to scout things out, but to search for a specific enemy agent, and that they were definitely in danger of suffering major wounds and could have even died from a stray blow.

Still, they both listened to this calmly. At the same time, they thought about whether they’d have turned down this investigative trip if he’d told them beforehand. And almost immediately, they mentally shook their heads no.

The most rattled person at the moment was probably Masaki.

“…You know the name of the one who led the invaders here?”

Still, he was the first one to ask a question. When he did, Mikihiko turned a firm gaze on Tatsuya as well, hoping for an answer. This was information even he still didn’t know.

“Gongjin Zhou, he’s called. A man who appears to be in his early twenties. But we don’t know his real age. Long hair, and from the photograph, extremely handsome. And he apparently uses Qimen Dunjia.”

In a surprising turn, Tatsuya unflinchingly gave the name.

“Gongjin Zhou?!” Masaki cried, now even more surprised than Mikihiko was.

“Do you know him, Ichijou?” Tatsuya asked coolly in response—that was exactly why Masaki seemed so surprised.

“Yeah, I do… So it was him. It was him!”

Fiery anger lit up in Masaki’s eyes. The fire turned into a flame, whirling around.

“What happened?”

It must have been a very important connection. The way he responded made it seem like he’d been badly burned.

“…Last year in Yokohama, part of the invasion forces fled into Chinatown. I went there to get the residents to turn them over.”

Tatsuya had gotten a chance to read the report of the Yokohama Incident, but this was news to him. It was the kind of thing the authorities needed to suppress, so the information probably hadn’t been put together yet. He decided he’d have to go and view the records of that battle again when he had the chance.

But for now, he needed to listen to what Masaki had to say.

“Against our expectations, the gates to Chinatown opened right away. The young man representing the residents who had arrested the invading soldiers and handed them over to us said his name was…”

Masaki clenched his teeth.

Tatsuya spoke the name in his place. “Gongjin Zhou?”

“Yeah. He gave me his real name, and he grinned…!”

Masaki closed his mouth. Tatsuya could understand what he was feeling now, so he didn’t say anything.

“What kind of magic is Qimen Dunjia?”

Erika was the one to change the topic. It seemed like she was putting her own curiosity first, but she was obviously doing it out of consideration for Masaki.

And besides, they did need to share information about the spells their opponent used.

“Not the Qimen Dunjia from Chinese astrology, right?” Mikihiko asked, just to be sure.

“Right. The true form of Qimen Dunjia, used by ancient magicians from China, is a mental interference-type spell that throws off your sense of direction,” Minoru answered.

“Throw off your sense of direction?” Leo wondered. “Like if you’re in the water, he can make you confuse down and up to drown you?”

Minoru gave him a look of admiration. This was apparently an application he’d never thought of before.

“You can probably use it like that as well, but its main usage is to ruin pursuers’ sense of straight lines, making them go back and forth in winding turns, never letting them catch up even though their target’s within sight, dealing mental damage to them—or forcing them to wander for a long time inside a circle made of rock piles.”

“…Kudou?”

“You can call me Minoru, Ichijou.”

Minoru and Ichijou had introduced themselves right after coming into the room. Minoru had said the same thing to him then, but it seemed like Masaki resisted calling him by his first name right away, even though Minoru was younger.

“All right—Minoru.” It seemed he considered it unmanly to insist on refusing. “Aren’t you talking about the legend of Zhuge Liang from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms?” he asked.

“Yes. Lab Nine didn’t only research Japanese ancient magic—they researched Chinese ancient magic, too.”

That makes sense, Tatsuya thought as he listened. Magician development institutes saw the most activity during the Twenty Years’ Global War Outbreak. Ancient spells, like Electron Goldworm, changed to be applicable in a modern magic framework were a real threat at the time, so it would have been unnatural for them to not have investigated them.

“The Lab Nine scientists concluded it was highly possible Zhuge Liang learned the immortalist art of Qimen Dunjia.”

Erika and Leo offered admiring looks to the mention of an unexpected famous person. Tatsuya had no love for military failures, so he corrected the conversation’s course before it could steer away. “Qimen Dunjia isn’t just a large-scale spell, is it? Isn’t it also a technique useful during individual close-combat? In fact, I’d think that aspect of the spell deserves more caution.”

“How so?” wondered Masaki.

Tatsuya refrained from telling him to think about it himself. “Standing still and shooting spells at each other is one thing, but if you’re rapidly changing locations during the fight, losing sight of your opponent is fatal.”

But he also didn’t explain it all the way until the logical conclusion.

“I get it. If he messes with your sense of direction, you won’t know which way you were facing.”

When it came to Masaki, he didn’t need to.

“At the same time, you’ll lose track of what direction the opponent is supposed to be based on where you are. Meaning Qimen Dunjia magic can make your enemy lose sight of you.”

“Most likely. Miyuki?”

Prompted by her older brother, Miyuki opened her mouth to speak. “Ichijou, during the disturbance, we fought against a user of Qimen Dunjia named Xiangshan Chen at the Magic Association’s Kanto branch.”

“Is that true?”

“Yes. At the time, I was watching through the floor’s surveillance monitors, but I couldn’t look at the man as he walked down the hallway and approached. I was looking at the monitors showing left and right of the door, back and forth, but it was like I was only watching the one showing the right.”

“How did you break the spell, Shiba?”

Tatsuya privately thought That’s Ichijou for you at the question. He hadn’t asked if, but how. It wouldn’t have been meaningless to ask if, but if he had to say which one was more important when discussing actual combat, it was how.

“One of our group had special eyes. I had her gauge the timing while I waited for the door to open.”

Masaki sunk into thought. Tatsuya stayed silent, waiting for him to speak again.

“…Would that mean Qimen Dunjia has something to do with time? The spell is essentially mental interference that either directs someone’s attention in a specific direction at a fixed point or doesn’t let them direct it that way. But if you know when the person will reach that junction and decide beforehand right then which direction you pay attention to, you can resist the mind guidance effect… Maybe that’s how it is.”

“I expected nothing less from you, Ichijou,” said Minoru in open admiration after hearing Masaki’s deduction. “So the magic interferes with the mind through a combination of time and direction, and not only direction? Now that I think about it, I feel like that makes the most sense.”

Minoru turned around to Tatsuya, seeking agreement.

Tatsuya gave him a slight nod.

“Assuming we have the correct interpretation of the spell now, what would you do exactly, Ichijou?”

“Well… I’d predict the opponent’s moves without relying on my senses…”

“Then it’s something we each need to think about individually.”

Pretending to help out Masaki, who was having trouble, Tatsuya put an end to the conversation regarding Qimen Dunjia. He’d heard from Mitsugu Kuroba that the technique was no help if the opponent could see you from up close, so the question of how to neutralize it didn’t mean much to him.

“Let’s set that aside for now and talk about today. I think the battle you rescued Leo and the others from involved the Traditionalists, a society of ancient magicians harboring Gongjin Zhou. Most likely, they mistook a shikigami Mikihiko released for something that was hunting for them specifically, then tried to eliminate what they thought was a search party.”

“That isn’t all, Tatsuya,” Mikihiko interrupted. Not only Tatsuya, but Masaki as well, looked over at him. And of course, so did Miyuki, Minami, and Minoru, who weren’t at the scene. “The ones who attacked us were ninjutsu users. Probably mages from Mount Kurama or people who deserted from there. But the one at their center was an immortalist from China. Gongjin Zhou isn’t being harbored by the Traditionalists. Maybe he was at first, but now I think he’s hijacked them.”

“Not the Traditionalists, but a part of them,” Tatsuya explained.

This time, Mikihiko looked at Tatsuya, face confused. Erika, Leo, and Masaki followed suit.

“We had some developments on our side, too,” he went on. “It’s a little weak to call a foothold, but we narrowed down the area Gongjin Zhou is likely to be hiding in.”

As Mikihiko and the others expressed their surprise, Tatsuya told them about the Traditionalist “conjurer” they’d met on the approach leading up to Kiyomizu-dera.

“To think such a bounded field existed… I suppose it makes sense for those inheriting the traditions of the land of the ancient imperial castle.”

As Mikihiko showed his frank interest in the Uji River bounded field…

“If he came out of the Kyoto metropolitan area and went south…that would be south of Fushimi and north of the Uji River. Still, it’s too big an area to comb.”

“Can we even trust what that old man said?”

…Masaki and Erika brought up reasonable doubts.

“It’s a lot easier than searching all of Kyoto without a goal. And we know where he was hiding until last week, right? If we check his earlier hideout, we could figure out if we can trust the guy, right?”

Tatsuya let out a friendly, wry grin at Leo’s optimistic viewpoint.

“Even if we find evidence that Gongjin Zhou had been hiding in Arashiyama, that wouldn’t prove what the ancient magician at Kiyomizu-dera was saying is true. It’s common practice to mix in truths to make the lies more believable.”

He turned a more meanspirited grin on Erika and Leo.

Before they could react to it, Tatsuya continued, “That said, I agree with Leo—we should get some evidence he was hiding in Arashiyama. It could be a huge clue if it’s true, and if it’s a lie, clearing it up quickly would keep confusion to a minimum.”

“Shall we go to Arashiyama all together tomorrow then, Brother?” Miyuki asked.

Surprisingly, Tatsuya shook his head. “We’d stand out too much in a big group, and we can’t forget to make sure the competition will be safe. Mikihiko, Erika, Leo, would you three do the same thing as today and look around the venue area to see if any suspicious people are hiding or if there’s any places criminals or terrorists are likely to hide?”

“…Yeah, sure, Tatsuya.”

Mikihiko didn’t appear to be in unanimous agreement, but Tatsuya was right—they couldn’t afford to neglect the safety of the students participating in the Thesis Competition, especially with him being the disciplinary committee chairman of First High.

“My family should already be making an objection against Mount Kurama over today’s attack. I’ve told several groups in Kyoto that have ties to my family as well. Whether this incident was at Mount Kurama’s instructions or was the independent act of a few, it should help figure things out going forward.”

“What was the situation anyway?”

Tatsuya, who hadn’t heard the details of the attack yet, posed a somewhat belated question.

“Oh, right. We didn’t explain it much.”

Mikihiko, too, made an oops face as though he’d planned to talk about it but forgot.

At times asking for confirmation from Erika and Leo, Mikihiko explained everything from when the ninjutsu users attacked them, to how the puppet-controlling, Chinese ancient magician had put them in a pinch, and how Masaki had saved them.

“He had their skin bitten through and used their blood to make water golems? The more I hear, the more I feel like the immortalist was deceiving those ninjutsu users.”

Minoru immediately agreed with the doubt Tatsuya expressed. “I think so, too. I’m probably preaching to the choir with Mikihiko, but blood has a particularly important meaning for ancient magicians. Using it to create familiars isn’t something they’d have readily agreed to, no matter how much they were trying to keep him happy.”

“Then it’s easy,” put in Masaki. “The Kiyomizu conjurer said the Kurama ancient magicians were the Chinese magician’s pawns, but if they weren’t overpowered but rather deceived and manipulated instead, we just need to give them the facts: They were tricked. It might not be enough to get them on our side, but we can probably put an end to their hostility.”

Tatsuya nodded. “The more chaotic this all gets, the more chances Gongjin Zhou has to flee. I think keeping the confusion to a minimum will let us crush the enemy’s plans.”

“Then if things evolve into something like last year, we lose—but if we prevent it beforehand, we win, huh?” Masaki, too, agreed with him.

“I can act as part of the Kudou family, alone—but if a large group from the families of the Nine enter Kyoto, that may end up provoking the ancient magician factions as well as the Traditionalists,” Minoru hummed, sounding disappointed.

“Indeed,” Miyuki offered to comfort him. “They’d also be giving the Traditionalists an excuse, so we should probably avoid that if we can.”

“The Yoshida family should be enough to provide support against the Traditionalists. If we do any more than that, some people could get out of control.”

With Tatsuya’s eyes directed at him, Mikihiko nodded. “Yeah… All right. We’ll stick to looking around the competition venue like we did today. I’ll also make doubly sure my family knows.”

“What should I do?” Masaki asked Tatsuya.

Tatsuya wasn’t in a position to command him, so the only thing he could say to the question was “Whatever you want.” But he naturally knew if he actually did that, they’d get into a fight.

And Masaki’s true intentions were clear from how he was stealing glances at Miyuki.

“If you were to accompany us, Ichijou, it would be very encouraging.”

Miyuki preempted her brother and answered thusly, because she figured he was more likely to accept the request if she was the one to ask him to go with them—and not because she thought that hearing it from her would raise his motivation higher. Probably.

“Yes, please leave it to me!”

But either way, with that, their plans for the next day were set.