“I doubt it would be that simple.” Yuichi felt annoyed by the way she said it, not as a challenge, but as a simple statement of fact. “Well? You introduced yourself, so now get lost.”
“Oh, don’t be like that,” Ende said. “Hey, as long as we’re both here, why don’t we grab a cup of tea and get to know each other better?”
“I thought you were my enemy.”
“Enemy?” Ende said. “How could someone so harmless be your enemy? You know I have absolutely no combat ability, don’t you?”
“Yeah. I can tell you don’t do martial arts and you’re not physically strong. But Outers aren’t about that, are they?”
Monika had the ability to erase people’s memories, and Makina could create enclosed spaces where others would be forced to play games under the rules she set. All Outers had abilities based on the worldviews they came from.
“Oh, yeah, but I don’t have that stuff, either,” Ende assured him. “I can’t do a thing all by myself. I think you probably know that, too.”
“What do you mean?” he demanded.
“Just what I said. Even when you’re fighting a magic user or someone with superpowers, you can predict any attack they’re about to use, and pinpoint their weak points and stuff. I don’t know how it works exactly, but I bet that same instinct is telling you that I’m completely harmless.”
Ende was right about that. Yuichi could anticipate anything, even magic he’d never seen before. He could read intent from his opponents, and any attack, even magic and superpowers, was presaged by intent. Some sign of what they were about to do would always show itself somewhere on their body in a way that told him that something was coming.
“In a real match, you never get a second chance” was a philosophy that his sister had drummed into his head. No matter who you were facing, even if you had no idea what they could do, you had to immediately ascertain their intent, and find a way to deal with it. It was the only way to win. If you couldn’t do that, you would die.
This unreasonable training of his sister’s had driven him to the brink of death many times, but the process had also raised his combat awareness to superhuman levels. That same awareness was telling him that Ende was completely harmless.
“Well, it’s not so much about getting to know each other as it is about giving you a bit of advice... a warning,” Ende said. “If you want to hang on to your peaceful high school life, you’d better hear me out.”
He didn’t know what she was after, but she didn’t seem to be lying.
“Nero! Are you here?” Yuichi called to nowhere in particular. Soon, a canine shape came around a corner and trotted toward them.
“What is it?” It was the werewolf Nero. He was one of the vampire Aiko’s retainers, and had sworn his loyalty to her. He could take human, wolfman, and wolf forms, and in the city, he disguised himself as a wolf-dog.
“Take Noro home,” Yuichi ordered. “I’m going to hear Ende out.”
“Huh?” Aiko stared in surprise, perhaps not expecting to hear him say that.
“She’s an Outer,” Yuichi said. “We don’t know what she might try, and I’m the only one she’s after.”
“Fine,” she said, after a pause. “Let’s go, Nero.”
After thinking it over a little, she must have realized that she’d just hold him back if things came to a fight, so she did as she was told and went off ahead.
“Now, shall we have some tea and a little chat?” Ende said. “Though I’m surely insufficient compared to the beautiful girls who usually surround you.”
She and Yuichi headed back toward the station.
“I’ve always wanted to come here once,” Ende told him. “It’s had a lot of mentions since I started following you.”
They were sitting in the cafe near the station, the same one that the runaway truck had crashed into during summer vacation. Yuichi had come here often since then.
“It’s really not all that special...” Yuichi said, feeling deflated.
It was starting to seem like she really didn’t have any combat abilities. He had intentionally given her a few obvious openings, and even made like he was going to attack her, yet she hadn’t reacted once. It wasn’t that he had let his guard down, but he was starting to feel foolish for keeping it up all the time.
“Anyway, we’re here now. What do you want to talk about?” he asked.
He was sitting in his usual seat by the window, with Ende sitting across from him. He had a feeling they’d never get to the main subject unless he forced it, so he tried to nudge her in that direction.
“You know, I’m surprised you came right along,” Ende said. “You must be very confident...”
“Can I go now?” Yuichi stood up, a little irritated by her belittling manner.
“Well, you know, it’s about the Divine Vessels War. Would you mind rejoining it?” Ende asked, as if it were a simple enough request.
“Absolutely not,” Yuichi answered immediately, having expected this to happen.
“Please, reconsider. As I said earlier, I’ve made special arrangements to beat you. If you won’t take part in the Divine Vessels War, I’ll have to resort to other measures.”
At a glance, it sounded like a threat, but Yuichi felt no malice or provocation in her words. It was a maddening feeling; he knew she was his enemy, but she jabbered on like they were old friends.
“I don’t know why you want to beat me so badly,” Yuichi shot back. “I’ve never even met you before. What do you have against me?”
He’d certainly earned his share of enmity in his time, so it was possible he’d done something to earn her resentment without realizing it. But he couldn’t remember ever meeting a girl named Ende before.
Her response was a dismissive laugh. “Come on, you heard from Makina about what Outers were, didn’t you? Generally we just like to kill time. At first, I was just trying to kill your big sister out of annoyance. But when that didn’t go well, I developed more interest in the both of you.”
“So you’re after my sister, huh?” Yuichi asked. “What’s your beef with her, exactly?”
“Soul Reader.”
“I told you, I don’t have it anymore... and besides, it belonged to Monika first. You shouldn’t have any reason to care about it.”
“Oh, but I do. You know that Soul Reader is a fundamental ability that all Outers possess, don’t you?”
“She did mention that, yeah...”
“The ability didn’t originally have a name. It was just something all Outers could do, so there was no need for one. But then your sister gave it a name!”
“Um, so?” he said. It was true that it was a ridiculous name, but Yuichi couldn’t see why Outers cared what his big sister called it.
“Call it a blind spot, I guess,” Ende said. “No one ever named it; no one ever invoked their right to name it. But then your sister did, and now it’s Soul Reader in perpetuity. It’s ridiculous!”
“Why can’t you just call it something else?”
“I can. I can call it whatever I want. But I’m still stuck with the feeling that no matter how I try to fight it, it’s just ‘Soul Reader’ by another name. The power to read things is called Soul Reader, and no matter how I try to change that, I can’t. It’s very annoying.”
“I don’t quite understand what you mean,” Yuichi said. “Is it a first-come-first-serve thing? So if I just give a random name to something, that’s what the name becomes?”
“Not you. Your sister can do it because she’s a Worldview Holder.” Ende smiled a knowing smile and watched Yuichi’s reaction curiously. “Hmm,” she said, after a moment. “You don’t seem very surprised. Wasn’t that a shocking revelation?”
“Eh... we’ve been through a lot,” he said. “I’d be more surprised by the revelation that she was a completely ordinary person. Telling me she has a worldview and that she can use it to influence things around her seems a lot more in tune with what I’ve observed.”
“Well, all right. The point is, I’m annoyed that she put a name on something without asking anyone. So I tried to kill you all, but I failed.”
“Are you the one who sent Makina after us?” he demanded. That was the only time an Outer had gone after them directly, so Yuichi wondered if Ende was behind that.
“No, it was earlier than that,” Ende said. “I’m the one who arranged things so that you’d go to Kurokami Island. I never thought you’d actually kill that anthromorph god... Anyway, that’s when I started to have interest in you, and seeing you in action made me want to start to meddle.”
“Then it’s all over, right? Now that I’ve lost Soul Reader, I’ll never do anything interesting again.”
“I see,” she said. “It sounds like I’ll have to find a way to motivate you.”
So that was that, in the end. She just didn’t want to have to cancel the plan or whatever that she’d set up to kill time, and that was why she’d gone out of her way to appear before Yuichi.
“Let’s see. If you refuse to participate, maybe I should just kill you right now,” Ende said, casually.
Yuichi could tell she wasn’t lying.