We all turned our attention back to Keiko, who tilted her head inquisitively. “Hmm?”
“I have a question,” I told her. “Did you know about magic before you came to this world, Keiko-san? Not that it matters what you knew or didn’t know, but just to understand and acknowledge it as a piece of information.”
Keiko placed a hand on her chin and looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling. “Well, if I were to think about it, maybe it’s aikido.”
“May I ask why you refer to your martial art as aikido?”
“I mean, it is aikido.” Keiko laughed awkwardly.
None of us found this amusing.
“Well, I can’t help it,” she said, noticing our serious expressions and shrugging her shoulders. “You might have heard some things from Mia-chan, but I learned aikido from a rather unique master. He told me I have a disposition to be involved with demonic entities, so I needed a power to protect myself.”
“Demonic entities?”
I wondered if this meant that in our original world, there was something akin to magic, or if we had entities similar to monsters.
“I don’t really understand what ‘demonic’ refers to,” Keiko went on, “but the aikido I learned supposedly has the power to exorcise those forces.”
“Who exactly was your master?”
“I don’t know. He was a withered old man. A while ago, he said he was going back to China to exorcise something.”
Clearly, Keiko’s master was a strange person. Still, her abilities, and apparently those of her master, had been crucial in helping us…
Keiko didn’t seem like someone who would lie about something so important. But what does she mean by “exorcise something”? Was her master really like a character from a light novel?
“Is that all you wanted to ask?”
“Yes, well… It’s just made things even more unclear.”
“Yeah. The mystery only deepens.”
We all looked from one another and sighed.
✦ ✦ ✦
Putting aside Keiko’s story for now, the top priority was resolving our current situation.
“Maybe we should try removing the thought block again. I can reapply Isolation right away if necessary.”
Arisu and Tamaki objected to my suggestion, considering it too risky, while Keiko agreed with me.
Mia thought a moment, then said, “Kazu, let’s remove my Isolation.”
“What are you aiming for?”
“We already saw what happened when the enemy read your thoughts. Now we should try with someone else. If that’s the case, I’m probably the most chaotic option.”
“Chaotic, huh… I see your point.”
Mia understood herself well! And indeed, when it comes to decision-making, she might be the most reliable among us.
I nodded slowly in agreement. “All right… go ahead. But if there’s even a hint of danger…”
“I’ll ask for Isolation again right away.”
We refined our plan further, taking breaks and even having a small party in between. Rushia, as usual, indulged in an astonishing number of sweets.
Finally, Arisu used her accumulated skill points to upgrade her healing magic to Rank 8…
And we returned to the red skies of the battlefield.
✦ ✦ ✦
We were still floating in the pitch-black space, surrounded by yellow gems dropped by the slain monsters. Arisu reached out and grabbed one of them.
“Okay, Mia. Ready?”
“It’s my first time, so be gentle.”
“Come on, don’t be annoying.” I lightly tapped Mia’s forehead and removed the Isolation spell from her.
“If there’s any contact with Mia now…”
“It’s there,” Mia whispered. She gently closed her eyes and looked down.
Wait, what? There had been no change in our surroundings…
“Hey, Mia!”
“Just wait a moment.”
I instinctively reached out to touch Mia’s shoulder… and my hand grasped at thin air.
“What?! Wait, Mia!”
Mia’s body was starting to turn translucent.
Is she… disappearing?
“Arisu, can you touch Mia?”
“What’s going on?!”
“Look, Mia’s body is turning transparent!”
Keiko was the only one of us who seemed relatively unbothered by Mia’s sudden transformation. But that didn’t matter now. What should we do? What can we do? I thought frantically.
“Mia, answer us!”
“Mmm.” Mia raised her head reluctantly, then met my gaze and gave a slight nod, as if to say she had this under control.
I trusted her… but then I realized, no, I couldn’t leave everything to her alone.
“No, this isn’t right!”
I made a split-second decision and removed the Isolation spell from myself. Then I tried again to touch Mia, who was fading away.
This time, I managed to grab her soft arm.
“Mia!”
“Hey, Kazu, wait…” Now Mia seemed panicked. She must have intended to bear the danger alone.
No way I’ll allow that.
“Master!”
“Sha-Lau!”
The Phantom Wolf King lunged toward us, but his front legs passed right through my body.
Arisu, Tamaki, Rushia, and finally even Keiko were all panicking, but…
“It’s okay,” I told them with a reassuring nod. “I’ll figure this out with Mia, just the two of us.”
No sooner had the words left my mouth than my consciousness faded to black.
✦ ✦ ✦
Upon awakening, I found myself outside my school’s Cultural Arts Center, up on the hill. The sun had tilted slightly, suggesting it was around 3 PM. Beside me stood only Mia, who appeared unusually cheerful, her gaze locked on me.
“What’s the matter? Aren’t you scared?”
“Kazu, you really are silly. The experiment would have worked with just me.”
“I thought it would be safer to have someone else who could cast Isolation, in case you ran into any trouble,” I explained, then added, “It’s not like I thought you’d feel lonely or anything…”
“Trying to act tsundere isn’t cool anymore. It’s just cringe.”
“I guess I was wrong…”
There’s nothing more awkward than a joke falling flat. I did my best to shake off the embarrassment and scanned our surroundings.
The Cultural Arts Center before us bore no signs of the recent battles—neither around the building nor in the front plaza.
“The school’s mountain, the Cultural Arts Center, huh?”
“Most likely a copy.”
“Let’s check.”
Taking Mia by the hand, I circled to the back of the Cultural Arts Center. If this were the same place we knew, there should be a girl’s grave here.
We found nothing.
“So, it’s like we suspected…”
This place was not the same as the one in our own world.
This world had been crafted from either Mia’s memories or my own, a faithful recreation of the time before the orcs attacked our school. However, my first visit to the Cultural Arts Center had been with Arisu, so it was likely that the memories forming this place belonged to Mia.
“Are you relieved?” she asked me.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “The Cultural Arts Center before the orc attack is a totally unknown place to me.”
“So, this place is constructed from my memories.”
It seemed likely.
“I wonder if the entire school mountain has been reconstructed,” I mused.
“Could be. The Shibuya we saw was pretty extensive.”
“Mia, you’ve been to the high school section a few times, right? You would roughly know the layout of the buildings… Maybe we could confirm that by flying around.”
Mia slowly shook her head. “That’s an option, but it’s probably not important.”
“Then, what are you looking for? And, before we warped here, when you closed your eyes…”
Mia looked up at me, expressionless. We stared at each other for a moment.
“No way,” I breathed as I began to realize what had happened.
“I heard a voice,” Mia confirmed. “Probably from the thing that was probing our minds, calling out to me.”