It was November. Autumn was in full swing, and it was past time to switch to cool-weather clothes.
Even so, I didn’t quite feel like I was keeping up with the change. It was probably because I’d recently spent a while cut off from the world.
The code of loss Abel had hit me with had taken my five senses and left me unconscious for more than three weeks. I had no memories from that time. I felt as if I’d dreamed about having a conversation with someone I missed, but other than that, I didn’t remember a thing.
Even so, I’d managed to wake up with the help of a certain girl, gone through a mysterious door that had appeared out of thin air, and seen the control tower whose programs were said to run the world. I’d fought Abel there again, this time with Charlie. That had been a week ago.
After that, I’d gone back to my former world (although that may not have been the right way to put it), and finally managed to get back to my regular routine. That said, there was no telling when I might be denounced by a certain organization. On that day—I’d tried to destroy the Akashic records.
As the Singularity, I’d decided on instinct that destroying them would be better than letting Abel steal them and use them for evil…but I had no idea how the top brass of the Federation Government would see it. At this point, it didn’t seem to have had any drastic effects on the world, but…
In any case, the situation had started to move in a big way.
It was a pretty sure bet that I’d end up discussing this with the Federation Government in some way. We weren’t specifically getting this out of the way before that happened, but for the first time in quite a while, our circle had gotten together.
Nagisa had organized it, on the pretext of celebrating my recovery.
Nagisa, Charlie, and Noches had gathered in my cramped, run-down apartment; Saikawa had stopped by for a few minutes between jobs, and Mia and Rill were attending via video chat. That night, the apartment was livelier than it had ever been… Although apparently I’d worried them and caused them a ton of trouble, and I got yelled at a whole lot more than I’d been expecting.
I did think they could have been a little nicer to me…but in the face of pressure like that from the girls, I hadn’t been able to say anything. A male-female ratio of one to six is pretty harsh.
That party was winding down now, and only Nagisa, Charlie, and I were still there.
The hot pot we’d all gathered around was still sitting on the low table. The rice and vegetable porridge we’d added—clearly overdoing it—in order to round off the meal was sitting there glaring at us. It was one of those unpleasant things that happens all the time with hot pot.
“Nagisa, you’re a big eater. Go ahead and finish that off.”
“What are you, the tactless wonder?! I seriously hate this side of you, Kimihiko.”
Getting so upset the sound effect for “fuming” actually seemed to apply, Nagisa neatly divided the porridge in the hot pot among three bowls.
“Too bad we didn’t at least go with noodles, huh?”
“I said we should. I said it last time we had hot pot, too.”
“Did you? …Oh, the time you stayed over.”
Now that we’d started university, we had a lot more opportunities to eat hot pot.
It was relatively tasty, easy, and cheap, so Nagisa and I often stopped at the supermarket on the way home from school, bought the fixings, and made it.
“It sounds like you people are living pretty sordid student lives.” Charlie glared at me and Nagisa from beneath half-lowered eyelids.
“…I wouldn’t say that. We just eat together, that’s all. If we’re going to be cooking for ourselves anyway, it’s more convenient to cook for two.”
“Then why do you have loungewear and makeup remover over here, Nagisa?” Charlie grilled her.
Nagisa said nothing and started blowing on her porridge to cool it off.
That’s just going to make her even more suspicious. Make some decent excuses, all right? Please?
“Oh maaan. Don’t come crying to me if Ma’am gets mad at you,” Charlie warned Nagisa. She sounded exasperated, but she was smiling just a little.
—Siesta. If possible, I would have liked to have her here, too. I’d wanted her to be part of the circle that had gathered at my place today.
“I bet it won’t be long now, though.”
Apparently Siesta’s surgery had been completed without incident while I was unconscious. During that major surgery, the seed-infected heart in Siesta’s chest had been replaced with an artificial heart Stephen had made for her.
It had gone well—but Siesta wasn’t awake yet. According to Stephen, it would take time for the new heart to settle in and function properly, and he needed to monitor her progress, so he was keeping her in a coma.
When Siesta woke up, would she still be the person we knew? Would she remember us? It would be a little while longer before we found out.
“By the way, Charlie. Have you heard from Ms. Fuubi since then?” I asked.
Charlie shook her head. “Not even once. I don’t think she’d contact me in the first place, though.”
Put simply, Fuubi Kase had gone missing.
She’d definitely been in that world with us last week. According to Nagisa, she’d actually been there physically. After damaging the Akashic records, Nagisa and I had vanished, and we didn’t know what had happened after that. When Charlie had come to, she was in the Mizoev Federation embassy. The government had probably sent someone to pick her up.
No one knew where Ms. Fuubi had gone, though. Ryan White, either. I hadn’t been on their battlefield, so I didn’t even have the right to know that story.
“She said she’d be back for sure,” Nagisa said. She’d been with Fuubi Kase right up until she’d vanished. —In that case, I’d believe in them: the words of the Ace Detective, and the Assassin’s justice.
“Speaking of missing persons, Abel’s gone, too,” Charlie said, remembering.
I’d pinned Abel down temporarily, but right after I’d destroyed the Akashic records, I’d heard his voice from a location I couldn’t trace.
“The plan won’t end here. The world still has a big secret.”
Before I could find out what he meant, he’d disappeared.
In the end, the term “the Akashic records” had referred to something like a program that could control all phenomena on earth—and the core of the System that executed it.
However, according to Abel, the world still had secrets. Were those secrets connected to his goal of inverting the world? For the sake of his ambition of a new world controlled by his codes, he’d probably try to restore both the Akashic records and the System.
“Still, who’d have believed Professor Moriya was actually Abel…?”