When the light cleared away and I came to my senses, I was standing on the ground. I couldn’t see the shining platform anywhere. It looked as if I was back where I’d been before I climbed those stairs.
A little ways away, I saw Nagisa and Siesta looking around as well. Our eyes met, and the three of us gazed at each other, dumbfounded.
“Kimihiko!” Rill raced over to me in her wheelchair, panting. “Is it all over?” She swallowed hard, her expression tense.
“—Yeah. Though I couldn’t really do much to help.”
Basically all I’d done was help the detective save face.
Rill’s eyes widened, but her expression quickly softened. “Ah. So business as usual then.”
“Don’t make it sound like I’m always useless.”
We stared at each other for a few seconds, then started grinning at the same time.
Behind Rill, Noches had joined Siesta and Nagisa, who were all chatting cheerfully.
“Is it really over?”
Our fight had finally come to an end.
As I looked at their smiles, the tension went out of my shoulders in a rush.
This was why we’d worked so hard. This was the future we’d been aiming for. Now we could—
“It looks like it’s all settled,” a voice said behind me.
I turned around to see the red-haired Assassin, Fuubi Kase. A short distance behind her were the Enforcer, the Hero, and the other Tuners.
“I took the liberty of doing things my way a bit.”
“What do you mean ‘a bit,’ you idiot?” Ms. Fuubi seemed exasperated, but as she looked at us now that we’d achieved our goal, a faint smile crossed her face.
Noticing her, Nagisa and the others came over, and Siesta stepped forward. “It’s been a long time, Fuubi.”
The two of them were meeting again for the first time in over a year. The other Tuners all stared at Siesta with great interest. She was a hero who’d returned from the jaws of death not once but twice.
“Ha! At this point, it seems dumb to be surprised.” Ms. Fuubi snorted, laughing it off. “It’s not like I’ll have anything to do with you from here on out anyway.”
“Now that’s a sad thing to say. We’re a detective and a police officer. Let’s get along.”
For a moment, Ms. Fuubi’s eyes widened in surprise.
“You are going to keep being a police officer, aren’t you?” Siesta asked, her blue eyes fixed on the Assassin.
After a brief silence, Ms. Fuubi gave a thin smile. “I’m not sure. Never mind that—we should talk about what we’re going to do with him.”
Ms. Fuubi’s eyes narrowed sharply, and I suddenly realized he was there again.
“Abel.”
The Tuners’ attention—and their weapons—came to bear on him. The Assassin aimed her pistol, the Magical Girl pointed her staff, and the Enforcer leveled his great sickle. Abel was their mortal enemy not just as a Tuner but on a personal level.
“Wait.” Nagisa stood in front of Ms. Fuubi, her arms spread wide.
“What are you trying to pull?” the Assassin asked. “Sure, the Akashic records were destroyed, but you’re not planning to just let Abel walk, are you?”
“Of course not. I don’t have the slightest intention of defending his crimes. However, it wouldn’t be justice to kill him here,” Nagisa said, not retreating a single step. “The way I see it, justice means continuing to think about the future.”
A dubious expression crossed Ms. Fuubi’s face, but she lowered her gun.
Seeing her reaction, Reloaded spoke up. “So you think letting Abel live will lead to justice in the future?”
“He has a power that isn’t like ours. We’ll have him use it for the sake of the world.”
Right, the world no longer had the Akashic records. It was true that we’d have to think about the ideal shape of justice in this new world.
At that, Reloaded lowered her staff. Every eye came to focus on Ookami, the only one left pointing a weapon. Ookami had been opposed to our plan from the start and wanted to kill Abel all along.
“Either way, he’ll need to return everything he stole first,” Ookami said, lowering his sickle. The tension finally eased, and the mood relaxed a little.
“Can he do that now that the System’s broken, though?”
Could Abel still use his code abilities?
“The Akashic records are still here,” Abel said. Something that looked like orange particles of light were rising from his right hand.
“…So the Akashic records were under your control, and you preserved some of them inside yourself?”
That meant Abel could still use his codes. Were those particles of light data he’d stolen from the world? Then if he returned it…
“So you’re giving up on controlling the world?”
On staying evil?
“No, I won’t stop being evil,” Abel answered, as if he’d picked up on what I really meant. “I will reign as the enemy of the world for all eternity, and you will continue to wonder. About the ideal shape of justice; about what ‘peace’ means; about human foolishness; about the seven sins; about how to atone for one’s crimes; about knowing one knows nothing; about the unconscious evil that is self-sacrifice.”
I heard several sets of footsteps, and a group of people wearing white masks and outfits surrounded Abel.
“A military guard under the direct control of the Federation Government,” Siesta murmured quietly.
The group promptly began to put Abel in restraints: a series of rings, starting with his ankles. The Federation Government must be thinking of locking him up again—permanently, this time.
“I will always be watching from the farthest ends of the world. I’ll be listening. You won’t be able to escape. Peace will never come. Rest will be an impossibility. Evil will be born so long as humans live. By the time this body withers away, a new disaster will appear.”
A collar was fastened around his neck. Yet even then, Abel continued to address the Tuners, or perhaps the government officials who must be watching this play out remotely.
“This evil will shall never die.”
Abel Arsene Schoenberg vowed that he would remain the worst criminal in the world for all time.
It was a challenge to us.
He was saying that if we rejected this form of evil, we should try to make the new world some other way. Until we did, Abel A. Schoenberg would remain a threat to the world. That was the point we had to compromise on now.
“Good. That’s what we want.”
They went to put a sack over his head—but just then, a big hole opened up in the left side of Abel’s chest.
“Huh?”
None of us could believe what we were seeing. Not even Ms. Fuubi or Siesta. Noches murmured, staring wide-eyed at the sky. “The Akashic records.”
The inverted pyramid of the System floated in the sky on the verge of crumbling apart; however, a design like an enormous eye had surfaced on it. The eye seemed to be peering at us and at this world.
After that, everything happened in an instant. The Hero was the first to move, but something that looked like crystal grew up from the ground and trapped his lower body. The same thing had happened to me, Nagisa, Siesta, and the other Tuners; we were all trapped by the mysterious crystals.
“…! Don’t tell me—is the Federation Government doing this?”
A second later, though, I realized that the white-clad guards who’d restrained Abel had all been completely encased in crystal. This wasn’t the government’s doing.
“So it was too much for those without wills, hm?” Abel said.
Did he know what was going on?
“Breaking the System activated a repair program. It seems to be trying to retake the Akashic records from me.”
This time, a hole appeared in Abel’s lower abdomen. His eyes widened.
“Then—no way… Is that…?”
“The will of the Earth? …Of the world?”
Even as the creeping crystals made them wince in pain, Nagisa and Siesta looked up. The sky had begun to crumble apart like shattered glass.
“—A reboot. It’s planning to make it as if nothing ever happened?”
By now, Abel’s lower body had been completely blown away. The expression on his face looked like he was smiling, but it also seemed sad.
“The cataclysm won’t end.”
And with that, Abel Arsene Schoenberg was erased from this world entirely.
“_____________!”
I put out a hand, reaching for _____________, who’d vanished.
“…Who?”
Who was I reaching out for? Who had been there just now?
Who had we been fighting all this time?
“Assistant!”
Somebody was calling out to me—Siesta. She was reaching out to me. …I knew that much. I remembered her; how could I ever forget Siesta? But why was she here? How was she awake?
“Kimihiko!” Nagisa yelled. I had the feeling she’d told me something important just a few hours ago, but what was it? How had I responded? And when had we started calling each other by our first names?
My memories were getting fuzzier.
We’d been fighting one of the Tuners, ___ __________ ______, all this time. I had a nature known as ___ ____________, and the two of us had been fighting ___ ______________, the world’s secret. And then… Yeah. Just now, that fight had ended. I was pretty sure the result had been…
“—! Siesta! Nagisa!”
I desperately tried to reach out for them, but I couldn’t move anymore.
“It’s all right!” Nagisa said. Even though the crystal had crawled all the way up to her neck now, she kept doing everything she could to convey her emotions. “No matter what we forget, we’ll be together. I’m sure our future selves will find one another again!”
…Right. She was right. If it was the three of us, we’d be okay.
Siesta and Nagisa were the detectives, and I was their assistant.
I remembered that much. It was the one thing I could never forget. So…!
“Someday, let’s leave on another journey to save the world,” Siesta said, smiling at the very end, and Nagisa and I nodded.
On that day, the world was reborn.