“…Ah.” Shido opened his eyes with a groan. “What was that…?”
He felt like he’d been having a weird dream. Fondly familiar, yet unfamiliar. A very sad but warm dream.
“Mm…” Still half-asleep, he felt something tickle his face and brushed a hand against his cheek.
He found it was wet with tears. And clearly not with just the two or three that might come from a powerful yawn. He’d been crying in his sleep.
“…Why would I—?”
He ran a hand through his hair and looked around. Before too long, his hazy view sharpened into reality. He was in bed. Sterile white walls and ceiling. This was probably the infirmary on Fraxinus.
He sat up slowly and stretched at length, feeling a slight pain in his stiff muscles, and his back cracked quietly.
At that moment, the door to the room swung open, and Kotori came in, followed by the Spirits.
“Coming in,” Kotori said, and then cried out when she saw him sitting up. “Shido!”
“Oh! You’re awake?!” Behind Kotori, Tohka opened her eyes wide in surprise together with the other Spirits.
“Yeah.” He turned toward them with a pained smile. “I just woke up.”
Tohka tilted her head. “Shido, what’s wrong? Are you crying?”
“Oh. No… I just yawned, is all.” It was kind of awkward to admit he’d been crying in his sleep, and he also figured worrying them would do no good.
“…”
Perhaps picking up on something in his attitude, Kotori looked at him dubiously, then sighed. “Well, let’s leave it at that. How are you feeling?”
“Huh? Oh… I think I’m fine.” He was confused by her serious attitude at first, but prompted by her question, the silhouette of his foggy memories abruptly sprang into sharp relief.
Right. Just before he lost consciousness, he’d been plummeting into the atmosphere with Mukuro in his arms and nothing to protect them. He might have had the blessings of many Angels, but it was natural for Kotori to worry.
“Mukuro…” He wrenched himself around, twisting the sheets up across his body. “What happened to Mukuro? Is she okay?!”
Fortunately, he was left with no serious injuries, thanks to the defenses of Zafkiel and Raphael combined with the healing abilities of Camael. Because he’d blacked out before reaching the ground, however, he hadn’t been able to make sure Mukuro was similarly safe.
Kotori’s expression turned troubled. “I don’t know. Mukuro was gone by the time we found you. We considered the obvious possibility that you got separated midair, so we searched a fairly large radius around your landing point, but…”
“You can’t actually mean…,” Shido stared at her anxiously, and Kotori shook her head.
“She might have been in a stupefied state, but Mukuro is a Spirit,” she told him. “And she was wearing an Astral Dress. Plus, considering we found you in one piece, it’s hard to imagine she was hurt too badly. It’s more likely that after landing with you, she regained consciousness and ran off somewhere.”
“I—I guess that makes sense…” He let out a sigh of relief.
“…”
He immediately rethought this and pursed his lips tightly. The fact that Mukuro was all right was indeed news to be glad about. They had no idea where she had run off to, though. They had hit a dead end.
He dropped his gaze to his right hand and clenched it into a tight fist. As if checking for the sensation of the key turning that still remained in his palm. He knew he had pushed the fake Michael into Mukuro’s chest and opened her heart’s lock.
That was just the first step, though. Unlocking her heart was no guarantee that Mukuro had changed how she felt about him. All he’d done was awaken her emotions. In the worst case, she may have become even more hostile.
And in the moment of first contact, the point on which the entire mission depended, he had lost consciousness. While that certainly wasn’t his fault, he nevertheless couldn’t help but contort his face in regret.
“…Sorry, gang. You all worked so hard, and I…,” he said slowly.
The Spirits stared at him in surprise, eyes wide, before they all began to shake their heads vigorously.
“What are you talking about?” Tohka said. “We all know how hard you tried, Shido.”
“Th-that’s right,” Yoshino agreed. “Please don’t…talk like that.”
“You’re really in the dumps, huh? You okay? Wanna touch my boobs? Although there ain’t much to touch! Ha-ha-ha!” Nia said, with a burst of raucous laughter.
Shido had no idea how he was supposed to respond, so he simply smiled awkwardly, a trickle of sweat running down his cheek.
“What? Do you meeean it?!!” Miku, in contrast, began to waggle her fingers excitedly. “What an unbelievable offer! Are you a saaaint?!”
Kotori held up a hand. They were getting far off track. “Miku, quiet.”
“Aw! No faaaair!” Miku pushed her lips forward in a pout.
“Haah, honestly.” Kotori sighed. “Getting down about it’s not going to change anything, Shido. It’s not like we’re back at square one, okay? If you want to pay everyone back for their hard work, first thing you gotta do is start looking forward.”
“Y-yeah. I guess so,” Shido agreed with a wry smile. Kotori was exactly right. He wouldn’t say regret was pointless, but if he couldn’t learn a lesson from this and keep moving, it was nothing more than stagnation. For the sake of everyone who believed in him and helped him, he couldn’t stop—“Ah.”
“What?” Kotori frowned. “Something wrong, Shido?”
“Kotori…,” he said, clenching his hands tightly as another memory came back to him. “What happened to the Ratatoskr base?!”
Right before they flew off to space, the base where Fraxinus was stationed had been attacked by DEM Industries.
Kotori sighed. “…I can’t say it’s unharmed. The damage certainly isn’t minimal. We’ll likely have to abandon the whole thing.”
“H-holy smokes,” he said, a look of fear coming across his face. “What about Mr. Woodman and Karen?”
“…”
Kotori wordlessly dug around in her jacket pocket, pulled out a small terminal, and turned it toward him.
“Huh?” A few seconds later, Woodman’s face was shown on the terminal’s screen. “Mr. Woodman!”
“Ah, Shido,” the older man said. “You’re all right, then. I heard you crashed into the atmosphere with no protection?”
“Y-yeah. I made it somehow. How are you, though?”
“I seem to be all right. Apologies if I caused you to wor— Hrngh!” Woodman cried in anguish.
Shido jumped. “M-Mr. Woodman?”
“In what world is someone who nearly lost an arm and a leg ‘all right’? The only apt description of your condition is ‘beaten to a pulp.’ ”
The voice he heard next was not Woodman’s, but rather the bell-like voice of a woman. Karen. Her tone was humdrum as ever, but there now seemed to be a note of anger about it.
“Please, get into the medical Realizer right away. You are on strict bed rest for the time being.”
Woodman smiled wryly as he turned his gaze back toward Shido. “Apologies. I did wish to speak with you a little longer, but you see how Karen is.”
“O-of course,” he stammered. “That’s fine… But an arm and a leg?”
“Elliot.”
“Yes, yes, I heard you. Don’t yank, Karen.” Woodman disappeared from the screen, and the transmission ended.
Kotori tucked the terminal away with a shrug. “There you have it. They managed to escape.”
“O-oh.” Shido looked at her with concern. “That all sounded real ominous, though.”
“Mm, I’m dying from curiosity myself. But Woodman keeps dodging questions and won’t tell me what happened.” Kotori sighed and crossed her arms, shifting gears. “At any rate, you rest up for now, Shido. We’ll keep looking for Mukuro, and you’ve gotta be up and running when we find her.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said. “Where did she even go?”
“If we knew that, we wouldn’t be busting our butts. With her Michael, she can go anywhere she wants. Maybe she ran off to some deserted corner of space again. Or maybe she’s surprisingly close—” Kotori abruptly cut herself off, and her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates as she stared beyond him.
“Huh? Wh-what, Kotori? Why are—?” He furrowed his brow in confusion before stopping abruptly, just like Kotori. To be more precise, he gasped from utter shock, which forced him to stop speaking.