It was one PM. The sun, which would have been near its zenith, was hidden by a thick layer of clouds, and its warmth did not make it all the way to the ground. The occasional wind was fearsomely cold, slowly wicking away Shido’s warmth. He sneezed dramatically and rubbed his shoulders, sniffling.
Instead of his classroom at Raizen High School, he was in front of the apartment building next to the Itsuka house. To be more precise, he was across the road with a clear view of the front entrance. He was hidden behind a telephone pole, keeping a careful eye on the building.
“…!”
After he’d been waiting for who knew how long, the door opened, and two small girls walked out. One was a sweet-looking girl with a cute hat and puffy coat with a rabbit puppet on her left hand. The other looked excessively grumpy, a dark coat buttoned up tightly and a scarf wrapped around her neck. They were Spirits who lived in the building, Yoshino and Natsumi.
“…Ah! It’s so cold! I can see my breath!” Natsumi said.
“Hee-hee. You’re right. Haaah!” Yoshino exhaled puffs of white breath, and the rabbit puppet Yoshinon twisted and squirmed.
“Whoo-hoo! White breath!”
Yoshino giggled happily. Natsumi scowled in contrast, troubled and somewhat apologetic.
“…Um. Yoshino? You don’t have to come shopping with me, you know. It’s no big deal, and it’d be a whole thing if you got sick…”
“No! It’s totally okay. I’m good with the cold. And…” Yoshino took Natsumi’s hand and tucked it into the pocket of her coat with her own hand.
“Eeah?!” Natsumi shrieked in surprise.
“Eh-heh-heh!” Yoshino flushed slightly with a mischievous smile on her face. “Warmer?”
“Y-yeah… I guess…,” Natsumi replied awkwardly, as her own cheeks grew two hundred times redder than Yoshino’s. Perhaps she started to suddenly sweat more, too; with her free hand, she tugged on her neatly wound scarf and let the wind at her neck.
“…Ha-ha!” The adorable scene brought a smile to Shido’s face. But he quickly pulled himself back together. This was no time for him to be taking in the view.
He pursed his lips to get his mind back on track and stepped out from behind the telephone pole in front of the girls. He swallowed his rampaging anxiety. “Yoshino! Natsumi! And Yoshinon!”
“Huh…?”
“Wh-what? Where’d you come from…?”
“Whoa-ho! Scared me!”
Shido gulped.
“Hey, gang. You remember me, right?” he asked, almost like a prayer, clenching his hands into fists.
But.
“Uh. Um. I’m sorry. I don’t know you.”
“…I don’t get it. C’mon, Yoshino, Yoshinon.”
“Ah-ha-ha! Sorry, young man. Try someone else!”
It was the same as it had been with everyone else.
Yoshino and Natsumi looked at him with suspicious eyes, then slipped past him on quick feet.
“Ah…” He couldn’t even reach out or take a step toward them. He simply crumpled to his knees in despair. “This can’t be… What the hell is happening…?”
Following the terror and unease he felt after Tohka and Origami claimed to have no memory of him, he had decided to visit the other Spirits to see if they remembered him.
Kaguya and Yuzuru in Class Three next door had looked at him just as dubiously as Tohka and Origami, and Nia, living in a skyscraper condo in town, had mistaken him for a rude fan and shown him the door. When he got to Miku, the mere sound of his voice over the phone made her shriek, “Aaah?! A phone call from a strange maaan?!” He hadn’t been able to get in touch with her again after that.
He’d been waiting for Yoshino and Natsumi as a last bastion of hope. But they were the same as everyone else.
He hung his head lifelessly and ran his hands through his hair. Nothing had changed since yesterday. The city was the same as ever. The people were the same as ever. Everything was exactly the same.
There was just one thing—the Spirits and his friends had forgotten him. That was the one difference. He felt anxious, as though he had wandered into a parallel world.
“Dammit, I don’t understand. What even is this?! Is there no one…no one who knows me?” He put a hand to his forehead as he let his mind work. But the only people left he could think of were the most malevolent of Spirits, Kurumi Tokisaki—and he didn’t know where she was; Westcott and Ellen of DEM, Shido and his team’s bitter enemies; and that one person who had disappeared, leaving him dazzled and disoriented.
“…”
He gasped. A name popped into his head and spilled from his trembling lips. “Mukuro…”
Yes. Mukuro Hoshimiya. The Spirit with the key Angel Michael, which could “lock” anything and everything. The range of this power’s effect was not limited to the visible. Mukuro had used this Angel to lock her own heart, after all.
It’s not that he was hoping she still remembered him.
“Understood. No need to speak any further. You may leave this matter to Muku.”
The words she had spoken when they parted the day before came to his ears. He hadn’t understood at the time what they had meant, but now he realized they were the key to understanding the strange phenomenon that had befallen him.
The Angel Michael could lock even the intangible heart and seal away its emotions. Could that power be used on people’s memories as well?
“Is this actually all your doing, Mukuro?!” He pressed a hand to his mouth, a shiver of fear coloring his face.
Of course, this was all conjecture. He had no proof, no evidence; it was firmly in the realm of his imagination. But the whole world forgetting his existence wasn’t the sort of thing that happened spontaneously, and Mukuro was on the top of the list of Spirits capable of something like this.
“…”
He silently lifted his head. He put a hand against the wall next to the road, pushed himself to his feet, and exhaled at length.
He truly felt as though he were in a parallel world. He could try and get help, but anyone who might have helped him had forgotten his very existence—the worst-case scenario. The truth was, right up until that very moment, he hadn’t known what to do next. But this new hypothesis gave him more than enough hope to get back on his feet.
It went without saying that Mukuro wielded tremendous power. But there was an enormous difference between being adrift alone in an incomprehensible anomaly, and having a rough idea of what the situation actually was and who had put him in it.
And if Mukuro really had locked everyone’s memories with the power of Michael…
He looked around to make sure no one was in the area before he closed his eyes and called the name of an Angel. “Haniel.”
A broom-shaped Angel manifested in his hand. He took a deep breath to focus and moved his lips once again. “Kaleidoscope!”
Haniel shone with silvery light and twisted up like kneaded clay. After a few seconds, it had transformed into a staff in the shape of an enormous key.
When he opened Mukuro’s heart, he’d replicated Michael to do it. The Angel responded to its master’s wishes. So if the reason the Spirits had forgotten him was Michael’s power, he assumed he could unlock those memories just the same.
However…
“Huh?” he said, baffled, freezing in place, hands on the fake Michael.
From inside a small door that was suddenly in the space right next to his Michael, a massive key tip appeared and stabbed the pseudo-Angel.
“N-no—,” he cried.
“Segva.” He heard a disembodied voice, followed by the click of a key turning in a lock, and his eyes grew wide.
Instantly, the fake Michael shone faintly and reverted to its original Haniel before splitting into particles of light and melting into the air.
“Ah.” He stared at his now empty hand, stunned, then shifted his gaze to the key tip still suspended in the air and spoke in a trembling voice. “M-Michael…”
As if in response, the door in the air gradually grew larger and larger until finally, a girl popped out from inside of it. Small with blond hair wrapped around her neck and clothes in the same design as Kotori’s.
Mukuro Hoshimiya.
“Mukuro!” he gasped.
“Mm-hee-hee-hee. I did expect that you would come to this realization, having unlocked Muku. You did not fail me,” she said with a bright smile, and he felt a chill down his spine.
She had been watching for the moment he attempted to use his Angel to unlock everyone’s memories, and when she caught him doing exactly that, she had locked the power of the fake Michael with the real Michael.
He didn’t have to think too hard to understand why. It was to seal any ability he had to unlock the memories of the Spirits. This proved his hypothesis as unequivocally correct.
“Mukuro,” he said again slowly. “You locked everyone’s memories?!”
“Mm. That I did. Impressive, yes?” She put a hand on her hip and tossed her head back smugly.
“Why?!” he cried out, a deep crease digging between his brows. “Why on earth would you do that?!”
“Why? Hm-hmm. Such strange questions you ask.” Mukuro looked at him blankly, then grinned. “This way, we shall be alone together. There is no longer need for concern. You may love Muku without reservation.”
“Wha—?!” Shido gasped in horror. His mind was thrown into chaos by the incongruity between her words and her adorable expression.
He had sealed the powers of a number of Spirits. He had encountered untold dangers and been through many a fierce battle; he had been exposed to the most powerful of enemies and the most incredible hostility.
This was different.
The girl before him now was totally different from any that had come before.
The most malevolent Spirit, Kurumi Tokisaki, had been terrifying. He hadn’t been able to take a single step when she turned her murderous impulses and madness on him.
Similarly, when up against DEM’s Westcott and Ellen, Shido had been petrified. He had nearly been crushed in the face of this overwhelming, inhumane evil perpetrated by one person toward another.
But Mukuro possessed no malicious intentions. All he could glean from her face were innocent love and goodwill.
“Say, my lord?” Mukuro moved her lips, a gentle smile rising up on them. “You do care for Muku, yes?”
Her words were so adorable, so pure.
Yet Shido could not respond to them.