In spite of this, Ann kicked the doll away once more.
As it crashed to the floor, the strange doll must have understood its circumstances to be unfavorable. It ran out of the room through a gap in the door and fled.
“Are you unharmed?” asked Ann.
“Ann, you,” stumbled Colette. “Y-Your arm!”
“I am all right. With this amount of damage, I am capable...of self...repair.” Ann transformed once again from a doll into a human, and her arm was restored.
But Colette felt uneasy after hearing Ann’s uneven tone of voice, and she threw her arms around her. “What’s wrong, Ann?”
“Confirmation of magical contamination,” recited Ann. “A counterfeit. Danger. Moving into emergency evacuation mode. Establishing suspected target. Partial interruption to functionality. Restarting. Please wait one moment.” With a crackling sound, Ann instantly turned back into a doll.
Colette hurried over and picked up Ann, who was gazing up at the ceiling. Clutching her to her chest once again, she cried,“Ann, it’s all right. Just hold on, Ann!”
“I am all right,” said Ann, her voice halting. “I only need to...conserve my power...for a while.”
“Are you really all right, then? Tell me, what should I do? Call a doctor?”
“No. It has to be...my master.”
Her master. Is that person the only one who can fix her?
“Then tell me, where’s your master? Colette will take you to meet him.”
“I do not know,” answered Ann without blinking or turning her gaze away, even as Colette looked like she was about to cry. “More importantly, that doll’s target is you. Be careful.”
“Y-You may tell me to be careful, but what should I do? Tell my mother?”
“If you do that, your mother will also...become a target.”
Then what am I to do? As Colette finally began sobbing, the doll’s cold hands held Colette’s. They were bloodless, just like the hands that had been tightened around Colette’s neck a short while earlier, but they somehow felt warm.
“I will...protect you. My friend.”
“Protect me,” repeated Colette, sighing.
“To that end, I have reset my objective. Until my master arrives, stay close to me. I will protect you.”
Creaking slightly, Ann stood up.
Colette didn’t know much, but she could tell that her friend was not in tip-top shape. “If that doll comes back,” she began, after a pause.
“It will come again. When it does, I will eliminate it.”
“But what if you lose?”
“I will not lose. Not if my master comes.”
“Is your master looking for you?”
“Without a doubt.” There was no emotion in her flat voice, but she was doing her best to protect her friend, Colette. So Colette wiped the tears from her eyes and made up her mind.
“Then Colette will also do her best.”
Until Ann’s master arrived, Colette would protect her. After all, they were friends.
If rumors about some mysterious doll began to go around, it might be easier for Ann’s master to find her. So Colette let the rumors spread, and no matter how angry it made her mother, she would not let go of Ann. She knew that the other doll would occasionally creep through the mansion, scaring its inhabitants. Its targets, Colette and Ann—even in the poor condition she was in—always managed to chase it away, but the effort left Ann unable to move, falling down in the corridor. Because of this, it was impossible for anyone else in the mansion to tell which doll was Ann and which was the intruder. If Ann were mistaken for the other doll and thrown away, that would be exactly according to the other doll’s plan. Therefore, Colette was firmly opposed to throwing Ann away.
Whenever Ann was unable to turn back into a doll and had to wait outside the mansion, Colette would sneak out of the mansion to play with her in the flower garden. Neither Colette’s mother nor the servants of the household were pleased about this, but Colette had fun.
Yes, she had fun. Though she was scared of the other doll, she knew Ann would protect her. But she also knew that these days could not continue for long. Each time the doll came to attack them, Ann grew weaker. While Colette was her primary target, little by little she sapped Ann’s strength and grew more powerful.
“If your master comes, can you win?”
At Colette’s question, Ann nodded without hesitation. “I can. But there is one problem. I will have to be overhauled.”
“Over...what?”
“I will be taken apart and born again. I will also lose my memory. I will forget...you, Colette. My name, Ann, will almost certainly change as well.” In a rare occurrence, Ann, who was normally expressionless, frowned heavily. “I am troubled,” she sighed. “Troubled. We were supposed to be friends.”
Colette was shocked to see Ann show such emotion so plainly on her face. She panicked. “Don’t worry, Colette will remember you!”
“But if I forget, will you be able to call me your friend?”
“In that case, we can just become friends again.”
Colette couldn’t help laughing at Ann’s wide-eyed expression of surprise. Ann would forget her; Colette would lose Ann. That should have made her sad, but strangely enough, she found that she was able to smile.
And so, from the bottom of her heart, she wished, “Please, let Ann’s master come to take her home.”
This wish was granted. The price would be the girl’s life.
The scenery changed. The mansion vanished, and their surroundings became one vast flower garden—a flower garden at night. The night sky, which should not have had a single cloud in it, was suddenly cloudy, so that neither the moon nor the stars were visible. In spite of this, the small flowers growing all around them glowed with a faint purple light, so it was possible to survey one’s surroundings.
It was a place that closely resembled reality, but it wasn’t real. This was a mental image constructed from Colette’s memories, a place where her wish could be granted. A location where the Demonic Heirloom would try to swallow her whole, in exchange for granting that wish.
“Damn it!” cried Hat. “Have we been dragged to the other side?! What happened to those girls?!”
“Look, over there! The lighthouse!” Under the lighthouse, which emitted a solitary red light, Colette was making a flower crown. Headed in her direction was Ann—who, for some reason, was missing an arm. In her remaining hand, she held a sharp object that might have been a fork. It glinted in the red light.
Don’t tell me she doesn’t intend to control Colette, but to kill her?!
Colette was the doll’s user, and the owner of this world. If one were to destroy this world—in other words, to register the doll, the tool that had created it—Colette would return to the world of the living. On the other hand, if her life force were to be used up by this tool before that happened, she would die in the real world.