Too late, I realize I’m about to throw up.
Clearly unsatisfied, Karamori continues to sink his blade into Archive’s body. Within ten seconds, her remains are reduced to formless scraps of meat, her blood covering the barrier and turning the surrounding area into a red sea.
All I can do is tremble and watch in abject horror. The sight is so shocking I can’t look away.
Karamori falls still. Archive’s flesh is so ravaged there’s nothing left for him to cut.
Those cold eyes turn to look at me.
“Eep…”
That puny squeak is all I can manage. My body feels as if it’s been caked in cement.
I catch sight of something strange: a faintly glowing object rising out of the pool of Archive’s blood. It’s hard to see through the blood-soaked barrier, but it looks like a translucent red book.
That shape. Its size and thickness…
“Untitled…?”
The mysterious book shines brightly, and when the light fades, I see Archive standing there without a speck of blood on her. Her clothes remain in tatters on the ground, but it’s clearly her.
I stare at her in shock.
“You do not need to worry about me,” she says. “This is not the day I die. Fate will not allow it.”
It takes only a few seconds for Karamori to start slicing her apart again.
A hellish scene unfolds from there as I watch Karamori kill Archive again, and again, and again. Each time, she’s mutilated beyond recognition, and each time, she revives as if nothing happened.
Slicing skin and cracking bones are all I hear for who knows how long, and the garden turns from a sea of blood into an ocean. But every time Karamori swings his sword, the flame-like mark covering his skin retreats a little farther back up his right arm.
I watch, trembling with fear.
Karamori mercilessly swings his sword.
And tears stream from his eyes.
The sun had sunk below the horizon by the time it was over.
Karamori stood there breathing heavily and covered in dark, dried blood. Archive watched him, standing a few feet away without a shred of clothing on. Light had returned to his eyes, and the memory of what he’d done had turned into barbs of guilt that stabbed into his heart.
The heinous, unspeakable violence he had committed…
The sword had gained complete control over him.
He glared loathsomely at the naked blade and rammed it back into its scabbard.
“…I’m sorry, Archive.”
“No need to apologize. That is why we were paired together,” she remarked casually.
“…”
Karamori squeezed his eyes shut.
A moment later, the barrier around Fujinaka dispelled. She looked at Karamori with terror in her eyes, cutting deeper than anything else.
“…It’s over? Thank you both for your help.”
The older investigator entered the garden. Seeing Archive, he gave her his jacket, and she thanked him and put it on.
Karamori forced himself to speak. “Sorry, but you took Takeo into custody and evacuated the surrounding residents, right?”
“Yes, sir. When I heard that you drew Tyrfing, I rushed to take precautionary measures. I know that once the blade is loose, you both lose the ability to focus on anything else.”
“I’m really sorry for all the trouble.”
Karamori bowed, and the older investigator shook his head.
“Please, this is nothing compared to the burdens you two have to carry.”
He reached into his pocket and produced a black felt-tip pen. It had a familiar design but lacked any sort of brand name.
“This is the vanit that spawned the Half-wits. As you predicted, the pen itself seems to contain the distortion. I questioned young Komaki, and he told me something rather concerning…”
“…What did he say?”
“That a stranger gave it to him, calling it a wish-granting pen.”
“What…?”
Someone was handing out vanits? That in itself was surprising, but it was made all the more unusual by the fact that they had chosen such an ordinary boy. Had the culprit just been playing around…or was it something else?
“Who is this stranger?” Archive asked.
“I don’t know. But I did have the boy describe him. He said he was horribly scarred on the right side of his face and wore an eyepatch marked with a wing.”
“What?”
The other three looked stunned. Even Fujinaka, who had been in a daze and barely paying attention, went wide-eyed.
A face disfigured on the right side and an eyepatch with a wing… They knew someone who fit that description. Karamori’s mind went right to the portrait he’d seen yesterday in Fujinaka’s house.
Asahi Fujinaka. The man who had created Hitsugi Fujinaka.
“Isn’t he dead?” Karamori asked.
“There was a funeral, which Ms. Fujinaka herself attended. This could be an imposter; however, we are talking about a man who managed to obtain and use Untitled for his own means. It would be foolish to discard the possibility that it is actually him.”
“What…? Dad…?” Fujinaka muttered in a daze. She had to be close to her breaking point, considering everything she had experienced over the last couple of days.
“Please continue your investigation,” Karamori said to the investigator. “Also, can I borrow that pen real quick?”
“Of course. But I must ask, sir, what do you wish to use it for?” the man asked, holding out the pen.
Karamori took the pen, drew Tyrfing halfway from its scabbard, and sliced it in two.
“Wh-what did you…?!”
“I destroyed the target because I felt we were in danger. You can put that in your report.”
Archive picked up the broken fragments of the pen.
“We were not in danger. Why did you destroy it? Regulations stipulate that we should collect and store every vanit we can.”
“If we do that, it’ll just fall into the hands of someone else like Pyrovault. Or like you, or me, or Fujinaka…”
“So you chose to destroy it? Forgoing the use of vanits makes little sense when groups like Grave Nest will have no such moral quandaries. We will need to make appropriate use of them if we are to fight off such organizations.”
“I don’t even want to think about what ‘appropriate use’ could be found for that pen… Sure, maybe some vanits can be used for good, but that’s not gonna stop me from destroying them all. Not as long as they’re capable of causing suffering.”
The older investigator looked bewildered by their testy exchange, and Archive wordlessly gave the pen back to him.
“Perhaps you should have destroyed the pen after using it to draw this impossible dream of yours,” she said, smiling slightly.