Karamori looked Fujinaka in the eyes, his gaze burning with resolve.
“That’s why I don’t have any excuses. I don’t have anyone to blame but myself… So I decided the best thing to do is accept my fear and my pain for what it is. It’s not anyone’s fault. I may have been backed into a corner, but this life was my choice.”
Karamori didn’t falter as he spoke. He’d probably repeated those words to himself hundreds of times.
Fujinaka sighed loudly, impressed by his passion.
“You’re so strong, Karamori… Maybe too strong,” she said, giving him a troubled smile.
“It’s not that simple,” he responded. “It took me months to accept what I’d done. You’re doing so much better than I did. Er, sorry, that’s probably not helpful.”
“No, you helped me calm down in a way… I feel like I can keep doing my best.”
Fujinaka squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then looked at Archive.
“Archive… Exactly how many people…did I kill with Untitled?” Her voice shook, but there was strong determination in her eyes.
Archive looked at Karamori. He nodded.
“Two hundred eighty-nine.”
“…!”
Her face fell for a moment, but she quickly smoothed her expression, doing her best to face the truth head-on. A single tear leaked from her eye and trailed down her cheek.
“Fujinaka…”
“It’s okay… This is my fight…”
“Your fight?”
She wiped her eyes and forced herself to smile.
“Yeah… I can’t fight like you, Karamori… So I guess living itself is my fight? Is that a bit of a stretch?” she said, smiling awkwardly as if embarrassed by her words.
She shined brightly in Karamori’s eyes. The mood relaxed slightly.
The neglected meat on the grill chose that moment to ignite, sending up a column of fire between them all.
“Whoa!”
Karamori and Fujinaka both cried out in surprise, and Archive—who had been watching their conversation out of the corner of her eye—calmly began taking the burnt meat off the grill.
“It appears you lost track of time,” Archive said.
“Ah, ha-ha, sorry…,” Fujinaka said.
“Do not apologize. You needed to talk things out,” Archive said, her scarlet eyes studying Fujinaka. Karamori sometimes felt that her emotions seeped more into her gaze than her words.
“Anyway, this meat’s not gonna eat itself,” he said.
“Ha-ha, I think I’ve had enough,” Fujinaka said.
“Really? Then that’s more for—”
Untitled thudded open.
Karamori looked at the book in shock, the relaxed atmosphere gone in an instant. There was nothing he could do.
Every piece of text in the restaurant peeled from its respective surface and flooded toward Untitled, leaving the menus, posters, and labels on soy sauce bottles all blank. Objects corresponding to the words consumed by the book started to disappear. The chopsticks and order button in front of them vanished, and the sounds of things falling and breaking could be heard throughout the restaurant.
“Untitled! Stop!” Fujinaka yelled.
Untitled immediately stopped glowing and went still. Fujinaka had been able to respond so quickly because she’d feared this exact scenario unfolding all day.
Surprisingly few things had disappeared, but there was something unnatural about the space around them. The tables and chairs had survived, as had their plates and meat, but the wordless posters and menus were more than a little unsettling.
Karamori held his mobile device to his ear.
“Untitled broke loose! Did the barrier hold?!”
“Yes, everything is fine! The barrier contained the damage!” a voice responded.
His head snapped up. Karamori jumped out of his seat and rushed to the kitchen.
The area was a mess. The counters and floor were scattered with utensils and ingredients, but there were clearly far fewer things than normal.
Unsurprisingly, there was no one in the room.
At Karamori’s feet, he found an employee ID tag with a picture and no name.
He stormed back to the table, his face contorted in fury.
Fujinaka saw his expression and went pale.
“I—I didn’t do anything. I swear!” she cried, tears in her eyes.
But Karamori’s anger wasn’t directed at her.
He stepped toward Archive, who was sitting there expressionlessly, and grabbed her collar.
“Why did you dispel Untitled’s barrier?!”
“Huh…?” Fujinaka looked at Archive with fear and shock.
The blond girl remained expressionless. “Surely, you already know the answer. Fate determined that I would do so at this place and time.”
“Then why the hell didn’t you warn me?! If you had, we could have saved the employees! If I hadn’t asked for a barrier to be put up outside, the damage could have been devastating!”
“A foolish question. I did not warn you because fate did not dictate that I would.”
“Don’t you dare give me that! You can just as easily say it was fated that you would tell me! Why do you never share such vital information with me?!”
“Because I am a being that obeys fate. It is as simple as that.”
“Is that really all you can do?!”
“Yes. I’m telling the truth.”
“That’s… That’s…”
Karamori trailed off as he watched her face.
“…I’m telling the truth,” she repeated.
Her voice was cold and blank, but her expression was sorrowful. It looked like she was close to tears. Karamori saw that and forced himself to calm down.
He let go of her collar and tamped down his emotions, letting them simmer unsatisfactorily within him. He didn’t want to embarrass himself in front of Fujinaka by slamming the table in frustration.
“If you lose faith in me, you can end this at any time…by destroying this.”
Archive formed her red string into a square. A mass of red text appeared and quickly formed into a red book.
“I am to be disposed of the moment I am deemed dangerous. That is the condition under which an uncontrollable vanitas like me was allowed to live as a Canary. That is why we were paired together,” she said, holding out the red book.
Karamori looked at her with pity. “Put that away. Hell, you know I’m not going to destroy it.”