When the notification popped up on Ginka’s phone, her first reaction was this: I’m just seeing things. Impossible. Unacceptable. If this is legitimate, then we’ve made a fatal error.
No matter how much she blinked, the notification didn’t go away. Opening the app revealed an orange dot on the map—proof that she wasn’t just seeing things. She left her half-eaten meal on the table, headed to her room, grabbed her long coat out of the closet, and put it on. Then she leaped off the balcony.
With some concentration, silver particles—exoforce—started to float under Ginka’s feet. She steadied herself, then took off running through the night sky with exoforce supporting her weight in midair. She sprinted toward the location marked by that orange dot while checking and confirming her phone along the way.
She just couldn’t shake the feeling that this was impossible. We finished the job. That bloody war with those repulsive monsters had spread far and wide, but we hunted them down using every method we could and emerged victorious. This is nothing more than a bug in the app.
That last thought—Ginka’s hope—was shattered when she arrived at her destination and saw a retainer attacking a girl. She immediately intervened and destroyed the clawed monster, but if she had been just a few seconds late, Ruka Moriki would have been torn apart.
Even though Ginka had made it in time, the sense of guilt she felt was intense. How could she have let peace dull her so? Her past self from just a few months ago would surely call her a slacker now.
And what in the world was a retainer doing here? There was no one left to make them, and one surviving on its own strength was incredibly unlikely. Surely the retainer could not have been born naturally. How would we even begin to come up with countermeasures for that...?
Her thoughts stopped racing when she heard someone stepping away from her. Ruka Moriki, standing a few paces away, was staring at her with terror in her eyes. Observing the battle with the retainer had likely been a shocking experience. Though Ginka very much wanted to know how and why a retainer had appeared, providing mental care came first.
With a sigh, Ginka started to talk about herself—about vampire hunters.