Rukana Shizukudani’s four-legged zingai had pinned Itoha Hiiragi’s giant butterfly to the staircase and was eating it bite by bite. Cipher ate ravenously—like it was trying to devour every scrap. Messages continued to come over the PA system, urging everyone in the building to evacuate as quickly as possible. Now, however, they were being delivered by a male faculty member instead of Monika. Haizaki lay prone on the landing below, and Hiiragi was right next to him, her knees and waist bent. She looked like she was just barely staying upright, like she could fall over at any second.
At some point, without Tobi noticing, Ryuuko had sunk to the floor. She was leaning against his leg, her eyes trained downward. It was like she didn’t want to see—or hear—any of the things happening in front of her. Tobi felt a strong impulse to do the same.
“What’re you doing, idiot…?!” shouted Baku from right beside them. But Tobi had no idea how to help.
“Otogiri…!”
Another voice rang out, and Tobi turned to find Asamiya running in his direction. He must have been coming from Class 2-3. What are you doing? You’re supposed to be evacuating. You can’t be here. Hurry and get out, Tobi thought. But he stayed silent, not saying any of it out loud.
“This is all your fault, Itoha!” Shizukudani bellowed through sobs. “Yours! Everything! All of it! It’s your fault! It’s all because you abandoned me! I thought we were best friends! But you know what?! Fine! I don’t even care anymore! I have someone better than you now, Itoha! I met somebody wonderful! Someone who’s like an angel—like a god! Yes, that’s right, a god! And he’s even more than that to me! I’d do anything to help him—anything at all to make his dreams come true! To make him praise me! To make him love me! I don’t care about you at all anymore, Itoha…!”
“Forgive me.”
It was Hiiragi—or rather, her voice. But Hiiragi hadn’t spoken. She was still on the lower landing, about to collapse, and her mouth was closed. The voice had come from somewhere far closer—Ryuuko. She wasn’t speaking, either, though. Her voice didn’t sound like Hiiragi’s at all.
It was Chinurasha. She’d poked her head out from Ryuuko’s pouch, and her mouth was open. It wasn’t massive and gaping like Baku’s or Cipher’s. Chinu’s mouth was much smaller. She seemed to have grown recently, but her mouth was still only a few centimeters wide, at most.
“Forgive me. Please, Rukana. Forgive me.”
“Huh…?” Ryuuko tore her gaze away from the floor, looked straight at Chinu, and let out a stifled gasp. Tobi was just as shocked.
Most mouths were hollow, one’s teeth and tongue aside. Chinu’s wasn’t. Tobi had no idea if it had always been that way, but there was certainly something there now. That something seemed to be pushing its way out from inside Chinu, practically spilling over.
Something was the only way Tobi could describe it. Something strange. It was small—a few centimeters wide, maybe—and it had a bumpy surface that seemed to squirm. It reminded Tobi of a human face. It was like an ever-so-tiny human trying to make its way out of Chinu’s mouth—and it was speaking.
“Forgive me. Rukana, please. Forgive me,” it said.
Hiiragi’s voice was coming from Chinu. An incredibly tiny Hiiragi was speaking from within her.
“Grhaaauuugh…!”
The next sound was a deep, guttural wail, and it came from the real Hiiragi rather than the tiny one. She was crying, just like Shizukudani, but what poured from her hole-like eyes weren’t ordinary tears. Dozens of caterpillar-like insects—hundreds, maybe—were streaming down her face. They turned into chrysalides as they rolled across her cheeks, then reemerged as butterflies and took flight.
“Still…?!” Shizukudani shouted, holding her glasses to her face.
Still what? Still spawning more zingai? They were indeed streaming forth from Hiiragi once more—but that was when the situation changed.
“You need…to calm…down…!”
Haizaki reached out to grab Hiiragi’s ankle. She looked down at him, and suddenly, the caterpillar tears ceased. She’d stopped crying.
“We’re on…your side…,” the janitor continued.
Hiiragi shook her head. Once again, her eyes overflowed with caterpillars. Each zingai tear was tiny, but sometimes two or more of them would merge together, forming a larger one. Some of them landed on her hair, while others fluttered into the air around her, and a few—or rather, a few dozen—fell upon Haizaki.
“Agggh…” He moaned.
But Tobi didn’t have time to worry about Haizaki. Several butterflies were flying in his direction as well.
“Otogiri?!”
Tobi felt a hand on his back. Asamiya’s. No, Tobi thought. Not here! He turned around and tried to warn the other boy—to tell him that he shouldn’t be here. Why had he come? Because Tobi hadn’t stopped him. He could have—he’d had plenty of chances—but he hadn’t.
Baku grunted as he tore into the butterfly zingai flying at Tobi, devouring one and grabbing several others in his right hand. He tried to catch a larger one in his left, but it slipped past him.
That was when the translucent zingai coiled around Asamiya’s neck detached. It shot forward, wrapping around the butterfly Baku had missed. Tobi saw it happen. Asamiya’s zingai was trying to protect its master. It entangled its threadlike, snakelike body around the butterfly zingai, binding its wings and causing both of them to drop to the floor.
But that was only one of many. Countless smaller butterflies followed, clustering around their fallen comrade. Asamiya’s zingai had been hard to see to begin with and quickly disappeared beneath the mound of butterflies.
“Ah…” Asamiya gasped. His eyes glazed over, and he began to blink rapidly.
He was about to fall. Tobi could tell, so he rushed over to catch him. Asamiya was incredibly heavy. It felt like he’d gone totally limp—like he’d lost all the strength needed to support himself. He was nothing but dead weight.
“Grrr!” Baku growled with frustration and raised a foot, preparing to trample the butterfly zingai on the floor. They’d hidden Asamiya’s translucent zingai, and for all he and Tobi knew, they were eating it at that very moment.
“Stop,” Tobi choked out.
But he knew Baku would have stopped even if he hadn’t gotten out the command. Crushing Asamiya’s zingai could kill him. Baku had to understand that. Of course, it might already be gone. They might be too late.
“This is wrong,” said Ryuuko, clutching Chinu’s pouch. “You shouldn’t be doing this!” she screamed. “Hiiragi, please, listen to me!”
Suddenly, Hiiragi jerked her head upward. “Shi…”
Genuine tears were pooling in her hole-like eyes now. The caterpillar creatures had stopped emerging. Then, the face-like something spilling from Chinu’s mouth—the tiny Hiiragi—spoke once more.
“Shi…ra… Shiratama? Shiratama? Shiratama?” it repeated, over and over. “Shiratama? Is that your voice, Shiratama? Please forgive me. Help me. Forgive me. Please, I’m begging you.”
“Of course I forgive you!” Ryuuko shouted. “No one blames you! I certainly don’t! I want to help you! What should I do, Hiiragi?! Tell me, please! We’re friends, aren’t we?!”
“I, ahh, I, I, ahhh, wh-what, what should, ahh, what should I, help me, I—”
The tiny Hiiragi wasn’t the only one speaking anymore. Hiiragi—the real one—had joined her. She and Ryuuko were talking at the same time, their voices overlapping. Tobi didn’t understand what was happening anymore. Was this Chinu’s doing? He’d thought her power was just speaking for those whose voices couldn’t be heard. Was there more to it?
The butterfly zingai still in the air came to a stop, then dropped to the ground like fallen leaves. Even their leaflike exterior grew dimmer as their existence began to fade away.
“Oh, you just had to butt in…!” Shizukudani growled. She stamped her foot three times in quick succession, then kicked the stairs for good measure. “What do you idiots think you’re doing?! Why are you getting in my way?! I can’t even look at you! Haul your stupid asses out of here! Leave! Drop dead and disappear, you dipshits!”
“It was you,” said Tobi.
He was holding Asamiya upright. The other boy was still alive and breathing, but he hung limp and motionless in Tobi’s arms. Who was responsible for what had happened to him? Was it the butterfly zingai and their master, Itoha Hiiragi? Or was it Tobi himself, since there was a chance he could have prevented this situation altogether? Maybe both of them bore some amount of responsibility. But there was someone who bore far, far more of it. More than anyone else.
“You.”
Tobi laid Asamiya down on the ground as gently as he could, never taking his eyes off Rukana Shizukudani or her zingai. The four-legged Cipher had long since finished consuming the giant butterfly. It was standing in front of Shizukudani, two steps down the stairs from her, and was considerably bigger than it had been only moments before. It was probably about as tall as Tobi now, and its size wasn’t all that had changed. Cipher had gone through a complete transformation. Its four, armlike legs had hardened, and its skin had taken on a blackened coloration, save for a white pattern that Tobi could just barely make out. Its head, which had looked like that of a four-eyed mannequin, now resembled the head of a four-eyed man-eating shark.
Cipher stood before its master, perhaps trying to intimidate Tobi. It was a zingai, so protecting Shizukudani was surely its highest priority.