She was just about to tap the app’s icon—but an instant before she could, Asamiya lunged forward and tried to grab the phone out of her hand.
“Hey, let’s not, actually!” he shouted.
“Wha—? Hey!” Monika twisted to the side, dodging away from Asamiya’s arm.
But he wasn’t ready to give up just yet. “I’ve done a bunch of venting on that app, okay?! It’s totally anonymous, so I don’t care if people on there read what I said, but I’d die of shame if someone I knew saw it! Give it back!”
“Ah,” Ryuuko gasped. Had she wanted to say something? Or had she simply meant to call out Asamiya’s name, then reconsidered?
Asamiya, meanwhile, kept grabbing at the phone with both hands. Monika had impressive reflexes and dodged every attempt. Tobi was impressed—though this wasn’t really the time to be admiring her agility.
“Give it back! Give it! I’m serious, okay?!” shouted Asamiya.
Maybe he’d decided that he wasn’t getting anywhere, or maybe he’d just lost his temper. Whatever the reason, he grabbed onto Monika’s hair and pulled.
“Ow…”
“Asamiya!” Tobi shouted. Not good!
Tobi leaped to his feet and tried to cut in between the two of them. He tried—but he couldn’t. All of a sudden, it felt like he was suffocating.
“Agh…”
He couldn’t breathe. Why? What was happening? His neck. Tobi reached up to grope at it. At the same moment, Baku and Ryuuko both shouted.
“Tobiii!”
“Tobi…?!”
There was something there. On his neck. Wrapped around it. For just an instant, he’d caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye. What was it? It had been thin. That was when it hit him. Asamiya. There was nothing on his neck anymore. It was gone. The translucent zingai had vanished. Tobi knew where it was: wrapped around his neck. It had separated from Asamiya and jumped over to him, and now it was throttling him.
“Ngh… Hah…”
Breathing was difficult—but not impossible. Tobi could tell he wouldn’t suffocate any time soon. He tried to stop Asamiya, but it was too late. He’d already reclaimed his phone from Monika.
“You can’t,” said Asamiya. “I need this! You can’t take it from me. It’s the only thing supporting me. You don’t understand how I feel! Go ahead and laugh. It’s funny, right?! You can laugh all you want! But I need this…”
Nothing about this was funny. No—it was crazy. Why was Asamiya acting like this?
“…Ugh…” Tobi grunted as he tried to free himself from the translucent zingai.
He managed to get a grip on it, but he couldn’t pull it loose. It was far more powerful than it looked. It also felt like it was bigger—or thicker—than it had been a moment ago.
“T-T-T-Tobi…,” Ryuuko stammered.
She was still sitting, moving her hands in the air as if pantomiming something. Meanwhile, Monika was doing just as expected: watching Tobi and Asamiya closely without interfering.
“Dammit! Tobi…!”
Baku started flailing. He wanted to eat—to devour Asamiya’s translucent zingai. He was already preparing to do it. To protect Tobi. To keep him safe.
Oh.
Tobi wrapped his arms around Baku. “I’m fine,” he choked out.
Something had dawned on Tobi: Asamiya’s zingai was doing the same thing Baku was. It was only trying to protect its master.
“Calm down, Asamiya,” he said.
Asamiya trembled as he clutched his cell phone tightly in both hands. Tobi knew they were making a scene in the food court, but he didn’t have the time to worry about that. Right now, his best option was to talk to Asamiya as normally as he could and convince him he wasn’t a threat.
“I don’t know what that this app thing is,” Tobi said, “but I won’t try to take your phone away from you. I promise.”
“I—I don’t believe you!” Asamiya shouted.
“…That’s fine. You don’t…have to. I really won’t, though…and I won’t…let anyone else take it…either.”
It was shocking that Tobi could still speak. He could barely breathe, and even he wasn’t sure how he was getting the words out.
“You can go home…and take your phone…with you. I won’t…take it. If you want to leave…y-you can just go. Go…home…”
Tobi couldn’t see Asamiya’s expression behind his long bangs. Maybe that was why he didn’t cut them—because he preferred to keep his face hidden. Tobi understood the feeling.
“…No,” said Asamiya. His voice was slightly choked, like he was on the verge of tears.
Suddenly, Tobi could breathe again. The thing had loosened its grip.
“I don’t…want to go home,” Asamiya continued. “Not like this…”
The translucent zingai uncoiled itself from Tobi’s neck, then slithered down his body toward the floor. Now that Tobi got a better look at it, he noticed it didn’t have a head. It most closely resembled a partially see-through string.
Once it had crawled back to Asamiya, it wrapped itself around his neck and stopped moving. It was staying as close to him as possible—to protect him if worse came to worst. Just like Baku did for Tobi.
“The truth was, I was happy.” Asamiya slumped back into his chair. “I had a chance to help you, and I wanted to take it. No one ever relies on me. Plus, well…we’ve been talking a lot lately, right, Otogiri? So I just thought…”
“Of course! You’re friends, after all!” Ryuuko chimed in. She’d stopped her inexplicable pantomiming and begun nodding vigorously. “It’s only natural to want to help your friends when they’re in need!”
“I guess…,” Tobi muttered, rubbing his neck as he sat back down.
Asamiya glanced at him through a gap in his bangs. Tobi wished he could say they were friends as easily as Ryuuko had, but it just didn’t come naturally to him. He wasn’t against the idea at all, it was just so embarrassing.
Before long, peace returned to the food court.
“My bad,” Monika said, offering Asamiya an apologetic nod.
“Tell me about it,” Tobi grumbled. He hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but it was the truth. “This is all your fault, Monika.”
“You did hear me apologize just now, right?” Monika huffed.
Asamiya cracked up. “Like you have any right to get mad.”
“About your phone,” Monika said. She held out a hand without looking at him. “Let me get someone to check into it. I can have a specialist analyze the HEA app and find out how it works, if you’ll let me. Also, and this should be obvious, but you’d be better off avoiding sketchy social networking apps like that. Who knows what they’re doing with your data?”
“…See, this is what I’m talking about. It’s that attitude that sets people off,” Asamiya grumbled. Despite his complaints, however, he handed over his phone. “Actually, wait—a specialist? Are they, like, an acquaintance of yours?”
“An acquaintance?” Monika cocked her head as she inspected the device from a variety of angles. “I wouldn’t put it that way. I’ll introduce you later, though. We’ll need your parents there, too.”
“Wait, my parents?”
“Well, yeah. We’re middle schoolers, after all. There’s a lot of stuff we can’t do on our own. We need an adult to take legal responsibility on our behalf. Sucks, but those are the rules.”
“…Surprised you know all that, Asahi.”
“At any rate, I’ll explain everything later.” Monika glanced at Tobi and Ryuuko in turn. “I’ll introduce you two, as well. There’s only so much I can tell you, but I won’t hold anything back if I’m allowed to share it. I’m not like a certain old man, if you know what I mean.”
Tobi and Ryuuko glanced at each other. It wasn’t hard to guess who she meant, considering she’d called Haizaki an old man to his face. How she was supposed to be different from him, however, was much less clear.