The hero began to move.
The rose petals already covered the school grounds completely. In a few more minutes, the amount would double. It was easy to see how much damage would ensue.
The petals writhed as if they were alive. Through the air, on the ground, before their eyes, like they were searching. There were more and more of them with each passing moment as if whatever they were hungry for, it was never enough.
There would likely be deaths. The petals were fairly large, meaning a mass of them would easily crush people.
There was no way Azuma was going to let that happen. He sliced through several of the petals with a broad swipe, trying to work his way deeper toward the center.
Just as he was about to take another swipe, a vine coiled around his arm. Several more attacked simultaneously as if trying to drag him away. He shredded through all of them with a single effortless slice. He was certain now. The egg had to be this way.
It was heavily guarded, just as expected.
More specifically, the hero had formed with the egg at its center, leaving it inundated by stems, leaves, and petals. It was unlikely that anyone other than Azuma would have even been able to find its location in the first place.
“Erk…!”
Every time he took another step, the vines tried to stop him. Using brute strength, he tore free of the vines that coiled around his legs, leaving them in tatters as he made his way closer to Kaguya, step by steady step.
“Hang in there. I swear I’ll make it before you turn into a real monster.”
He just had to.
Azuma’s body was almost completely covered in vines at this point. Every tendril in the vicinity was directed his way. Angry. Harrowing.
Entangled as he was, he could barely swing his katana properly. Nonetheless, he pointed the tip forward. The blade was so entangled in vines now that he could no longer see it.
“Someone clearly doesn’t want me here…”
It was trying to reject him, an interloper interfering with their perfect world.
First things first, he needed to get rid of the vines. By changing the angle of his blade, he managed to make a significant notch in the vines entangling him. Once he had that gap, he was able to leverage it to cut the vines to ribbons with a single explosive slash. New vines coiled forward from the tatters of their remains, but Azuma quickly carved a path forward before the vines could ensnare him again. Doing this repeatedly, he slowly made his way toward the egg.
Once he was close enough to get eyes on the spot, he began to hear a faint pulse.
“…”
This egg’s sound was very familiar to his ears.
He had once used it as a landmark before to search for Kaguya. The sound he had listened to the closest. At first, he had found it aggravating, but eventually, he had come to think of it as her second heart. He had been listening to it for so long that he now knew the rhythm by heart.
Azuma walked forward. That sound. That beating he needed to end.
“The truth is there was something I wanted to say to you.”
No one else was around now.
“I’m not stupid. I knew. I knew what it was I was feeling.”
It was his last chance to say what he needed to say to her. He could feel himself bleeding. He held his sword level, careful of the tight angles, as he closed in on the beating egg.
“—!!”
One of the large blossoming vines had Azuma in its sights. Kaguya was a hero now—it was one of her arms. It came for him. For Azuma.
Unable to disobey her instincts as a hero, Kaguya thrust a tentacle straight at Azuma’s stomach.
“Erk—!”
Azuma had already been given the hero factor, however, during the attack six years ago. Targeting him now was pointless—it would only kill him.
Azuma’s stomach split open. A wound so large that the one given to him by the dog hero, once upon a time, did not even compare.
The air froze. Koyuki, Rindou, and Haru all stared at the gaping hole in Azuma’s stomach.
He wheezed, sucking in and exhaling something that did not constitute a breath. His blood spilled in shuddering torrents, drenching the hero, by way of its tentacle, in Azuma’s fresh, hot blood.
It was obvious at a glance, even to Azuma himself. His fate was sealed.
His vision distorted and grew hazy. He was having trouble making out the hero.
The katana slipped from his grasp. Too weak to draw another weapon, Azuma placed his left hand on his left ear.
His cross. A keepsake from his younger sister and what Kaguya had once used to help save Azuma. His cross-shaped earring.
He tore it from his ear, causing a small trickle of blood to flow from the lobe. The earring, made of pure silver, glimmered brightly with his blood, more beautiful than anything else nearby.
He held the earring out toward the tentacle, which still pierced his stomach.
“Kaguya.”
There was still something he had to tell her. A feeling he needed to share. The only last words he had now that he knew that this was his final chance.
“…I love—”
The words spilled from his mouth along with his life. He never managed to finish.
His confession, cut short in the end, was one he had only been able to bring himself to say because he knew she could no longer understand him. Slowly, almost comically slowly, he thrust the earring in her direction.
As it connected, all of his strength, all of his awareness, fled from his body.
“…!!”
It happened almost as soon as Sakura began to cry.
There was a heavy thud, and the world shuddered. Everything grew distorted, like when a movie screen warped. In the same instant, a powerful heat flared in Kaguya’s throat.
Sakura noticed the change as well. Her face registered surprise. Kaguya saw it, a glint of light in Sakura’s eyes—and there was more.
“Did I just hear…a voice…?”
She could have sworn she did. Although she had no idea what that voice was saying.
“Kaguya!!” Sakura took a step toward Kaguya, grabbing her firmly by both shoulders. “There’s still hope. You have to remember! Remember now!!”
“R-remember what…?”
“Everything, Kaguya! Everything you’ve ever experienced, all the conversations you’ve had up until now!”
That was when Kaguya’s brother intervened.
“It looks like there’s a pretty nasty storm brewing out there, Arakawa,” he said. “Don’t you think it’s about time you left?”
Sakura ignored him. She was only focused on Kaguya now, no one else. An image of those same jade-green eyes, sad, seemed to superimpose themselves in Kaguya’s mind. She had a feeling, almost a certainty, that she had seen eyes like that staring at her once long ago.
The voice—
“—”
It sounded like it was coming from somewhere far away and yet also from inside herself.
But wait, she thought, don’t I know that voice?
The heat, which felt like it was going to burn her throat, began to spread throughout her entire body. Meanwhile, the image of a young man began to rise up from the depths of Kaguya’s mind.
At some point, the scenery had changed. The air smelled different—the colors she could see out of the corners of her eyes had changed. A dreary cafeteria. It was almost deserted. The smell of Lunch Set A wafted through the air.
“Huh…?”
She had been at home, hadn’t she? Why was she in Technical’s cafeteria now with Sakura?
Kaguya realized this was a reenactment of the day when she had been ordered to transfer to Charon. The captain of the squad, Sakura, had come to speak to her.
Her mind raced to thoughts of that first meeting. She was pretty sure they had argued. Neither was very receptive to the other at first. It had taken some time before they had learned to respect each other’s guiding principles.