Two weeks had passed since we welcomed the newly brainwashed Joanne into our ranks. Once the uproar finally died down, I decided it was time to move to the next phase—brainwashing Celestia the same way.
“Let’s go over our objective one more time,” I said. “In order to bring down the Aros Temple Cult, we first need to break the brainwashing placed on Celestia. If we can overwrite her thoughts through organ exchange, all the better… We’ll just proceed to brainwash the rest of the executives the same way.”
“Hearing it laid out like that, it sounds completely insane,” Joanne replied calmly.
“You’re the last person who gets to say that, you know?”
After reaffirming our goal, Joanne and I started our search for Celestia.
Joanne and I exchanged organs, engraving each other’s personalities into our very souls. That might be the reason she’s changed so much. Calmer than before, too. Probably my influence mixed into her.
Back then, she’d been the kind of girl who looked best when she threw her head back and laughed, baring her jagged teeth with a wild grin. Now, she pressed her emotions down and smiled in this slow, sultry way.
I couldn’t help but find it unsettling. She was too understanding, too composed, and that stirred a faint dread in me. Did I make an irreversible choice that night?
Under the fixed gaze of those distinctive eyes of hers, I felt like I was being watched every second, a tight, unpleasant knot twisting in my stomach. I hugged my own body, trying to shake off the unease, when Pawk Tedlotus wandered into my field of vision.
“Oh, Pawk-sama. Fancy meeting you here,” I greeted.
“Hm? If it isn’t Oakley,” she said.
“I’m looking for Celestia.”
Pawk rolled her shoulders in a helpless shrug, the very picture of “give it up already.” “I’m sure she’s gone invisible and is hiding out somewhere,” she said. “You two used to be enemies, remember? I bet it’s awkward for her just walking around the base.”
Celestia had originally been an executive on the Orthodoxy side, with a long history of life-or-death battles against us heretics.
Just like Pawk said, roaming freely through our stronghold probably felt unbearably awkward. At the same time, holing up in Fuankilo’s now-empty private room would almost certainly rub people the wrong way and make her hesitate.
“Well then, I’ve got things to take care of, so I’ll leave you to it. When you don’t have anything to do, make sure you rest with everything you’ve got, okay?”
“Thanks for worrying about me,” I said with a smile.
“And don’t trash your room again.”
“Ah… Right…”
The one who’d cleaned up the disaster of a room after Joanne and I had done our organ exchange there had been Pawk. Even though she was a heretic executive, I still felt bad for making her handle the aftermath.
I watched the androgynous beauty in men’s clothes wave her hand lazily as she walked away, then went back to searching.
Just then, as I was running all over the holy land Metasim, a man stepped toward me.
“Yo, Oakley-senpai, afternoon! You out here looking for someone?”
I didn’t recognize the man. His cheeks were sunken, dark circles pooled under his eyes, and the close-cropped gold buzz cut, shaved in uneven patches, only added to the sickly impression he gave off.
The fact that he knew my name probably just meant I’d gotten famous within the cult.
But this blond buzzcut bozo was way too suspicious to be called “friendly.” That soft smile he wore—the kind that was supposed to make him look like a nice, gentle soul—only made my skin crawl.
“I’m looking for Celestia. You know where she is?” I asked.
“Ahh, Celestia-sama, huh?” His thin brows arched upward, and he nodded with a little glint of interest. Since he seemed like he knew something, I pressed him about Celestia’s whereabouts. In response, he lifted a knobby finger and pointed toward the clock tower. “Probably over there,” he said in a vague, airy tone.
Feeling a faint, nameless wrongness prickling under my skin, I thanked him and moved on.
The chill hit me when I actually found Celestia on the balcony of the clock tower.
How the hell did that guy know exactly where an invisible Celestia was hiding?
The blond man was already gone. I shoved the thought to the back of my mind, convincing myself that I was just overthinking it.
I fixed my eyes on a single point on the balcony. The background looked warped, like the surface of water trembling in place. Celestia had to be hiding there.
The refraction of the air wasn’t quite enough. Then again, if she wasn’t seriously trying to vanish, this was probably plenty.
I thrust my hand into the distorted space.
Squish.
“Kyah!” A sharp, girlish cry rang out. I jerked my hand back on instinct.
That was… ridiculously soft. What did I just touch?
“S-Sorry!” I exclaimed.
Cold sweat trailed down my back as I waited for a response. A moment later, Celestia bled into view, as if seeping out from the air itself. Hands planted on her hips, cheeks puffed out, she was visibly fuming. I did not dare ask exactly where my hand had landed.
She started, “To just suddenly grab a lady’s body like that…”
“I really am sorry. But seriously, you being invisible makes it a pain to find you,” I said.
“Ah… I see. My apologies.”
“So, what are you doing up here?”
“They’re constructing the main facilities under Metasim. I was helping with that. I’m on break now, and… I’d rather not go back.”
Now that she’d dropped her invisibility, Celestia sat down on the edge of the balcony and leaned her cheek into one hand.
Under the holy land Metasim, construction work was underway to build new facilities. The plan was to construct a whole complex of human production facilities, research centers, and educational institutions—the backbone of the cult’s future funding.
“With wind magic, you’d be a real star on-site, you know.”
I tossed out the tease, and Celestia let out a strained little sound, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “Yeah… It’s just, this world is so different from the one I knew that it’s… mentally exhausting,” she murmured.