Chapter 89

CHAPTER n: EVEN IF THERE IS DEATH Dead_to… 1 Kumokawa saw it. Beyond the world that had shattered like glass was still the same Baggage City located in Eastern Europe. But it was different from before. The oppressive stench of death was no longer present. The pressure the Kiharas and Gremlin had been enacting upon it had been lowered. The world had changed. Thanks to the mere existence of a single boy. In addition to those invisible changes, there were visible, more comprehensible changes. They weren’t outside on a mountain of vegetable containers; instead, they were inside a facility—a domed sporting arena, in fact. It must have been one of the four made for the tournament. They were in a ring surrounded by metal fencing, where Natural Selector was originally supposed to be held. That was where Touma Kamijou, Marianne Sringeneier, and Maria Kumokawa stood. “What…is this…?” “This isn’t about which one is correct. The coordinates of the place you were in before and the place you are in now were the same—but just like black holes warp the space around them, the same location ends up being out of alignment from before.” There were no spectators. Aside from the three of them, the domed sporting facility was empty. It hadn’t always been this way; there were traces of many people having fled, and they could make out crushed pamphlets scattered on the floors. Had the crowd realized something was wrong and ran away? Or had they not made it in time, leading to a tragedy? Kumokawa could only speculate. “……” Marianne was silent. The horrid sword in the golden sheath, Dáinsleif. An insane weapon that could, with the mere nudge of a thumb to lift its sheath and expose a few centimeters of the blade, induce such terror in someone that their heart gave out. Casually, Marianne brought the sword out in front of her. Despite not even a millimeter of the blade being visible, Kumokawa froze in place. “…Why now? After all this?” said Marianne, ignoring her. “I tried as hard as I could just to get here this early,” replied Kamijou. “Bersi…Kagun Kihara is dead.” “I couldn’t stop it. I won’t deny that. I don’t have the words to.” Despite Gremlin being connected, in a way, to the current chaos and that man’s death, Marianne put her own interests aside for the moment and continued. Perhaps it was because she understood who Touma Kamijou was. She’d known about his unique traits since before meeting him, as Gremlin needed to create a countermeasure against Imagine Breaker. And because there was someone who couldn’t be saved even with those traits, maybe she was denouncing something other than Touma Kamijou himself—something bigger. Either way, she didn’t hesitate. As if to curse him, she pushed up the thumb on the magic sword’s guard. Just a few centimeters of that horrid blade appeared, its seal undone, exposed to the world. Ba-bump!!!!!! Though Kumokawa knew Marianne wasn’t aiming for her, even her heart leaped. That wasn’t Dáinsleif’s true power. Marianne was simply making her target die of their own accord, forcing their instincts to stop their heart rather than try and take the brunt of the sword’s full strength. How was anyone supposed to resist an attack of that level? It wasn’t as though the sword was shooting out some kind of projectile. One couldn’t swiftly dodge out of the way, and there was no point in trying to dive behind cover to protect oneself. No matter where one ran or what they used to defend themself, they would be killed instantly by the terror welling up inside. The attack was inescapable. Undefendable. There was no point in resisting. One was dead before they could do anything—before one could even decide to fight back. The sword stripped the meaning from all action. It nullified the very meaning of all combat. Since Touma Kamijou had been targeted directly, his heart should have stopped. Before Dáinsleif actually did anything, before the sword came out for more direct combat. It didn’t need logic. The blade was merciless as it reaped anything capable of feeling fear. This ordinary boy should have died in an instant, without sustaining a single wound. And yet. He didn’t fall. Touma Kamijou remained standing. In defiance of the world-destroying Dáinsleif, his mind repelled the fear, and his heart continued to operate normally. Marianne’s brow twitched. In response, Kamijou readied his right fist—as if to fight back against her as she pointed the sheathed magical sword at him. “…If that attack exploits peoples’ fear of getting hit by powerful magic to work, then it won’t have any effect on me. Because I know that magic isn’t something you need to just take. As long as I have this power in my right hand—no, as long I keep wanting to clench my fist—I know that I can repel magic or even cancel it out.” Touma Kamijou could destroy magic. He could banish illusions. He knew these things, which alleviated the fear. As long as he knew this wasn’t a one-sided battle, that it was an even match, then he wouldn’t have give up and die before the fighting even began. That was why he could fight. That was how he could stand firm against a magical sword of the highest caliber, one that caused the final war, Ragnarok, in Norse mythology. Meanwhile, Kumokawa noticed something—she had been able to calmly observe this entire sequence of events. She hadn’t fallen into a state of derangement, bound by the overwhelming fear the magical sword produced. She didn’t know who the boy was or what Imagine Breaker was. But the possibility that this world contained something that could resist the magical sword was lessening her instinctual fear, keeping her heart pumping. She was being protected. She was being helped. She was being rescued. Somehow, she knew Shuri and Saflee had woken back up somewhere else—because there was something that could push back the fear the sword was imparting. The girls’ hearts hadn’t stopped because of an injury or an illness. Now that the terror in the air of Baggage City had lifted, they would revert to normal. This was Touma Kamijou. This was Imagine Breaker. He didn’t do anything special. Just by being there, just by standing there, just by acting to try to avert a tragedy and save someone, he created something naturally. A safe zone. A main character. “…So what?” mumbled Marianne. Whh-shing! She gripped the golden sheath tighter, and it let out an eerie noise. “Bersi is dead. He was like you, a main character—but a different kind. So I will honor his legacy! Both the fake, cruel world destroyed right in front of me, and the way he passed on with that satisfied face of his. I’ll destroy all the friendly rules that get wholly denied by the valued opinions of people who look down on others!” Had Kamijou been involved with this from the beginning, then maybe Bersi—Kagun Kihara—wouldn’t have had to die. Maybe Kamijou would have been able to solve the man’s problem and keep him alive in the process. Marianne would dare to reject that possibility and eliminate it. To convince herself that it was good that Kagun had died, that it was the best thing that could have happened, she would attempt to erase the boy destabilizing his monumental achievement. Kamijou had his rules, and Gremlin had theirs. That was what this battle came down to. Knowing deep down that nothing she did would reach the dead, Marianne still readied her magical sword for the sake of her departed friend. “Let’s get started, you foreign substance. Battles involving the dead are deadly serious. Bersi couldn’t put on the brakes, and he abandoned the girl who stood by him. Now my grudge against you is the only thing I have left!” Zrk-zrk-zrk-zrk-shhh-shhh-shh-shhh!!!!!! The storm of hatred whipped around the dark-skinned girl in every direction. Just like the magical sword, it was the power of fear that could dominate battlefields and pin soldiers’ feet to the ground. But even as she found herself exposed to the disturbance, Kumokawa heard Kamijou say something. “…I know,” he said. “But I’ve fought plenty of people who have given up and gone crazy like you have,” he said. And then the battle began—in a world where it was all too late. In a situation where not everyone would make it back alive anymore. A battle between someone trying to protect the dignity of the deceased and someone trying to put a stop to further tragedy. How ironic it was, then, that it would all play out in a ring at the Natural Selector arena. 2 The ring was thirty meters in diameter. Inside it, Touma Kamijou and Marianne Sringeneier stared each other down, a distance of about ten meters between them. The terror from Marianne’s Dáinsleif no longer worked. The coming battle was bound to be a violent one because of that. Kamijou, for his part, couldn’t deal any effective damage unless he got close enough to reach her with his right fist. Naturally, one would expect them both to clash at close range. “…?” But that wasn’t what happened. Instead of advancing toward Kamijou as he rushed her, Marianne actually took a step back. Then she thrust the sheathed magical sword out in front of her. A soft kriiing. It wasn’t the sound of her thumb pushing up the guard. It was the opposite. She’d put those few centimeters of exposed blade back into the sheath. It was both proof that she’d given up trying to terrorize him—and a ritual to unleash the magical sword’s other power. The wind moved slightly, ignoring the flow of air, heading toward Marianne from all directions. Bwoooom!!!!!! A moment later, the giant sword sliced through the ring hemmed in by metal fencing. Something seemed to have erupted from the bottom of Dáinsleif’s sheath. It was gray, slender, and straight—a long blade, which had cut through the fencing behind Kamijou. When Marianne swung the sheathed sword, the long, slender sword followed. It moved. And it destroyed. “Shit!” Kamijou stopped running and focused on defense. In response to the large sword coming for his neck, he quickly stuck out his right hand and tried to erase Marianne’s magic. But as he did, he noticed something. A small cut had formed right between his palm and pinkie finger. The meaning behind the tiny trickle of blood was clear. “Imagine Breaker can’t fully block the sword…!” he exclaimed. “We’ve been working on countermeasures, idiot,” replied Marianne. Feeling his spine and muscles groan under the stress, Kamijou forced himself to stop what he was doing and pulled himself onto a different course. Keeping his hips in place, he swung his upper body into a lower position. The gray greatsword passed right above him. The fencing behind him was ripped to shreds. The blade, however, took a long time to come back at him. It seemed to take about three seconds per attack for the big sword to appear. But Marianne’s assault didn’t end. If a single attack was restrictive, she could just do it over and over again. Damn it! thought Kamijou. I shouldn’t have stopped to focus on defense. Keeping me at a distance where I can’t protect myself is perfect for her, but my only option is to get in deep and pummel her! Whh-shoom! Shoom-boom-shooom-boom! Marianne’s slashing attacks came at him one after another. Each individual swing was simple, but their power and range were ridiculous. She sliced away at the scenery as easily as one might take a pair of scissors to a photograph. Nevertheless, Kamijou didn’t sustain any fatal wounds. In line with the scope of the destruction, the metal fencing, the concrete floors, and even the spectator stands went to pieces. The sword sent fine particles and dust flying into the air. That dust showed odd silhouettes, which in turn revealed the source of Marianne’s power: the process her gray blade underwent to materialize. Now, Kamijou could figure out how to avoid it. Realizing she’d made a mistake, she stopped her attacks for a moment and glanced around. “…That sheath,” said Kamijou in the gap between attacks. A translucent sphere about three meters across floated at the tip of the sheath housing the magical sword. It looked a little like a giant balloon, but its essence was probably different. “I don’t know what kind of properties it has, but it’s gotta be powerful enough to seal away that crazy sword of yours. If you change what it’s sealing, you could use it to bind something else hand and foot. For example—” “—gravity, perhaps?” said Marianne. “When you’re Earth, gravity is exerted on everything equally, but I’m not letting it escape outside. So as long as I’m on Earth, gravity rapidly gets added into the sphere. The law of gravity doesn’t apply here—it all gets reflected and diffused inside the sphere. And if I open up a tiny little hole as all that force bounces around, looking for an exit—” “—then all the vectors get grouped together, and they burst out in a straight line. Along with all the dust and dirt in the air that the sphere took in. Just like when a machine tool shoots high-pressured water mixed with man-made diamond particles at a metal plate to slice through it!” The three-meter-long translucent sphere immediately shrunk to the size of a golf ball. Cutting through the thin layer of dust, the gray claymore shot out. Kamijou twisted himself as far as his body would go. The only part of the blade made with magic was the sheath’s magical extension—the sphere. The sword coming from it was nothing more than a physical phenomenon created when the warped flow of gravity pushed on the dust. He couldn’t block that with Imagine Breaker. If he held up his right hand, it would just get cut off. Contrary to his expectations, though, Marianne didn’t swing the blade. As Kamijou compromised his stability trying to avoid it, she instead kept her grip on the magical sword’s sheath and thrust it straight forward, reaching striking distance in the blink of an eye. The next step beyond just remaining at range and using only the sheath to attack—her next move, more dangerous than the first, rushed at him. Without creating her gravity claymore, Marianne swung her hand hard, sending the sheath in a diagonal strike from lower right to upper left. The bottom tip of the sheath was aimed at Kamijou’s temple. If she created a claymore a few centimeters from him, it wouldn’t just cut off his right hand—it would destroy his whole body. So he clamped down on his instinct, born of pure fear, to immediately protect his face with his arm and instead focused on trying to dodge Marianne’s strike. But then suddenly, everything around him was wrapped in darkness. Kamijou fell into confusion. His mind went blank for a moment. But he quickly realized what was going on. …She didn’t trap air in the sphere this time. She trapped me?! If that was the case, then the next thing he could expect was intense pressure from all directions produced by the rapidly building gravity, or Marianne creating a small exit for the energy and squeezing him into spaghetti or jelly to force him out. That meant his only choice was to destroy the sphere. The claymore made from the force of gravity was one thing, but Imagine Breaker should able to destroy the sphere—the sheath’s extension. But since it was completely dark, he couldn’t get a sense of how big the sphere was at this moment. It was very possible Marianne would launch her attack before he could run to touch the outer section of the sphere. He needed to be much faster. So he didn’t glance around. He aimed directly down. No matter how big the sphere had become, his feet had to be at its bottom. So as fast as he could, he bent over and used the force of the movement to slam his right fist into the spot at his feet. The darkness shattered. The sliced-up circular ring leaped back into his vision. The abrupt change in scenery momentarily scrambled his vision. That was when Marianne charged him. Using her free hand, she brought her golden saw down on Kamijou’s head as he squatted. He moved his right hand. The human-altering Soul Arm fell to pieces, its fragments dancing through the air, reflecting light. Marianne grinned. Kamijou was wide open now that he’d swung his right hand. She tightened her grip on Dáinsleif’s sheath. Another three-meter translucent sphere appeared at the end of the sheath, filling itself with the dust and gravity it needed to make a sword. Kamijou tried to scramble to his feet, but he didn’t get all the way through the motion. Because that was it. The sword appeared, about to slice him in half through the torso. 3 A little before that. Kumokawa could only watch in awe at Kamijou’s battle with Marianne. After all, the scale of the fight was on another level entirely. The clash between the Kiharas and Gremlin throughout Baggage City had already been absurd, but these two were so strong they put that battle to shame. Kumokawa was no longer frozen in place, but she stood in the same coordinates regardless, not doing anything. She’d been made to feel like she was reading a report. She could understand the contents well enough, but she couldn’t intervene. It was only natural. The idea of struggling against it was a mistaken one. So intense, so overwhelming was the battle that it seemed like it would warp reality itself, removing even the gears that kept the world spinning and changed the future. However. People frequently groaned and moaned in spite of themselves, even when reading a report or watching a video of something that had already happened. They knew it wouldn’t do anything; it wouldn’t change anything—but the sounds would still slip out. Having sank to the floor, Kumokawa spoke, as if wringing the words out. “…Maybe the teacher I was searching for disappeared a long time ago. Maybe my image of him was wrong to begin with.” Words out of place, ignored. Words that couldn’t change anything. “The man who used the name Bersi to work for Gremlin might have taken on a variety of dirty jobs to further his own ends. He might have hurt a lot of people and allowed many more to be hurt.” But she couldn’t stop the words. She couldn’t. Her mouth continued to move, knowing it was futile. “But Kagun Kihara was more than that.” Her words turned into a shout. Their strength grew because they would never be rewarded. “He had a life before taking the name Bersi. His past involves more than just Gremlin. Even if Bersi was on the side of people who want to destroy the world, even if Kagun Kihara had an awful record to his name, I don’t care. He was a teacher once! He always listened when we needed an ear!” She didn’t care what was happening with her pride. Even if she hurt it by shouting, it would never break. Even if it was meaningless. Even if it was worthless. Even if it changed nothing. She knew she wasn’t twisted enough to think it was disgraceful. “Please. Please!” she cried. “Don’t let the word “teacher” be erased from his headstone! Don’t fill it in by saying he found comfort in the sword, or that he was an unknown enemy only after destruction and murder!” And then the time came. Touma Kamijou fell, and Marianne was prepared for a surefire attack. Naturally, the dark-skinned sorcerer wasn’t hesitating. She immediately swung her blade to cleave the boy—her obstacle—in two. But Kumokawa heard something. Heard it within this disturbance of an incomprehensible scale, the one she could read and listen to but not intervene in, like a report of past events. A response from the boy, who seemed to be hanging on by a thread. “Okay.” It was right after that one short word. Kamijou and Marianne—both of them moved. 4 Kamijou had lost his balance. He couldn’t dodge at this point. He couldn’t step in and ram Marianne with a punch, either. He couldn’t shift his center of gravity and make any forceful movements—not when he was in the middle of standing up. Instead of his right hand, he immediately moved his left. He reached for the golden radiance drifting around them. The remnants of the human-altering tool Marianne had been using. Imagine Breaker had already destroyed it, and now it was just a cloud of shards, no longer possessing the power of a Soul Arm. As Kamijou grabbed at the shards, still unable to shift his weight, one of the sharp fragments sliced his clothing. He grabbed the part of the sleeve that had been cut off. And threw it. Precise control was crucial. The rag he threw with an amount of force equivalent to tossing an eraser as a joke wasn’t aimed at Marianne. Instead, it was aimed at the sheathed magical sword she held—specifically the translucent sphere, which had expanded quite a bit. Marianne’s countermeasure to Imagine Breaker created a large sword using gravity—a purely physical phenomenon—to slice Kamijou and his right hand—which worked only against preternatural powers—in half. In other words. As long as the sword is a purely physical phenomenon, even Marianne couldn’t can’t completely control it. After all, she can only manipulate magic. By manipulating the size of the balloon’s mouth and the position at which she opened it, she gained fine control over the size, power, and direction of the giant sword. But she only had control over those things. What she controlled was the hole—she couldn’t perfectly bend the locations of the fine dust spurting from the hole, pushed out by gravity, to her will. In which case, if he interfered with the hole she was controlling… If he changed the shape of the “muzzle” by covering it up with a layer of something thin, because it wasn’t a matter of strength… …then if Marianne tried to activate her gray greatsword in that state, the rag would alter the dust spilling out of the hole the same way attaching a showerhead to a faucet would. In other words. The unstoppable greatsword she created would be unable to retain its form as a weapon, betray even Marianne’s expectations, and cause devastation. “…Eh?” In that moment, Marianne, certain of her victory, glanced dubiously at the sheath of the magical sword. Perhaps that was a bad move. If she’d had time to do that, she should have used all her might to get rid of the translucent sphere. To use an analogy, it was like someone putting their thumb over a shower hose. The bundle of dust and other fine particles lost their stable escape route, bursting out from the many tiny gaps that had opened up instead. Then, a blast that embodied the very word explosion echoed through the air. Graa-boooooom!!!!!! It was strong enough to send Marianne’s small body careening several meters away without bouncing. “Gahhh?!” She slammed back-first into concrete, and the wind was knocked out of her. Yet still she clung to Dáinsleif’s sheath. Meanwhile, Kamijou didn’t get ahead of himself to try to attack again. If he attempted to close the direct distance between them, completely unguarded, he’d just be doing the same thing all over again. There was a much better way of leveraging his success to cut a path to her. “Once you know the trick, it’s easy.” Kamijou used the golden fragment to slice his clothes some more, preparing several rags to use. “Fire and swing. Your attack has stages. I guess to suppress the recoil? So you stop for a moment when you open the hole. Not just you—the sheath you’re carrying and the translucent sphere on the end of it, too… It makes you an easy target. Scraps of fabric don’t weigh much. Even while using my off hand, I still got one to hit. If I use my whole body and throw with my right hand instead, my accuracy will simply increase. I’m guessing you reload the dust and stuff like a vacuum cleaner, right? So I can just throw my rag from anywhere, and it will head straight to the hole automatically. I can always plug the hole. We won’t know what form the exploding sword will take, so I run the risk of taking us both out, but that’s your limit. In rock-paper-scissors terms, you’ll only ever lose or draw. You have no chance of winning.” “No… Not yet…” Krrrsshh. Marianne slowly got to her feet, dragging the sheath along the concrete floor. “That was still just the sheath. I haven’t…even drawn the magical sword yet. Dáinsleif can cause a war to end the world. It was made to wipe out all of humanity. There’s no way a single kid can stop it!” She pushed up the guard with her thumb. Just a few centimeters of that horrid blade contacted the air. Drawing the whole sheath at once would probably unleash its true power. Everything before now was just setting the stage. The terror that could stop hearts, the sheath that could create greatswords to cut up the circular arena—all of it was just like the rings of Saturn drifting around the magical sword. He didn’t know what would happen if she used it. Maybe it was beyond anything he could even imagine. Even so, he set his gaze straight on her and spoke. “…You can’t draw it.” “Wh-what…?” “If you could use all that power whenever you wanted, you would have done it a long time ago. I’m not talking about this little brawl we’re having. Before that—even before you launched Radiosonde Castle into the air to advertise Gremlin. You could have ended the fighting before it even began and claimed victory all for yourself. If you could bear to sacrifice everything but yourself, that is.” “……” There was a chance Marianne herself wasn’t confident she could control that much raw destructive force. Or maybe she was just afraid. The magical sword could stop someone’s heart when just a bit of its blade was exposed. Maybe if she drew it completely, the terror would bind her, too. However. There was one more thing. “You didn’t want to draw it.” “What are you saying?” “That magical sword—Dáinsleif or whatever. That Soul Arm of yours, the one that’s way too powerful.” “Why wouldn’t I?!” “I’m not sure how much of the world it would destroy, but I know it would destroy parts you’d rather stick around.” Consciously catching his breath, he clutched the scraps of fabric in his hand. “And sure, after that guy—Bersi, or Kagun Kihara, or whatever his name was—died here, maybe there aren’t any parts like that anymore. But that isn’t true. You brought out Dáinsleif, but you still haven’t drawn it from its sheath… I bet that even with your friend dead, you still don’t want to lose the places you spent time in together.” Krrrshhhh! A shrill noise cut Kamijou’s voice short. The bottom edge of the sheath was scraping against the concrete floor. And then, for the first time, Marianne brought her other hand to the magical sword’s hilt. She grasped it tight. “Loading ammo.” Right after she said that, a huge beam of light fell from the skies, piercing through the roof of the domed sporting facility and creating a shock wave that traveled in all directions. The perimeter of the dome creaked. Immense power flowed into the magical sword’s sheath. Little by little, the power she’d expended filled it up again. She was preparing to use the power to destroy the world. “I’ll draw it.” “Do it, then.” “I’ll rip it out of its sheath, even if it’s just to win this!” “If you do it like that, you won’t actually win.” Kamijou said nothing more after that. He took one step forward. He approached, exploding into a run. He ran straight up to her. He jumped. There should have been time. Marianne should have been able to draw Dáinsleif. And yet. “Gh, gah…!” “See? You can’t,” spat Kamijou, clenching his right fist. “That’s because you’re strong. It’s nothing to feel guilty about. If you’re not around after getting your revenge, if the whole world goes away, then who would be left to mourn Bersi’s death?” Nothing more was necessary. The golden sheath and the boy’s fist crossed. A dull noise rang out, and then it was over. 5 “Is it…over…?” murmured Kumokawa, having slumped to the ground. The circular arena had been torn to shreds, and huge holes had formed in the ceiling of the domed facility. If she recalled, the ceiling was supported by artificially raised air pressure, but at the moment, the framework and other pieces seemed to have barely stopped the whole thing from caving in. No telling how long that would last, of course. She very quickly began to feel the cold on her skin. Was this due to the negative-twenty-degree air coming in through the damaged roof, or was it just that her senses had finally gone back to normal? The battle was enough to make her suspect the latter. The clash went wildly against the standard of Academy City, and in all likelihood, it was removed from any standard procedure when viewed from those outside Academy City, too. Touma Kamijou, the one who had created it, casually crossed the damaged arena, walking toward Dáinsleif, which had fallen out of Marianne’s hands. “What…what are you going to do…?” groaned Marianne. “Gonna destroy it, if nothing else,” said Kamijou without turning around. “You couldn’t draw it, Marianne. But that doesn’t mean someone else couldn’t. Maybe someone else could push away their fear and control it—so I obviously can’t just leave it here. I have no idea how much destruction it could cause.” As he answered her, he walked over to the magical sword without hesitation, the source of the terror. Once that thing is destroyed, it’ll finally be over, thought Kumokawa—it would end the whole chain of superhuman battles between the Kiharas and Gremlin happening inside Baggage City. As Kamijou knelt beside the sword, Kumokawa asked him a question. “…How did you get here? How did you figure out what Gremlin was doing? This is all different from Academy City theories.” “It was Bersi.” Kumokawa felt a pang in her heart at the short answer. Kamijou continued, “He didn’t just stand there and answer all my questions or anything. But he did leave a few hints on my way through Baggage City. I’m just a high school kid. Now that I think about it, my own hard work probably wasn’t the only thing that got me from Hawaii to Baggage City.” How far had that man’s plans gone? By intervening, maybe Kamijou had avoided the worst outcome for Baggage City. At a glance, it could have seemed like a certain sorcerer, having accomplished all his goals, had entrusted Kamijou with cleaning up the loose ends. But what if Kamijou had been able to end this whole thing sooner? What if he’d been able to kill the illusion? The ending might have been different, then. He could have even dismantled the goals Bersi had set for himself, bringing them to a world free of this tragedy. Kamijou had been made to dance in the palm of Leivinia Birdway’s hands, and he’d wanted to escape that. But had that really been the right move? As someone who hadn’t even been able to dance in anyone’s palm this time, he had no way of answering that. That was how perfect Bersi had been. If Kamijou succeeded, then great. But even if he’d failed, Bersi would have had his own conclusion about it. Birds didn’t foul the nests they were about to leave, after all. Was that Kumokawa’s pure, idealistic image of him? Should she be angry about how cleanly it all wrapped up? “This Bersi guy,” said Kamijou. “Kagun Kihara. Do you know what kind of person he was?” Kumokawa steadied her breath for a moment before answering. “Yeah.” As stated before, Kamijou was an outsider in this affair. Maybe he wanted to know more about the man who had driven Marianne to this state, the one he’d helped without realizing it. “I don’t know much about him,” she clarified, “but I do know some things. I may not know if he was even a good guy or a bad guy. But I still know some things. He saved many lives, including mine. From my perspective, he was a teacher whose mystery was worth following.” “I see…” Kamijou stopped for a moment. His tone was soft as he gave voice to the reality they could no longer change. But instead of simply yelling about it, he said this as if to engrave the words into his soul. “I couldn’t save him.” But he could, at least, learn from his failures. Swearing to learn as much as humanly possible, he said it again. “I couldn’t save him.” “It’s all right,” replied Kumokawa without hesitating, as if to get over it. “The way he went out—it was really dumb. He was smiling like he was satisfied at the end. It was probably the best moment of his life. If we’d tried to force him to keep living, the purity of that happiness probably would have just gone down.” In reality, it wasn’t that easy, just putting it down to that. It wasn’t something she should put down like that. Kamijou remained motionless for a few moments. But stopping wouldn’t change anything. He had to move forward, or the conflict that had started in Baggage City wouldn’t end. So he did. He brought his right hand to Dáinsleif. To put an end to things, at least for now, by destroying the immense power it contained. However. The skinny arm of a woman grabbed his right hand as if to stop him. He couldn’t comprehend it. When had they showed up? “What the…?” The question bubbled up. There stood a girl of about thirteen or fourteen years old, close enough that he could feel her breath. Her fur coat was open in the front, and beneath it was a black leather outfit and pale skin. But there were two other things about her that drew his attention more than her outfit. The first was the pointed, wide-brimmed hat that made her look like a witch. The second was the showy patch over her right eye. Deciding that whoever she was, she had to be with the sorcery side, Kamijou felt his caution spike as she held onto his right wrist. But she went far beyond what he expected. The one-eyed girl whispered the next words to him. “…It’s not over.” Then a moment later. She didn’t hesitate. The sheer force of her grip crushed his right wrist and severed his hand.