3_Chapter 2_ Detectives in the World of Combat

CHAPTER 2 Detectives in the World of Combat 1 The next day… It was an early summer’s morning permeated with an aura of relaxation. Index, playing the part of mother, opened her eyes a little, and she looked at the quarreling father and son, each with black rings under his eyes. “Good morning, you two. Oh my, male bonding? Were you up all night trading stories? How nice. It’s kind of like we’re at an outdoors school or a field trip.” The anguished, cheerless negative energy swirling through the room certainly rivaled that of when boys in their room on field trips tell late-night love stories (about 80 percent of which are ostentation and falsehood). However, Kamijou couldn’t get a handle on that idea, given his unrevealed amnesia. In any case, given all the additional exhaustion from yesterday, Kamijou was completely beat and couldn’t even answer her. He thought, Ha…ha-ha. Damn it. I managed to protect her. It’ll be fine now that it’s morning. Immediately afterward, drowsiness took him and he dropped right down onto the futon. He was about to fall asleep with a reassuring, victorious feeling, but… “See, now, Touma has fallen asleep and isn’t looking, so we should at least give each other a morning greeting.” “Oh my, how troubling. What could you have been discussing the whole night for you to feel that way now?” Touya seemed to want a wake-up kiss as if she were Snow White. Just before the couple’s lips met, Kamijou’s eyes shot open with a bam “Behold…my Guillotine Upper” Right before their lips touched, his fist sent Touya flying directly upward, and Kamijou fell back down into the futon, faceup. He didn’t think he hit him too hard, so Touya was probably staggering from his own sleep deprivation. This time it’s fine for sure, he thought, also falling back onto the futon. However… Touya certainly wasn’t the only formidable opponent Kamijou had to deal with. “Big brother, brother, bro, dear brother, my brother, lord brother, brother dear, ABCDEFG! Daybreak Wake-up Flying Body Attack” Mikoto, in an incredibly cheerful mood, suddenly came in and attacked him, delivering a pressing attack with all her weight behind it directly to Kamijou’s solar plexus. He bent over his stomach and awoke (total sleep time: fifteen minutes). “Mgah! Gah, gahagebekobuh! W-wah! What?!” “Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha” “Quit climbing on me and laughing about it! Could I have a convincing explanation for this?!” “Alarm clock functionality via weird pro-wrestling moves comes standard issue on little sisters, Captain!” “Shut up! So you’re trying to act like the flattering character, are you?! I won’t allow it! I’ll tie you up with a jump rope and leave you to rot in the gym warehouse” Then, Blue Hair, playing the part of Index, overheard their commotion and came romping into the room. “Aah! Touma, you’re having such a fun time waking up! Me too, me too! I wanna do that to Touma, too!” “Wait, I—Hold on, you giant! Your body presses are no joke!” “Why?! Why do you have to keep leaving me out?! I want to, too, I wanna do that, too, that’s what I said, so I just decided I’ll definitely do it!” “Eh, what? Hold on! I’m sorry! Here, I’ll give you two thousand yen, so please forgive me, bgah!” Kamijou’s organs took such an impact he thought they would burst. “Uh, uh. Ugh. Uhu-hu. I’ll kill you. I’ll take those happy little heads of yours and slice them in half like a watermelon in summer” This was how the second day of Angel Fall began—with much noise. 2 Twelve o’clock noon. The sun was at its peak. I have summer heat fatigue; please, leave little old me here and go have fun, Kamijou had said to his family, who (along with the freeloading nun from the Kamijou residence) rushed toward the beach. Then, as if they had chosen the exact time, Kanzaki, Tsuchimikado, and Misha arrived at the beach house Wadatsumi. If Tsuchimikado, whose appearance was a male idol in a lot of trouble, was found out by the guy in charge of the beach house, things could go south pretty fast. They decided to hold their war council in Kamijou’s own guest room. Incidentally, the fact was that time had elapsed and it was already noon. Kamijou really had been collapsed with summer heat fatigue until just a little while ago. It was a disaster when he awoke, sleep-deprived and dehydrated. Misha had apparently been searching for Hino by herself since morning, but she had turned up nothing. The fact that Kamijou was only dragging them down filled him with regret. “My word. What do you mean you didn’t get a wink of sleep? What could you have been doing?” asked Kanzaki of him in a voice colored with both exasperation and worry. He was sagging like a plant its owner had neglected to give water to for a long time. Her words caused him to start slumping down even farther. Then, Tsuchimikado’s eyes smiled wryly behind his blue sunglasses. “Now, now, Zaky. There’s nothing in it to humiliate a sick person even more now.” “What are you saying, Tsuchimikado? If you do not scold someone when they need to be scolded, they will repeat the same mistake. There’s no telling whether we will be able to rescue him for sure next time.” Those words sounded like she was reprimanding a child for playing with fire too much, and they stabbed right into Kamijou’s vital spots. Tsuchimikado, unable to let them pass, brought his mouth to Kanzaki’s ear and whispered into it like a lover sharing a secret. “…(Hmm? You okay with this, nya~? That’s a pretty oppressive attitude. Kammy wanted to protect your precious, precious Index even while he was being violated with poison.)” Her breath froze. “…(You okay with getting mad like that even though you’re grateful to him? I mean, sis, you haven’t even thanked him or apologized for the incident before this. What’ll ya do, hmm?)” Her movements froze. Misha, watching the two of them from a step away, breathed a soft sigh, softly but certainly making fun of them. Her bangs hid her face because she was always looking down. Kamijou didn’t really get it, but he got the feeling that if he left them alone, then at this rate, their temporary party would break apart midflight. Now a little bit worried, he decided to place himself in the chairman’s seat and move the conversation along. “So, should I take this to mean Jinsaku Hino is the criminal behind Angel Fall?” Jinsaku Hino—the assailant who had attacked him from beneath the floor last night. “Judging by Little Misaka’s and my eyewitness information from yesterday, he definitely doesn’t seem to be substituted, does he?” Kanzaki looked at Kamijou and responded, “I have not personally seen Jinsaku Hino, so I cannot say for sure. If that is the case, however, then he is very likely our criminal.” “…Which would mean that we need to get our hands on the guy…But, nya~.” Tsuchimikado made a difficult face and fiddled with his sunglasses. Yes—to even catch Jinsaku Hino, they first needed to know where he went, and they had no hints of that nature. “If Hino is a sorcerer, then can we not track him via his mana residue?” “Answer one. Did not find any traces of Hino using magic last night. I conjecture that he is likely using some trick to throw off pursuit.” “And the biggest bottleneck is that we can’t sense the angel, nya~. But we’re talking about something on the level of an angel here. If we left it be, it would distort the very land by itself. I don’t think there’s much doubt that he’s using some method to conceal it.” “Conceal…Is it that easy to do?” Kamijou asked. Kanzaki, after thinking for a moment, replied: “Though solely in the Old Testament, there are descriptions of angels hiding their identity and going into human towns, into people’s houses, and eating with them. There was one archangel who rescued a drowning child in the same way. We may want to consider that this kind of concealment technique has been around from the outset.” Misha offered a small nod to Kanzaki’s viewpoint. He couldn’t read her expression because it was hidden behind her bangs, but this seemed to be her specialty. It was for Index as well—did nuns like talking about the Bible? “Whatever the case may be, we gotta get some info first. Hi-ya!” Tsuchimikado flicked on the old-fashioned TV sitting in the corner of the guest room. As usual, Miss Komoe was on the news program, holding a mic in her hand and talking about something. “An entire day has gone by since Jinsaku Hino broke out of the Shinfuchuu prison. Here with me in the studio today is Raizen Oono, a criminal psychology professor at Miwa University. Professor Oono, how are you today?” “Doing well, thanks,” responded the person in a weighty tone, though he looked like a third grader. With Miss Komoe alongside him, it looked like some kind of educational show. Professor Oono spoke. “Historically, Jinsaku Hino’s behavioral patterns are extremely rare for a criminal. He has murdered twenty-eight innocent people, and yet he insists that he did not kill any of them under his own volition. He seems to be saying that a presence named ‘Angel’ has been guiding him, so perhaps this should be classified under the header of ritualistic murder, which can be seen in cult crimes in Europe…” Kamijou nodded lightly as he listened to the elementary school student wearing a suit and talking like an old man. “That’s right, ‘Angel.’ Hino said that yesterday. If this commentator is talking about Hino before he was substituted, then it matches up with him after the fact.” “Question one. I’ll confirm this once. Does this mean that Jinsaku Hino is the perpetrator of Angel Fall after all?” He nodded at her. Hino by no means possessed the Imagine Breaker like Kamijou did. In spite of that, he hadn’t undergone any sort of substitution, so it wasn’t a problem to consider Jinsaku Hino the most suspicious person at present. “But what is this ‘Angel’?” “About that—while we were repairing the floor last night, this thing popped up.” Tsuchimikado took out a thin wooden plank about the size of a notebook. Its surface had been marked up into a mess by something like a nail. There wasn’t anywhere on it that wasn’t cut up. “It looks like there’s some English letters carved on here. It’s been overwritten again and again, though, which is why it looks like such a wreck now, nya~.” Tsuchimikado sighed. “This is a kind of oracle, or Automatic Clerk. It’s more than possible that Hino was moving in accordance with the orders written by his right hand under its own power. The nuance here is kind of like ‘divination by planchette,’ like Ouija, I guess?” …Ouija? Something bothered Kamijou about it, but he stayed silent. This was their field—occult territory. “So then, a ritualistic killer of twenty-eight people, just from the confirmation that it was done on the orders of this ‘precious Angel.’ What kind of ritual could that be indicative of?” “…Are you saying it could be Angel Fall?” They’d mentioned planet-wide grand sorceries and ritual sites before, but he shuddered anew at the fact that twenty-eight people had been killed for it. It was like the devil-worshipping black mages in picture books. “But if that’s the case, things get pretty complicated. If we assume that Jinsaku Hino did bring about Angel Fall, then the one who commanded him to do so would have been his ‘Angel,’ right? If it’s an actual angel, then why would he be causing Angel Fall at all?” Tsuchimikado groaned and folded his arms. Without thinking, Kamijou asked, “…Maybe because, like, it wanted to come down to earth? Just straight-out?” “Mgh. Kammy, this will sound contradictory when I say it, but angels don’t have a personality. Angels are God’s errand people. They’re actually closer to fleshy puppets filled with vast preternatural power. The concept is in the same vein as how fake crosses in idol-worshipping religions hold a portion of power, so from a purely theoretical point of view, you could even separate an angel’s ‘substance’ into one hundred parts and put it into swords and armor and stuff. So fundamentally, angels don’t actually create miracles, or save people, or fight against evil unless God orders them to do so. They’re basically just radio-controlled cars.” “…That’s all angels are?” “That’s all they are. In the New Testament there’s something called the Last Judgment, and it’s God’s job to judge the righteous and the sinners, then send them to heaven or hell at the end of the world. In other words, an angel changing history by going off by himself and saving people or killing people would be terrible. “Incidentally,” he added, “like I said before, angels are pretty much remote controlled by God, but they don’t run out of batteries and stop taking orders or get their wires crossed or anything. Those would be demons.” Kamijou was a little surprised at that. The angels and devils that appeared in video games were a completely different story. He had this image of angels as these blond-haired, winged people who looked down arrogantly on humans from above. Of course, that was just what he got from movies and manga. “…” Once again, he said without thinking, “Then maybe it wanted a mind?” “It doesn’t actually have a mind to think that it wants a mind. Even if an angel looks like it’s thinking on its own, it only looks like that. Even if it seems like it’s moving by itself, it only seems like that. In reality, though, if a puppet’s strings are cut, it loses all ability to move around freely.” Having thought through it, Tsuchimikado scratched his head. “Well, I suppose we’ll just have to rein him in and make him cough it up. Let’s think a little about what the enemy might actually have on his side in the way of concrete forces.” All Misha did in response was glance at him. It seemed like she was bad at voluntary conversation and only spoke when spoken to. So Kanzaki answered him instead. “First off, whether or not Jinsaku Hino has acquired the angel.” “Having heard all that before, it’s pretty dubious. I mean, if Hino had completely seized an angel, he would have already been using it during the pinch we were in last night.” Tsuchimikado thought for a moment. “I’ve got the feeling that Hino’s commands aren’t being completely conveyed to the angel, like there’s some radio interference. Quite the contrary, it’s looking like Hino is the one taking orders from this angel. So even if he had delivered a command in an important situation, it’s not a given that the angel would even listen.” Now that he mentioned it, after Hino was cornered last night at the end, Kamijou thought he remembered him voicing displeasure toward his “Angel.” Like, “Why aren’t you helping me?” or something. “Then on the contrary…we can’t ignore the possibility that when the live angel does arrive, it would be under the desperate Hino’s control, correct?” asked Kanzaki to Tsuchimikado, whose eyes smiled ferociously back from beyond his blue shades. “I mean, there’s no harm in always keeping the worst-case scenario in mind, right? Though if I’m going that far…heh-heh. The worst case would be having the angel as an enemy, I guess. All of human history could end here, nya~.” So he said, but it wouldn’t sink in for Kamijou. He couldn’t come to grips with these angels or one wiping out the entire human race thoroughly and completely. “Moving on. About the enemy’s strength in terms of his human relations…What is the probability that Hino belongs to some sort of organization or collective?” “Low, it seems like. If his ‘Angel’ commanded yesterday’s attack, then Jinsaku Hino coming by himself seems somehow pathetic. Though that theory wouldn’t hold up if they were working on other projects simultaneously, nya~.” “Hmm. The collaborator theory doesn’t hold much weight. Then, where do you think Hino went to receive treatment for his injuries? According to Kreutzev, she pulled two of his teeth and broke his left wrist.” “If he just straight up went to a hospital, they’d notify the authorities immediately. He couldn’t go to a back-alley doctor, either, since he just broke outta prison—he’s got no cash. All that’s really left is to rob an armored money truck to get that money or to start making preparations for a recovery spell, I guess.” “The only thing we know is that nothing is for certain. I’m worried about where he obtained that knife and the poison. He may have hidden them along with other equipment somewhere before being arrested, or they may have been weapons that somebody else supplied to him. He may have the money, and he may have given weapons to his comrades. I’m no psychological analyst, though. Speculating any further on his criminal profile might only serve us with mistaken information.” She sighed. When she stopped, the conversation came to a halt as well. Only the voice on the television resounded inorganically amid the somewhat oppressive air. Then, all of a sudden, the robotic TV voice livened up. Kamijou looked over to see a “breaking news” caption on the screen. Whoever that commentator was, he was chased off to the side, and in bewilderment, Miss Komoe looked over a news bulletin that someone had abruptly handed to her. “We have just received a follow-up on the Jinsaku Hino incident! Hino has fled into a residence in the Kanagawa prefecture, and the riot police have arrived and surrounded his location! Here’s—Can you hear me? Here’s Miss Kugimiya, on the scene.” The eyes of everyone present reflexively locked on to the TV. Even Misha leaned in silently, a step away from them, and looked at the picture. The screen cut to a new one. It was an average residential area, the kind one could find anywhere. The quiet neighborhood was lined with ready-made two-story houses. In it, there were curious onlookers, police officers holding them off, and the riot police clad in dress that made it seem like a war was about to break out, all causing a commotion. However, the members of the police and riot squad were all substituted with old men, kindergartners, and the like, giving Kamijou a pointed sense of unease. A guy who looked like he might be a produce seller was holding the microphone. “As you can see, all civilians, including reporters, are being barred from getting any closer than six hundred meters to the house in which Jinsaku Hino is holed up. Those around me appear to be evacuated residents. According to the authorities, Jinsaku Hino has fled inside a home and shut himself in, closing all the curtains and storm doors, making it impossible to see inside.” Tsuchimikado swore under his breath. His eyes, buried behind his sunglasses, showed flickers of what looked like irritation. Was the vexation because he had made a huge scene of everything or because of the house’s residents? “We do not know what’s going on inside. The riot police seem to be avoiding a frontal assault, as they cannot judge whether Hino has any hostages nor what kind of weapons he may possess—Wait, what might that be? A single passenger vehicle has crossed into the off-limits area. Could it be a police negotiator?” The screen cut to another picture again, this time showing an aerial view taken by a helicopter. Was the red-roofed house being displayed the hideout location in question? “Idiots,” Kamijou muttered, unable to help himself. Bringing a helicopter over the house Jinsaku Hino was shut up inside would needlessly provoke him. And Hino could be watching TV right now, too. The image was still zoomed in, so that wasn’t a problem, but if they broadcast video from higher up, it would tell him where the riot officers were located. …Wait…huh? Kamijou got a weird feeling from the video, but with abrupt and unnatural timing, as if something had intervened, the broadcast snapped back to the studio. Miss Komoe was in dire distress reading a manuscript describing Hino’s crimes thus far and urging nearby residents not to leave their homes. “Well, well, what a pain. If Hino gets handed over to the police, it’ll be a disaster for us to get him to undo Angel Fall himself. I’d like to grab the guy before they butt in, if possible. What should we do, nya~?” “Tsuchimikado! Do you have any idea what sort of result that would incur if he did have hostages?!” Kanzaki was unusually enraged, but Tsuchimikado turned her ire aside easily. “Nyaan~ Well, regardless of whether we are going to capture Hino or rescue his hostages, we have to actually go there first. Where’s the scene, though? Kanagawa prefecture’s a pretty big place, you know.” “Umm,” uttered Kamijou, timidly raising a hand. Kanzaki, in an annoyed voice, said, “What is it? If you wish us to bring you there, we refuse. I don’t know about Stiyl, but I haven’t the slightest intention of dragging you into a battlefield.” “Not that. There was something about that aerial image that’s bothering me.” “What?” “Well, I mean…But still, I guess…I might be mistaken, but even so…” “Explain yourself this instant.” “Yeah…My mom has this paragliding hobby…Oh, there’re a lot of kinds, I think. Was it the motorized kind? I don’t know. Anyway, you sit in this harness with a parachute on it, and you wear this huge propeller on your back and fly through the air. When I first enrolled, and I didn’t know the neighborhood at all, she brought me a whole pile of photographs she took from the sky.” “Aerial photographs? What do they—” —have to do with anything, Kanzaki was about to say before she caught on. “Yeah.” Kamijou nodded. “I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that red roof before…in aerial photographs of my house.” 3 The intense pain had stolen away his calm judgment. The death-row prisoner Jinsaku Hino held onto his left wrist, which looked like a rotten fruit, and spat into the darkness. It was still before noon, but light was prevented from entering because he had closed all of the windows, sliding doors, and curtains. It seemed like the riot police had cut off the electricity here. Even the lingering summer heat of late August was harsh, and without an air conditioner or any open windows, this building was hot as a greenhouse. The temperature in the room was so disgustingly high that he even began to worry that it could be causing his wound to fester, though he was pretty sure that was impossible. He had tended to his broken wrist using some wire and timber he found on the way here to make a cast. He couldn’t do anything about his extracted teeth. Strange pains quickened inside the heated openings of those wounds. Jinsaku Hino, entire face dripping with sweat from the heat and the pain, said alone into the darkness: “My Angel, my precious Angel…” As he spoke, he considered the situation. When he first became known as the “mysterious ritual killer who murdered twenty-eight people,” it had spawned numerous enthusiasts and copycats with the Internet at their core. The university student who built a website in support of the serial murderer, Hino, lived in an apartment near here. He had originally planned to go there after breaking out in order to ask for a place to hide and funds to run away, but… The room was powerless, and the TV was no exception. He didn’t know what was happening outside. It did seem like the nearby residents had been ordered to leave, though. That meant that his “collaborator,” who would have been living nearby, had also been chased outside their encirclement. “My Angel, my precious Angel…” What should I do now? Hino thought. There were no signs of the riot police rampaging in for the time being, probably because they didn’t know what it was like inside. If they knew he had no hostages, though, they’d come to attack immediately. Unfortunately, a careless bluff could end up backfiring and informing the riot police of his combat strength anyway. The important thing was to maintain their ignorance. Hino specialized in psychological attacks; he knew that the most troublesome thing was not a raging thug but a ghastly, silent figure. What should he do? How would he escape? He had reserves in the form of that crescent-shaped knife, but a single knife wouldn’t be enough to cut through their siege. “My Angel, my precious Angel…” Then, his right hand, holding the knife, began to move of its own accord. The knife’s tip immediately lightly pierced into Hino’s gut and ran around it, engraving more letters. The red oracle carving his flesh quietly showed him the answer. CALL AN AMBULANCE I see! I could do that! thought Hino, impressed. I knew there was no mistake in my precious Angel’s solutions. I was caught by the police once and sentenced to death, but I didn’t want to die—and my precious Angel granted me that wish. My precious Angel really will lead me to a happy future. With that out of the way, things were simple. Hino began his preparations, without even tending to the wounds on his stomach. The flashier his entrance, the better. 4 Touma Kamijou was an amnesiac. Therefore, he didn’t actually know where his house was. After he parted with Tsuchimikado and the others under the pretense that he was going to the bathroom, he recalled the aerial image he’d seen on TV. He punched some coordinates into his GPS-enabled cell phone and examined the general area. Fortunately, there had been a large shopping center in the image on the broadcast. Based mainly in the Kyushu region, there was only one establishment in the Kanagawa prefecture, so he pinpointed it right away. Nonetheless, even a cell-phone GPS couldn’t cover the names of every single residence, of course. They’d have to go to the general area and then figure out where all the commotion was centered around. After finding the spot, he left the bathroom and headed toward the beach this time. Ignoring the faces playing by the shore, he came to their parasol, a little apart from them. In a careless act, the bags with their stuff in them had just been left there. Kamijou felt himself momentarily stricken by guilt, but he sniffed out his father’s wallet, took the key to their house from it, and returned to the beach house Wadatsumi. On the first floor, he found Kanzaki waiting for him. “So, where is your home?” “Mm. It’s about twenty minutes away by car. It’d probably be safest to call a taxi.” “…I’ll say this again, but there’s absolutely no need for you to come along.” “…I’ll answer again, but that’s my house. I’m scared it’ll be wiped off the map if I leave it to all of you,” he insisted, though he was actually worried about them, too. Misha had repelled Jinsaku Hino with an overwhelming display of force last night, but that wasn’t enough to set him at ease. “If Hino’s a sorcerer, then my right hand can at least do something. We decided that yesterday, right? You know, when you tried to drag down my swim trunks?” “Wha…” Kanzaki didn’t know what to say to that, and Tsuchimikado and Misha came back. Kamijou couldn’t tell who Misha was substituted with at a glance, but Tsuchimikado was a performer with a shady history, wasn’t he? It should be on his mind what would happen should he run into the man in charge of the house. “Yo! So, Kammy, if you’re ready for this, then let’s get going. You’re the only one who knows your house, so you’re in the lead, ’kay?” Misha, as usual, didn’t say anything. And she didn’t have a drop of sweat on her despite this damn heat. “Ah, about that. It’ll take, like, twenty minutes from here by car. So it might be easiest to call a taxi.” “Ehh.” Tsuchimikado grunted in dissatisfaction. “All right, then until it comes, we’ll go hide somewhere, nya~. I’d be rolling on the floor laughing if the beach house guy who looks like Stiyl started makin’ noise.” No sooner had he said that than he disappeared out of the house with ninja-like agility. “Tsuchimikado!” shouted Kanzaki, running after him. Perhaps she wasn’t okay with him trying to get Kamijou involved so easily. Kamijou was startled, but for now, he decided to use his cell phone and call the taxi. After hanging up, he thought, Oh, right, who’s gonna pay the fare, I don’t really wanna, but even if I say we should decide with rock-paper-scissors, I’d lose right off the bat…Then, suddenly, he felt a presence at his back— —and there he saw Misha Kreutzev still just standing there. “Whoa?!” Kamijou cried out unthinkingly, totally having thought she’d gone somewhere. “Question one. What surprises you so?” “Well, nothing, really…,” attempted Kamijou, words caught in his throat. Misha’s unique, inquisitive way of speaking was superb at transmitting information, but it didn’t seem too suited for small talk. It would probably take five or ten minutes for the taxi to arrive. He couldn’t talk to Tsuchimikado or Kanzaki, since they’d vanished somewhere, but it would also be kind of awkward to just leave Misha here at this point. In the end, he was stuck with her, and an elevator-like silence descended upon them. Misha only had on a mantle atop her inner uniform, which looked like a one-piece swimsuit. Somehow, reminded that it was only the two of them, he couldn’t look at her face directly. Th-this pressure…This is awkward; I can’t manage a smile…! After just thirty seconds of silence, Kamijou gave up. His favorite expression was “lively dinner table.” His eyes darted here and there in search of some topic they could talk about. When he reached into his pocket, he got hold of something solid. He took it out to see that it was chewing gum. “Y-you want one of these?” he hazarded timidly. Misha didn’t move a muscle, though. “Question two. I assume from your question that this is something to eat?” “It’s something to eat, but you’re not supposed to swallow it.” “?” Misha tilted her small neck. He held the gum out to her again, and her hand moved without a sound. She took the chewing gum by its edge so that she wouldn’t touch his fingers. It was an act not wholly unlike the courtesy offered to customers by a convenience-store clerk as he hands over change. As if she’d never heard of chewing gum before, she stared intently at the foil-wrapped object for a while. At last, she hesitantly began to unwrap it. She put the gum to her nose and sniffed it a few times like a squirrel, then touched it to the very tip of her only slightly stuck-out tongue and licked it. Ugh…She doesn’t trust me. She’s totally trying to make sure it’s not poisonous. Kamijou may have been all smiles, but his heart was in tears. Finally, she tossed the gum into her mouth. As she bit it once, she froze. Maybe its texture was unfamiliar to her. She stood at attention for a moment, but before long, she started working her mouth again. It looked like she liked it. “Opinion one. Yes, this sweet taste is nice. A type of sugar is said to be the source of longevity—I am reminded of the blessing of God.” He couldn’t see her expression behind her bangs, but her mouth quirked into a tiny smile…or so he thought. At long last, he felt like he’d finally broken free of the heavy air between them. Kamijou gave a sigh of relief as he watched her, looking like a young child eating candy, but… Gulp. Her throat made a move. “Ubah?! What did you swallow it for?!” “Answer three. What’s with your reaction? Should I not have swallowed this? Is this a variety of chewing tobacco?” Misha just bent her head a little at Kamijou’s mostly reflexive cry. As if it was only natural, she abruptly held out her small hand. She was asking for another one. Is it all right? he wondered to himself as he explained the proper gum-chewing protocol to her. Well, I mean, you do put it in your mouth, so I’m sure it’s not toxic…He handed over another piece of gum. Again, she grabbed it by the tip. Incidentally, though he had no way of knowing, gum’s main ingredient is plastic. 5 The taxi arrived after a little while, and Kamijou and the others headed for the encirclement. The cabdriver (well, there was a substituted high school girl holding the handle) told them she could only bring them part of the way because of the police blockading the road, but they replied that they didn’t mind. Kanzaki’s katana was close to two meters long, so in order to fit it in the cramped vehicle, they had to place it through the middle, from the backseat to in front of the passenger seat. The driver made a bothered face at it, but the fact that it was a katana must have been scaring her too much to complain. They decided to alight from the taxi a little ways from all the bystanders. As her guests got off, the driver looked at Tsuchimikado. “Yer that idol, Hajime Hitotsui, right? My daughter is a big fan o’ yours,” she said with a pleased expression, bringing out a notebook. Tsuchimikado smiled and signed it in big, blocky letters. The taxi drove off. The huge siege would be placed at a radius of six hundred meters from the scene, if they took the TV info on faith. “An encirclement with a six-hundred-meter radius is fairly overblown, though. If the police force wasn’t able to maintain one at such a scale, they should have just made it tighter. I wonder why they are going through such lengths.” Kamijou’s answer in reply was matter-of-fact, though it didn’t feel too good to say it aloud. “They’ve probably got permission to fire. They’re taking care so that stray bullets won’t hit any civilians.” Nevertheless, even a thief hiding out in a bank during a robbery likely wouldn’t call for this enormous road blockage. This wasn’t in preparation for just one or two shots but for a chaotic, extensive battle involving automatic weapons and explosives. Leaving Europe’s EOD incident aside, this level of caution was unprecedented in Japan, and for a single criminal, at that. Was Jinsaku Hino really that special a crook to the police? Ignoring Kamijou’s thoughts, Kanzaki and Tsuchimikado continued with the conversation by themselves. “Hmm. The TV helicopter is gone as well. Perhaps it was warned off by the police.” “It looks like the mass media on the ground is all being stopped by the blockade. It’s weird that those hyenas are listening so patiently for once. They might be under some pleasant pressure from this whole thing,” Tsuchimikado suggested, adjusting his blue sunglasses. He seemed to be bothered by the term mass media that had come out of his own mouth. “Are you suggesting that someone in Japan’s police force knows about Jinsaku Hino’s Angel Fall? Wasn’t the existence of a Spiritual Ability Investigative Division Number Zero debunked as a baseless rumor in the report of the first half of the year?” “Unyaa. I don’t mean anything like that, just that maybe they simply don’t want to broadcast the riot police blowing Hino’s brains out with their .22s? There could be all sorts of reasons. Politicians have to value their image even more than idols do, after all.” “Hmm.” Kanzaki groaned, making an unpleasant face. She stared at the no-entrance zone. Misha remained silent, chomping on gum. Kamijou looked at the three professionals in sequence and said… “So what do we do? Aside from the strict police officers, there’re a lot of bystanders around. How do we get to my house? Pop open a manhole and go through the sewers?” “I have a feeling that the police would have thought of any sewer routes as potential escape paths for Hino. Well, whatever. In any case, let’s get over to Kammy’s house,” suggested Tsuchimikado incredibly plainly. Now Kamijou was flabbergasted. “How?” “What do you mean how? We’ll go through there, of course,” he said, pointing out the concrete wall around a nearby residence. The police force was blocking all roads in the vicinity. However, put another way, there were no policemen in places where there were no roads. The yards of the houses under mandatory evacuation—those spaces could not be seen from the road due to shrubbery and concrete walls. Kamijou followed after Tsuchimikado and the others, who were running from yard to yard quite naturally. They jumped fences, scaled walls, and ran from house to house. Of course, just that shouldn’t have been enough to escape the police force’s prying eyes. They had been assigned to the roads, certainly, but that didn’t mean that they were completely ignoring the house yards and the shadows cast by cars. If the police officers, by some chance, saw Kamijou and the others, they’d be in for a chase. Yes, if they were seen. By some chance—for example, adjacent officers talking to one another, one concentrating on his walkie-talkie, one looking at a stray cat that jumped out of an alley, one casually looking up at the sky. The group ran straight by the officers by taking advantage of those sorts of miniscule lapses. Moreover, they weren’t huddling in the shadows to wait for openings to appear. Those inattentive moments oddly all came one after the other and the very second the group ran past, as if it were all planned. As a result, the sorcerers ran at full speed through the encirclement without stopping for very much. And on top of that, they did so while dragging the amateur Kamijou along with them. Kamijou imagined video games, like the spy ones where you have to infiltrate a terrorist hideout without being found by enemy soldiers or the ninja action games in samurai mansions chock-full of bodyguards. He felt like they were going through a speed run of a game like that. However, there was one difference between real life and video games… …Stages that, from the start, were constructed with the player being able to clear it in mind… …and battlefields that, from the start, were designed not to let anyone break through. This may not sound like a huge difference, but the gap between them is virtually impassable. Kamijou again fully grasped the fact that Tsuchimikado was a professional after witnessing this kind of inhuman technique, even though he had felt so close to him before. It was a bitter sensation for him. As he penetrated the siege, humming a tune to himself all the while, Tsuchimikado felt somehow distant. After making it past the police force’s six-hundred-meter encirclement, they didn’t see anyone for a time. After running farther, however, a lot of people wearing body armor and hoisting polycarbonate shields started to show up. They were the riot police. Some of it seemed a little bit unreliable, though, given the old men and old ladies substituted in there. Tsuchimikado stopped and hid himself in the shadow of a parked car. Everyone else followed suit. “Let’s see here. Getting any farther in secret’s definitely gonna be tough. All of the riot police surrounding Kammy’s house have their eyes glued to it with binoculars. Looks pretty much impossible to make it there and take down Hino without anyone noticing.” “Impossible…Then what do we do?” pried Kamijou, who had never considered they might get stranded out here. “Well, it would be possible to use a technique to intrude on their consciousness—say, to put them to sleep or have them stand there in a daze. But if we do that, the police force outside could pick up on it because of their radio silence and think something was odd,” explained Kanzaki, falling silent afterward. She seemed to be carefully choosing her next words. “Instead, why don’t we go with shifting their focus?” Kamijou didn’t understand what that meant at all. Misha looked at Kanzaki without a word. “In other words, we could force the riot police to think a completely different house was actually Touma Kamijou’s. That way, no matter what happens at his house, the riot police would only report that there was nothing going on.” Shoo came the noise of something cutting through air. Around Kanzaki appeared metal wires, slender enough to be invisible without the sunlight glinting off of them. “A prohibition barrier—from that old summoning rite for house-protecting gods coming out of southeast Asia?” “Tsuchimikado, why must you reveal the trick in front of the audience?” She sighed. “In order to place the entire riot-police siege under the effect…With the way they are, it looks like I will need to construct the spiderweb with a one-hundred-meter radius. It will take me approximately twenty minutes to hang all of the string, so please conceal yourselves somewhere in the meantime.” “Aye-aye, sir!” answered Tsuchimikado reasonably, putting his fingers to the frames of his blue sunglasses. “In addition, Touma Kamijou, please do not touch the wires. Rather than a two-dimensional magic ring drawn on the ground, the prohibition barrier is a three-dimensional magic circle spread using wires. They’re the barrier’s core, so if your right hand touches it, the spell could be undone.” “Well, I mean, I don’t know why I’d go and touch one. They look like they’d cut my finger clean off if I tried. And besides, I just had my whole right arm cut off, so there’s no way I’m letting it get wrecked again so easily. I wouldn’t be able to blame that on pure bad luck, you know?” The emotion suddenly drained from Kanzaki’s face. “Unya~ But Kammy, didn’t that turn out to be fortune in the midst of misfortune during the Misawa battle?” Neither Tsuchimikado nor Kamijou noticed Kanzaki’s sudden change. “It’s not like it got cut off because I wanted it to. Jeez, that damn lolicon alchemist. Meeting someone like that was rotten luck in the first place, you know!” Click went the heels of boots. Kanzaki turned her back to Kamijou. Kamijou followed Kanzaki’s back with his eyes and felt a chill creep up his spine. She hadn’t done it with any particular intent. It was more like…her body moved out of some reflexive danger sense. Her back said nothing. “Wh-what’s up? You feeling sick or something?’ “Nothing,” came the reply. Without turning around, Kanzaki left them and went to spread the barrier. Kanzaki ran through the deserted residential area building up the barrier, pulling the wires around. Unlike Academy City, normal towns have telephone poles. They were suitable “fulcrums” for hanging the invisible cords over a large area. Using the poles and wires, she created a three-dimensional magic circle about two hundred meters across from a position slightly away from the riot police. By using this barrier, she could throw magic of a particular wavelength at them in order to blur their awareness. The shape of the prohibition barrier was akin to that of a wok, though Kamijou might call it a parabolic antenna. Kamijou. She scowled, recalling his usage of the words bad luck. He’s not to blame. Taking out my anger on him would be unreasonable. She understood this logically, but another part of her would never, ever allow things to be settled just like that. Kanzaki had bitter memories of the words bad luck. Bitter enough that she would choose never to hear those words again if she could. She ran on, in fear that it would pry open the sealed door to her memories. She ran farther, she ran stronger, she ran with more focus—as if absorbing herself in her work to try and turn her thoughts away from that which she feared the most. After Kanzaki ran off, Kamijou, hidden behind a parked car, breathed a sigh. He was surprised. At the sorcerers’ skill level, of course, but even more so at their quite haphazard movements. Putting it bluntly: What would they have done if Kanzaki couldn’t use that whatever barrier? Would they have been stranded here? That would have been the most boneheaded thing ever. There were scenes in action movies where even the cannon fodder “special ops” team would look at some maps and come up with a detailed plan before diving into a terrorist hideout. Now that he thought of it, back when he and the rune sorcerer took on the alchemist at Misawa Cram School, he felt like he didn’t have any kind of in-depth plans, either. When he voiced these concerns, mixed in with a bit of whining and complaining, Tsuchimikado answered as if it were so obvious even he should know. “Kammy, we sorcerers may call ourselves professionals, but we’re not some special-forces team with textbooks programmed into our heads, nya~. We don’t get any of that ‘organizational murder training’ or ‘collective educational ideologies’ beaten into us like they do in some countries. We’re amateurs when it comes to combat.” “What?” Kamijou frowned. What he said seemed like it had absolutely nothing to do with the sorcerers he’d met until now. “You’re kidding, right? I mean, Stiyl and Aureolus are the kind of people who could, like, take down a Type-90 tank head-on and smile while they were doing it. Those battle-crazed demons can’t possibly be amateurs.” Misha held out her hand to him wordlessly, and he handed over another piece of gum. Once again, she didn’t attempt to touch his hand, and she took the stick of gum like a convenience-store clerk handles change. Tsuchimikado looked at the two of them from his blue lenses. “I mean, it’s like this. Envision a middle school student holding the launch button for a nuclear missile. Those guys’ve got some exceptional magical skills, but that’s not because they went through military training or anything.” He grinned. “Haven’t ya ever thought it was strange, Kammy? How sorcerers, who should be trained as professionals, get caught up with personal feelings during battle? Like, the enemy telling them some shocking truth and they freeze in place on the spot, or sincerely lending an ear to what the enemy has to say, or sympathizing with the enemy, or insisting on honorable, one-on-one combat? There are all sorts of unnecessary things going on in sorcerer battles.” It was true that cold “human weapons” indoctrinated with military training would never listen to the words of an enemy or sympathize with them. They wouldn’t even let themselves be seen, much less fight face-to-face. Even if they’d just learned some kind of shocking truth, they’d shoot first and ask questions later. If they were told to kill the criminal, they’d shoot straight through the heart of the child he was holding hostage. That’s what it meant to be professional combat personnel. “Sorcerers are children in those terms. We’re kids holding knives. In fact, we’re crying, trembling brats complaining that the world has betrayed us.” Tsuchimikado exhaled slightly. “That’s what sorcerers are. Their wishes won’t be granted, and their God won’t save them even if they pray—the last thing those wayward people cling to is the ultimate dirty trick: sorcery.” “…” Kamijou didn’t respond. Tsuchimikado himself was a sorcerer. However cheerful he may act, he was still a sorcerer. There had to be a dried-up void inside the heart of this grinning young man. That applied to Misha, who was silently chewing gum, as well. “Sorcerers—particularly the kind who assumed a foothold in the nineteenth century, or ‘advanced sorcerers’—engrave our own desire upon our souls. I’m talking about our magic names. We carve into our hearts the Latin for the reason we study magic, the one wish we have that we would give our lives for. For me, it’s Fallere825, and Kanzaki’s is Salvere000, nya~. The numbers afterward are in case there’re doubles of the same term. It’s kinda like an email domain in that respect.” “…How—” —much resolution must they need for that? Kamijou thought. He only had vague goals at best, and even he was embarrassed to talk about his dreams in front of others. There’s always the fear that one’s dreams will be rejected, too. There are plenty of people who dream of being actors or professional athletes and then are always rejected as foolish by their parents or teachers and just give it all up. That’s how damaging it can be to a person to be denied a dream. Aren’t sorcerers afraid? Just how hard must they steel their souls to stick to their dreams without giving up, even when others deny them? “For people like them, it doesn’t mean much to belong to an organization. You just stick together because you have similar goals is all. Kanzaki and Stiyl would both leave the organization if it were getting in the way of their lives, no questions asked. Of course, now that they’ve got a hostage situation on their hands, I don’t think they’ll be leaving.” Dumbfounded by the word hostage, Kamijou sighed. The meaning of professional in terms of sorcerers was the complete reverse of the professional in terms of special forces. That much he understood. They were the polar opposites of special forces, who, with a simple order, would commit murder against those who disobeyed. Sorcerers didn’t listen to orders, they didn’t want money, but they still didn’t want to bend their own feelings, no matter what. Those were the concepts that these “professionals” stood at the pinnacle of. …Then that means… Kamijou looked off in the direction Kanzaki had gone. There was nobody there. Only the empty silence of the now-vacant residential streets prevailed. Had he thoughtlessly said something to damage her principles as a professional to her back, which looked somehow irritated as she left them? Perhaps Tsuchimikado caught on to his slightly anxious expression. He grinned and said: “Ah, I wonder if Zaky didn’t quite like how you used the words bad luck, nya~.” “Bad luck?…Did I say something like that?” Kamijou wondered, tilting his head. He looked at Misha, but she didn’t answer. She just kept chewing her gum. “Well, that’s because it’s basically a habit for you, nya~. You know, saying ‘rotten luck.’ Well, Zaky’s got it bad, too—she’s got her own ‘devil’s luck’ to deal with.” “…The devil’s luck?” “Yeah. You can take it to mean ‘good luck.’ What I mean is, Zaky can’t forgive herself for having such good fortune.” “She…worries about being lucky?” Kamijou’s face showed a complete lack of understanding. Tsuchimikado nodded and continued. “There’s this hidden Christian organization in Japan called Amakusa-Style, see. Before Zaky was born, it was decided she would rise to the top of their group and be their priestess. And that she was one of God’s chosen ones, a stigmata-using saint, of whom there are less than twenty in the world.” Tsuchimikado was smiling. However, it was a different kind of smile than his usual easygoing one. “She had the talent to succeed without effort. She had the popularity to stand at the center of people without doing anything. Everything she desired would be fulfilled, and unpredicted, happy miscalculations would happen every day before breakfast. She would somehow survive if her life were threatened. She would avoid bullets for no reason, and she would miraculously emerge unscathed even if a bomb went off right next to her,” Tsuchimikado went on, as if singing a lullaby. “…That’s why Zaky can’t forgive herself for being lucky. Perhaps she’s cursed by her devilish fortune.” “…I don’t get it. Why would you worry over something like that?” For someone who struggled with his own misfortune on a daily basis, it was quite the enviable position. “Who knows? Only someone used to it would understand.” Tsuchimikado smiled. But his face didn’t look the slightest bit happy. “But, Kammy, what must it feel like to be one of the lucky ones? You’d buy one lottery ticket, and you’d always, definitely win with it. Which means that you would be forcing those around you to pick the nonwinning ones, no matter what.” “…Oh.” “She was promised the position of priestess at her birth, but because of that, the people who wanted to be the priestess had their dreams shattered. She had the talent to succeed without effort, but it made those who worked their asses off fall into despair. She had the popularity to stand at the center of people without doing anything, but it pushed others outside the circle. Everything she desired would be fulfilled, and unpredicted, happy miscalculations would happen every day before breakfast. But on the flip side, those who had one single, unfulfilled wish—they’d be stricken with disaster. She would somehow survive if her life was threatened, but it made the weak fall before her in an attempt to save her. They became her shields for bullets and her armor for explosions, and thus many who adored and believed in her died.” “…” “If Zaky was a heretic, she probably wouldn’t have needed to worry. But she just couldn’t bring herself to forgive her own fortune. She couldn’t forgive it for making those around her unlucky, precisely because those around her were precious to her.” Tsuchimikado sighed. Then, looking up at the distant sky, he continued. “Eventually, Zaky couldn’t stand it anymore. She made everyone around her unlucky, and yet they would smile and tell her that fortune brought them together as they died. She couldn’t bear to watch it.” Kamijou was at a loss for words. If he recalled correctly, Kanzaki was from the English Puritan Church. That would mean she left Amakusa-Style behind. She was promised a high position at birth and was adored by all those around her. In spite of that, she wanted to stop making the people who believed in her unlucky, so she abandoned her position. She had people she truly wanted to protect, and she chose isolation in exchange for being with them forever, like she wanted. In the end, the only people who could stand side by side with her… …was a special group like Necessarius, which was so strong that luck had nothing to do with it. What must that feel like? wondered Kamijou. And he’d made her remember that. He’d said he had rotten luck, then laughed it off like it didn’t matter at all, like it was obvious. Tsuchimikado looked at his worry but grinned brightly. “But you don’t need to worry about it, Kammy. It’s Zaky’s own fault for remembering it, that’s all. Sinking into her own traumatic experiences on her own is pretty egocentric, nya~.” He waved his hands dismissively. “She’s just acting like a kid throwing a tantrum. There’s nothing really to worry about.” So he said, simply and smiling, but it did nothing to get rid of Kamijou’s blues. The conversation stopped for a bit. There were no particular sounds to be heard in the residential area, only dogs left behind here and there, howling as if it were the middle of the night. From very far away he heard the sound of a train running. After a while, Kamijou looked around the deserted neighborhood. “But still, isn’t she running late? She couldn’t have been caught by the police, right?” “That’s not gonna happen. Even if a squadron of tanks found Kanzaki, she could cut through them all just like that. She’s one of the top ten sorcerers in London, but the techniques she uses are kinda whimsical. Drawing barriers like this isn’t her forte, so it’s just taking her a while.” “…Yeah, you said you were a sorcerer, too. I still can’t quite believe it. Does that mean you wear priest robes like an occupational pastor or something?” “Hey, an undercover agent wouldn’t wear a uniform. That’s outside my area of expertise anyway. I got a Bible once, but it’s in a closet somewhere. My fundamental techniques aren’t based on Kabbalah, either—they’re Onmyoudou, a Japanese remix of Taoism.” “…Onmyou, you mean like yin-yangs? That’s pretty Japanese sounding.” “That’s right. But Kabbalah and Onmyou are actually pretty similar.” Tsuchimikado nodded twice, agreeing with himself. “For example, both western and eastern arts use a pentagram as a symbol to display the five elements. They split each attribute into a color and a direction, too, and when drawing a circle, they both place guardians in all four compass directions. Though, in the west they use the Four Archangels, whereas in the east we use the Four Shikigami, nya~.” “Huh.” This was all Greek to Kamijou, so he responded with a noncommittal “How mysterious.” “It might sound mysterious, but it’s no coincidence, nya~. It was the Heian era when Onmyou first originated and was mastered by the old man Seimei. At the time, after all, there were a lot of foreign products coming in from the Silk Road. That’s only my personal opinion, but it seems natural to think that he got some hints from there. The original idea for Onmyou came from the Kin’u-Gyokutoku-Shuu, which was a fortune-telling book that arrived from the mainland, nya~. If you’re interested, you can just get the Index to pull it out of her head for you. “Of course,” Tsuchimikado added, as if laughing at himself, “my expertise is feng shui, nya~. The techniques of looking at the land do differ greatly between the east and the west.” “Feng shui? You mean like Doctor XXX?” I feel like I’ve heard the term ‘feng shui master’ in an RPG as the name of a job or something. Geomancer, was it? Does that mean it’s a side job? “Ah, Kammy, just so you know, feng shui wasn’t an actual profession in this world originally. It was originally a job for Taoists in China and Onmyouji, or practitioners of Onmyou, in Japan.” Tsuchimikado counted off on his fingers. “Feng shui was one of their responsibilities. Feng shui masters, fortune-tellers, apothecaries, hexers, worshippers, calendar makers, water clock users, et cetera. Those are all separate occupations that split off from Taoism and Onmyou and became specialized in their own right.” “Huh. Is that like how part of Shaolin Kung Fu made its way to Okinawa and became karate?” “Yeah, sorta. It’s similar. The ‘tao’ in Taoism refers to a technique to hit people with your ‘qi.’ But if you apply that concept to the land or the world, you get feng shui. To put it more in your scientific terms, you can think of it like the Gaea theory, where the world is one single life-form,” he explained, remembering something. “Of them, I’m of the Black Style—specifically, I specialize in the creation of waterways.” “Waterway creation?” “Just as it sounds, I make waterways. The main goal of it is to protect castles and towns by drawing a huge magic circle using the flow of water. Using waterways as a circle isn’t really unusual, globally speaking. I mean, just look at Venice—the City of Water—though it’s not quite feng shui. Near the end of World War II, the old Japanese army apparently tried to build an enormous magic waterway circle connecting the underground bomb shelters, but it looks like that ended in failure,” Tsuchimikado mused, as if remembering the distant past. “My specialty is using waterways to make traps…or at least, it was. Well, I mean, that’s what Onmyouji are. They quietly hit you with shikigami from an unseen, faraway place and draw a circle around them to conceal themselves. In Heian-kyou, ancient Kyoto, its power wasn’t the reason Onmyou was feared. It was their cowardice, their underhanded tactics, their guile, their assassinations, and their taboo foul play.” As they were talking about all these things, Kanzaki returned, as if stepping from shadow to shadow. Her face was calm, and there was no longer any trace of agitation. “The prohibition barrier is active. The riot police surrounding the Kamijou residence have mistaken it for another unoccupied house three hundred meters away, and they should be breaking their formation.” “Well, then, Kammy’s house is deserted, so let’s go let ourselves in, nya~,” said Tsuchimikado awfully plainly, advancing forward at once. Misha and Kanzaki followed suit. Kamijou was left behind by himself, and Kanzaki suddenly turned around. “Why aren’t you coming? Or are you going to remain there until we’ve dealt with Hino?” “O-oh yeah,” said Kamijou, getting his butt in gear. He came up next to Kanzaki, who had waited faithfully for him, and followed after Tsuchimikado. As he ran, he thought about apologizing for resurrecting bitter memories for her, but… …No, if I apologize, it’ll just remind her of it again. If they were such painful memories, then it was better not to bring it up so carelessly. Kamijou shook his head and sped up to break free of Kanzaki’s somewhat mystified gaze. 6 A nameplate with KAMIJOU written on it was affixed to the end of the concrete wall, near the porch entrance and the doorbell. Kamijou and the others hid themselves in the trees at the house across the street and scoped out the Kamijou residence. No matter how they looked at it, it was an average, two-story, pre-built house constructed from wood. But in the broad daylight of this scorching midsummer’s heat, all of the shutters on the windows were closed, or else the thick curtains were drawn. That sight was unusual in and of itself. Despite having no memories, Kamijou wouldn’t have minded a bit of nostalgia for this place. Unfortunately, the building he was looking at was radiating gloomy malice that smelled of an incident, like a case of domestic violence or the kidnapping of a young girl. And in reality, that odd sense of his was not far from the truth. Inside that house, shut up as if to oppose the sunlight, was an escaped prisoner who had not only butchered twenty-eight people and offered them as sacrifices for devil worship–like reasons but had also caused Angel Fall and engulfed the whole world with it. Peeking through the windows blocked by curtains on the second floor from the shadow of a tree, Kanzaki quietly said, “Hmm. I cannot judge from here where Hino is. Perhaps Stiyl would have been able to locate his position via heat source detection,” she said with just a twinge of chagrin. “However, given that the house is locked up so tightly, I believe that Hino is unaware of our approach as well. If we are to begin our raid, then let us do so quickly. Where is the key to the house?” “Right here, nya~.” For some reason, it was Tsuchimikado who pulled a silver key out of his pocket. Huh? thought Kamijou, groping around in his own pockets frantically. It wasn’t there. He didn’t know how or when he did it, but the key had been stolen. Kanzaki, too, sighed in exasperation at Tsuchimikado’s pointless parading of his sticky fingers. “All right. Tsuchimikado, you’ll be the decoy. Break in through the front door and make as much noise as you can. When we hear you do so, Kreutzev and I will infiltrate secretly from another route.” “Aye, sir. Does li’l Misha have any objections?” Tsuchimikado asked Misha, and she responded with a brief, “Answer one, affirmative.” She removed the saw from her belt and, without a running start, leaped onto the first-floor roof in a single jump. She pressed herself beside a small window on the second floor. Kamijou had no time to be flabbergasted—next, Kanzaki bounded up. Again, without getting a running start, she just flew Straight up there, surpassed the head of Misha who was on the first-floor roof, and touched down on the second-floor roof without a sound. Then, she continued to run to the other side of the roof, toward where the backyard-facing porch was. This was ridiculous. Unreasonable even. It was like a child had asked, “What should I do so I can run really fast?” and the completely serious answer had been, “Graft an engine onto your body.” Some basic fundamental thing was totally out of whack. Seeing the two of them off as if their actions were totally natural was Tsuchimikado, who came out from the shadows of the plants. Kamijou, left behind, hurried and asked him, “H-hey. What am I supposed to do?” “Seeing as how Zaky totally ignored ya, I guess the best answer is for you to stay put, nya~?” He turned around. “You saw that, right, Kammy? There’re three of us inhuman sorcerers all packed into one place. You’ve got nothin’ to worry about.” “B-but…two of them are just girls, aren’t they?” Tsuchimikado turned his gaze to him, amazed, from out of his blue sunglasses. “Listen here. Zaky is a stigmata user, got it? She’s a human weapon—no, a weaponized saint. Can you really classify her as just a girl?” “…What did you say? Weaponized…saint?” “It’s just how it sounds. Kammy, I explained about idol-worshipping religions yesterday, right? The stuff about even if the cross on a church roof is a replica, it’s still got a degree of power as long as its shape and role are the same.” Tsuchimikado spoke quickly, in consideration for Kanzaki and Misha, who had gone on ahead. “That applies to ‘replicas of God,’ too. Humans were designed in the form of God, so a human ‘replica’ having the power of the original God is possible. Of course, that only applies to a select few people who are like God. Such as her, who was proclaimed at birth to be a saint within whom would reside godlike power. While her stigmata, her proof of sainthood, are unleashed, she can temporarily use superhuman power. Don’t you think she could take out an entire castle by herself right now?” Tsuchimikado left him with a “See ya,” as if to push him away, then sidled up to the front door. The silver key in his hand was quietly inserted into the keyhole. Left alone in the shadows of the foliage, Kamijou pondered over this to himself. Is it okay to leave everything to them? Sorcerers are definitely combat professionals. Misha did corner him last night, and it wasn’t even a contest. So maybe it’s no big deal. But… Do they really understand…how difficult it is to fight in the dark like that? During enclosed battles in the darkness, the most dangerous thing is not an enemy’s attacks but friendly fire. Two silhouettes appear, struggling with each other in the pitch-black, and suddenly another appears from the shadows. The scariest thing is if the one mistakes the other for an invisible enemy and shoots them. Kamijou was by no means a pro at night combat, but when he resolved himself to fight rather than run during squabbles in the city, he always tried his best to choose an open spot for it. He was always wary of ambushes. And in all likelihood, Jinsaku Hino knew. He knew how to fight in the dark. He knew what to do to set ally upon ally. He might be overestimating Hino because of last night’s attack, but he’d gone through all the trouble of closing the curtains and shutters to create a dark zone. If he didn’t think he was going for pitting allies against one another, he’d probably regret it. Damn…That means the stronger the ally is, the more dangerous it becomes! Kamijou chased after Tsuchimikado and ran to the porch in front of the house, nearly hitting his head on a birdhouse on a low-hanging branch of a tree next to the front door. He caught up and came beside him. “Wait, Tsuchimikado.” Tsuchimikado swore under his breath, but as they were right about to invade, he had no time to spare having a leisurely argument with him. He said this to Kamijou in a voice that didn’t make much noise but somehow oddly stuck in his head: “…I’m gonna break in, so you hide yourself behind me. But don’t think you’re safe just by doing that. Be extra careful to watch your back, aight?” Kamijou more than understood that there were no “safe zones” where they were going. He nearly retorted like a child, but Tsuchimikado inserted the key into the keyhole and turned it. He quickly inhaled once, then flung open the front door. Bang! The drumfire of the door slamming echoed throughout the vacant neighborhood. Uh…?! Kamijou nearly said something as he peered past the door. A lukewarm air came dribbling out from the inside, where it looked like someone had poured darkness in. It was the heat of a sealed-up building. What’s more, there was an odd smell to it. It stung his nose and eyes, like there was a tank of rotten crayfish that had been left alone until the water inside got cloudy. Hiss came a strange noise from the darkness that sounded like the air being let out of a tire. Though the opened front entrance was square, it felt more like the mouth of a giant, bizarre creature. “…” Tsuchimikado didn’t exchange any careless words with him at this point, of course. He silently moved forward. Kamijou followed after him, setting foot into the artificial darkness. Behind him, the front door closed automatically with its springs. The stuffy, hot air wrapped itself around Kamijou. It felt like the lair of a beast. The curtains and shutters had been closed in order to block light from entering, but the dark it created wasn’t perfect. There was light leaking through the gap between the thick, opaque curtains and the windows. If Hino had taped the curtains to the window frame, he might have made it completely dark, but it looked like he hadn’t. But… It was because it wasn’t pitch-black, because it was dimly lit with light only creeping in, that it caused needlessly unpleasant ideas to come to mind. It was because they could see the outline of objects that the totally normal umbrella stand looked like a crouching figure. If silhouettes were to appear in the shadows of the walls, they might raise a hand against them no matter who they were. The stuffed tanuki atop the shoebox and the red mailbox ornament cast eerie shadows, too, and the souvenir wooden sword against the umbrella stand looked like a human’s severed arm or something. It seemed like if they pulled up the floorboards in the hallway there’d be a corpse there, and if they ripped off the wallpaper over there it seemed like they could find an old wooden door nailed shut to keep it closed. There were a lot of souvenirs about that looked somehow religious, like a big mask from South America and a small moai ornament. They were probably things Touya had bought on overseas business trips. After coming through the front door, there was a single glass door to the right, the stairs to the second story in front of them, and two doors beside the staircase. One of them had a lock on it. Was it the bathroom? What about Kanzaki and Misha…? Kamijou looked above him but didn’t hear anything. Of course, if he could hear them from here, there wouldn’t be any point to their sneaking around. Tsuchimikado began to walk. He headed for the bathroom door, opened it without a sound, and checked inside. Judging by how he closed the door again, Hino must not have been in there. Kamijou came up behind him as he was about to open the door next to it. When they opened the door, the sound of hissing, like air escaping a balloon, grew stronger. He didn’t know what it was, but the sharp scent that seemed to stab into his skin intensified as well. The door led into a changing room. He saw the silhouettes of a washer, dryer, and counter. To the side was a sliding door of frosted glass, and he imagined it led to the bath. Tsuchimikado opened it slowly and took a gander. The room with the bath in it had transformed into a dark space filled with moisture. There was a urethane turtle figure, maybe a bath toy, lying on the floor. It looked less like a bathroom and more like a basement with a kidnapped child in it. Tsuchimikado was peeking inside the empty tub. Kamijou returned his gaze to the changing area. In the mirror on the counter was vast, clouded darkness. It was like an ocean at night. On the counter were hair spray and a T-shaped razor next to each other, and next to those was a chess piece, or a little vial made of glass cuttings, or something. Was that one of Touya’s hobby souvenirs he picked up overseas, too? Tsuchimikado nudged him to the side and started for the back of the changing room. There looked to be a kitchen beyond it. …Wait. A terrible premonition jolted through him. The weird scent, the sound of air leaking, the kitchen, the smell that got stronger as they got closer, that odd smell coming out of the kitchen stinging his nose, it was… “…(Tsuchimikado, come back!)” Kamijou had tried to whisper this, but it sounded to him like his voice made a huge noise within the darkness. His heart skipped a beat at its unexpected volume. However, Tsuchimikado said nothing. He looked at him, his eyes asking, What? “…(It’s gas. That smell is probably propane gas. The gas main is open!)” he explained. Tsuchimikado’s shoulders jerked; he was startled as well. Hino just might have seen them coming to invade and gotten out of the house one step ahead of them. He might have been planning to spray fire into the building and blow them all up at once (though he might have thought they were the riot police). Kamijou slowly stepped back from the kitchen, trying to get farther away from it. Tsuchimikado took a step out as well, probably having finally decided staying here was a bad idea, and— —sway. Behind Tsuchimikado—from the kitchen—without a sound, a thin silhouette appeared. “Tsu—” —chimikado, Kamijou tried to shout, but the silhouette had already raised its crescent-shaped knife up in an arc above the young man’s head. Who could have anticipated it? In this situation, when the building was brimming with propane gas and the whole thing could combust at any moment. The very person who had opened the gas stop had hidden himself in the most dangerous place—the kitchen. He had slipped into a psychological blind spot for Tsuchimikado, who still hadn’t noticed that death was approaching his back. Without a sound, the knife came down on Tsuchimikado’s head— “!” —but right before it got there, Kamijou rammed into his body, pushing him to the side. The changing room was narrow, so the latter collided with a wall before going even one meter. However, it was enough distance for him to avoid the knife descending on him. As the blade split through the dark, the arm Kamijou had used to shove Tsuchimikado was racked with a scorching pain. He’d been cut. But it was shallow. He disregarded it and stared straight ahead. The silhouette—or rather, Jinsaku Hino—whipped the knife back up at him, going for his face from directly below. As the silvery edge threatened him, Kamijou grabbed whatever his hand could find nearby and tried to stop the strike. However, before his right hand could take hold of anything, a sudden, nightmarish thought came over him. Despite this area not being fully saturated with it, propane gas was floating around in here. If he were to use a hard object to block the knife, the sparks it would create would blow up the entire changing room! “You…fucking psycho” Then, at that exact moment, Tsuchimikado, who was beside him, kicked away the knife about to stab Kamijou in the neck—or, more accurately, the right hand holding the knife. It slipped out of Hino’s hand and fell onto the washing machine. It immediately put Kamijou on edge, but no sparks flew from it. Now was their chance. Kamijou would try and tackle Hino in the stomach to take away his freedom of movement. However, Hino opened wide his slimy, spittle-filled mouth… “Ghee! Ghbee” …and cried out like an animal. When Kamijou looked at the glutinous inside of his mouth, seething disgust caused his body to lock up for a moment. Hino didn’t let that go and ran past Kamijou fiercely, grabbing his knife from the washing machine and bursting out of the changing room toward the entrance. “You won’t get away” shouted Tsuchimikado, giving chase. Kamijou at last broke free of his paralysis, which hadn’t lasted even a second. He wondered whether to follow him, but instead he rushed into the kitchen. The smell of gas in there was terrible. Just a bit of static electricity from his clothing might set the whole thing off. There were all sorts of metal and electrical appliances that could trigger an explosion, like the microwave, upon which three cereal-box-prize-looking tiger toys were stationed; the refrigerator, on which magnets in the shape of wooden amulets were hung; and the stainless steel sink, in which seven small glasses each in a different color were sitting. Kamijou shivered. Anyway…anyway, I need to close the gas main! I’ll pass on my life’s story involving my dying in an explosion in my own house! Kamijou felt around in the near darkness and found the gas burner covered by an aluminum oil guard. He nervously looked behind it and saw the stopcock loosened from the gas hose. He twisted the stopper with the care of someone cutting the red cord on a time bomb. The eerie hissss stopped then. No explosion happened. Kamijou sighed in relief, then flung open the back door. The direct, blazing sunlight scorched his eyes, which had gotten used to the dark. He felt the toxic gas slowly start to flow out. The boiling midsummer’s air outside, which he had thought to be deathly, felt extremely refreshing. Just then… …he heard a deep, male shout and the sound of violent footsteps. Kamijou looked around. It was probably connected to the living room; he heard the sounds of struggling from beyond the dim light. It was Hino and Tsuchimikado. He also heard the pattering of feet from the second floor. He supposed Kanzaki and Misha had decided it wasn’t necessary to conceal their footfalls any longer. Kamijou ran through the kitchen and burst into the living room. It was a wide room. There was a large TV in one corner and a sitting table a measured distance away from it. The floor was covered with a low carpet. On the wall opposite the television was a cabinet, and in the open space next to that was a component stereo that looked less than current. Tsuchimikado and Hino were between the TV and the table. Hino was flailing his knife around thoughtlessly, but Tsuchimikado didn’t defend; he dedicated his energy to evasion and awaited an opportunity to counterattack. There were various objects here and there that would be able to stop the knife blade, like an ashtray and a shelf clock, but he didn’t seem to want to make sparks and ignite the propane gas floating around. Could he be thinking that far ahead…? Kamijou was again struck by just how terrifying Hino was. By always shouldering the risk of certain death, he psychologically bound and restricted his opponent’s movements. He had never seen a fighting style like that before. He didn’t think he could offer any assistance here. Carelessly exchanging blows with a weapon carried the possibility of making the propane gas catch fire, and he didn’t have enough confidence in his agility to plainly dodge the phantasmagorical knife work of someone well versed in murder. He couldn’t come up with any ideas, and maybe Tsuchimikado realized it. “Kammy, stay away” As soon as he gave that loud shout, Hino’s focus strayed ever so slightly toward Kamijou. But in that moment… Amazingly, having used the unmoving Kamijou as bait, Tsuchimikado took a big step up to Hino, whose attention had wavered, and drew into close range. “?!” Hino, speechless, hurriedly attempted to swing his knife around, but he was too late. Tsuchimikado had tread to practically zero distance, and he turned his waist to swing his arm around with all his body weight. Rather than a thrown fist like a brawl, he brought his elbow out and unleashed an elbow strike at Hino’s chest. With one full-power attack, he could even crush his ribs and pierce his lungs. It appeared to Kamijou as nothing less than a technique meant to kill. Jinsaku Hino… …as Tsuchimikado’s hammer-like elbow strike approached his defenseless breast… …in an unbelievable twist, brought up his crushed left wrist to block Tsuchimikado’s heavy attack. Squish came a sound like someone chewing up rotten fruit. Kamijou’s eyes snapped shut. Despite turning his face away out of reflex, a splash of some kind of lukewarm fluid flew onto his cheek. Once again, he came to doubt Jinsaku Hino’s sanity. The pure revulsion caused his feet to quiver. An unpleasant sensation swept through all ten of his fingertips. “Ghee-hee!” came Hino’s delightful laugh, and that was when Kamijou realized this was a psychological tactic as well. He had presented Tsuchimikado with a scene that he would reflexively avert his eyes from even though he knew he shouldn’t, and he had made him stop moving. Whoosh! sliced the crescent knife through the air not a moment later. “Tsuchimikado!” shouted Kamijou, unable to return his face to the horrifying scene— —crunch! The sound was not the slash of a knife but the impact of an elbow strike. “Ah?” Kamijou accidentally made a stupid-sounding grunt and opened his eyes. Tsuchimikado hadn’t flinched at all. He hadn’t averted his eyes. He hadn’t let his body lock up. He stared squarely and honestly at the enemy right in front of them and without hesitation had rammed his hammer-like elbow into the man’s face. “So what?” he taunted on top of all that. He grinned. It wasn’t an insane smile, or a broken smile, or a relieved smile. He asked this with only his usual, ordinary, normal, everyday smile. It hadn’t affected him. It hadn’t affected him in even the slightest, most minuscule way. After Hino’s body took the brunt of the sublime elbow strike, it flew backward like it had been hit by the full swing of a metal bat. He flew two meters without bouncing. His body, now a wreck, rolled across the floor, slammed into the cabinet, and finally came to a stop. “Now, then! Let’s ask him what we need quick, nya~.” Tsuchimikado bared his front teeth ferociously. A bestial glint was in those eyes behind those blue sunglasses. Hino appeared to be conscious, but it also didn’t look like he could counterattack. He had lost his sense of balance, and he could only just barely manage to move his limbs. His figure looked like an insect on the verge of death. Most of Kamijou’s thought processes came to a halt presented with such an extreme situation. Finally, Kanzaki and Misha made it down from the second floor. “Are you okay, Tsuchimikado?!” Kanzaki cried, then scowled. “…What is this stench?” Kamijou’s absentminded thoughts began to move again. Propane is heavier than air, so the two of them must not have noticed it on the second floor. Misha, as soon as she saw Hino’s face, tried to draw the L-shaped nail pullers from her belt. Tsuchimikado grabbed her hand before she did. If she caused any sparks while swinging them around, they’d all be in huge trouble. Kamijou informed them about the gas. Kanzaki stiffened a little and said, “We will carry out Jinsaku Hino’s interrogation. Would you mind going to open the windows to get some ventilation right away?” Her point didn’t seem to be mistaken at first, but he asked anyway. “Hey, then, wouldn’t it be safer just to take him outside the house?” “We will interrogate him in here until we have the necessary information. We do not want to give Hino an opportunity to escape after we’ve come this far.” “I see,” replied Kamijou, convinced, nodding for the moment. In that case, it would be best to get all of the gas out of the house as soon as possible. If a desperate Hino had planned to blow himself up, that would cause some problems. Kamijou visited the important places on the first floor, opening the windows and doors. Everywhere he went, he saw tons of ethnic souvenirs from overseas. Kamijou was utterly amazed at how bad a hobby it was, but now wasn’t the time to be thinking about it. After he had opened every window as far as possible, he returned to the living room. The shutters and curtains had all been thrown open, so it was no longer a dimly lit haunt. It was just a living room, like one you’d see anywhere. “…I don’t know.” When he returned to the living room, that’s what he heard Hino say from his limp position up against the cabinet. “What? What is that? Angel Fall? I don’t know. My precious Angel, what are these people saying? I don’t know. Please answer me, this is strange, it’s really strange, why is this happening?” Mumble, mumble. Mumble, mumble, mumble. He muttered at length in a low voice like an old, heat-stretched tape replaying over and over. It sounded like he was talking to himself, but it also sounded like he was trying to get his hooks into his sorcerer interrogators. Tsuchimikado smirked, gave a broad grin, and smiled quite pleasurably before beginning. “Now then, let’s start your hearing. The condition for your surrender is for you to spit up the ritual site of Angel Fall, so remember that. Let’s begin. First, I guess we’ll dislocate your elbow. A dislocated arm actually stretches out farther than you’d think, but let’s try doing it one centimeter at a time, nyan~?” His happy tone of voice instead sent a chill up their spines. Beside him stood Misha, silently, with a screwdriver in her right hand and the saw in her left. Just by changing the time of place, those do-it-yourselfer tools had changed into heart-stopping, brutal weapons. However, even that didn’t alter Hino’s attitude. He continued to mutter to himself, drained of strength, his limbs sprawled and unmoving. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.” His voice, completely flat, without any sort of modulation, sent a chilling surge through Kamijou’s spine. The index finger on Hino’s outstretched hand twitched like a caterpillar. It moved on its own, almost as if there were electrodes stuck into the muscles of his arm. It looked like it was drawing some kind of letters on the low carpet, but without ink or anything, they didn’t stick. However, Hino looked at the carpet his finger was running across with somewhat satisfied eyes. “Ah, my precious Angel, my Angel…” An uncanny incantation spilling out of his saliva-filled mouth. Kamijou put in his own question without thinking. “Your angel?” “Yes, my precious Angel is always in my heart. My precious Angel will answer anything I desire. My precious Angel is without wrong. My precious Angel will surely bring me happiness as long as I follow!” Right after he finished, Hino’s hand convulsed and writhed. Kanzaki seemed to be on guard against his hand’s movements. “Yes, my precious Angel is always right! My precious Angel opened the gas stopper; my precious Angel said if I use an ambulance, my precious Angel said I could get away in the confusion.” Kamijou looked at Jinsaku Hino’s stomach. The words CALL AN AMBULANCE had been carved in English into it as wounds with his own knife. “…A literal translation would be to get an ambulance, nyaa~?” translated Tsuchimikado, following Kamijou’s gaze himself. I see, he thought. Originally, the riot police were the ones who were supposed to come in here, not Kamijou and the others. And those riot squad members would be decked out in perfect defensive gear with their helmets and body armor. Jinsaku Hino would retreat to a place with a sturdy structure, like the bathroom. Then, when the riot police broke in, the gas would light up and explode. Then he’d steal the equipment and clothing from the fallen officers. After that, if he pretended to be injured and called for an ambulance, he could easily get through the encirclement…perhaps. His “Angel” would tell him the answer to anything he wanted to do. However, Kamijou thought something about that was strange. Hino’s finger was writing words with such intensity it might break. In a sharp, cautioning voice, Kanzaki commanded, “Stop your hand, Jinsaku Hino. This is not a warning, it is a threat. If you don’t comply, I will take out my katana.” Kanzaki’s voice was cold as steel, but Hino’s hand did not stop. Scribble, scribble. Scribble, scribble, scribble as it recorded letters on the floor. “Hee-eeh-hee. I-it won’t stop. I can’t stop my precious Angel.” Hino himself appeared to be terrified of Kanzaki’s edged voice. His face looked like it was crying and laughing at the same time, but his right hand kept on moving like a separate creature. …? Suddenly, Kamijou was bothered by this situation. He felt like he’d seen it somewhere before…No, he felt like he’d heard about this sort of thing from someone before. No, wait, it was his summer classes. Miss Komoe had said something during his summer makeup lectures, didn’t she? If he recalled correctly, there was research on whether one body could use two abilities— “—That’s right, a split personality.” A person’s nerves are all part of one network. When a part of it is blocked off to seal away unbearable memories, for example, it’s schizophrenia. And when that blocked-off part of the network is able to move independently, it’s dissociative identity disorder—in other words, a split personality. They said so on TV, too. Jinsaku Hino was diagnosed with multiple personalities during a previous incident, and there was controversy over whether he had the ability to be responsible for it. People with split personalities don’t necessarily fall under the pattern of the person completely switching between “personality A” to “personality B” like they do in manga and movies. Depending on the case, the two personalities could be “crossed.” For example, there was a story about a split personality patient being scared that his reflection in the mirror would talk to him. From the doctor’s point of view, the patient would actually be talking to the mirror himself. Personality A wouldn’t realize that personality B was controlling his mouth. Hino’s right hand was like that, wasn’t it? What if Jinsaku Hino had a split personality, and his other personality was controlling his right hand? “Hey, Angel Fall’s side effect was that the inside and outside of people get switched, right?” Kamijou asked Kanzaki. “Then what happens with a split personality? Does one ‘outside’ count for two ‘insides’ in that case?” “Huh?” Kanzaki looked at him. “Well, I mean—” He immediately followed up, looking into her eyes. “—is it possible that in Jinsaku Hino’s body, personality A and personality B got substituted?” “Wha…?” All present froze. “If the two personalities inside Jinsaku Hino’s ‘exterior’ swapped places, he wouldn’t appear to be any different from the outside, right?” Kamijou chose his next words carefully. “What would happen? Should we count someone with a split personality to have ‘two interiors’? Or should we count the entire split personality as one ‘interior’?” “…” Kanzaki was at a loss. She looked at Tsuchimikado and Misha. They didn’t have an answer, either. After Angel Fall had happened, they hadn’t met anyone with the unusual characteristic, so they wouldn’t know. But in reality, it was Jinsaku Hino who broke the silence first. “Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-shut up! Y-you’re one of them, too! You’re saying the same thing as that weird, tattling doctor! My precious Angel is real! My precious Angel is really real! Why don’t you understand that?!” From Hino’s point of view, rejecting the existence of his Angel was probably more painful than taking his life. After all, Hino wouldn’t hesitate to kill people if it was for his “precious Angel.” Unfortunately, his excuse didn’t do anything for him. In fact, it just made Kanzaki and the others look at him even more sharply. “By a doctor…A doctor said that? That your Angel is just a split personality? Is that what you were diagnosed with?” “Hee!” Hino quivered in fear at those words. “S-stop it, don’t look at me like that. That doctor didn’t understand anything. He just didn’t know anything, that’s all!” Hino was trembling like a child, and Kamijou couldn’t help but avert his eyes. Though Hino was a murderer, guilty feelings still pricked into Kamijou somewhere. “It’s…decided, then.” Kamijou heaved a heavy sigh. “Jinsaku Hino has a split personality. The reason he doesn’t appear to be substituted is simply because personality A was substituted for personality B on the inside. “In other words—” He finished in an agonizing voice… “—Jinsaku Hino isn’t our man.” 7 Everyone present froze. Jinsaku Hino, who was completely caught up in all this, had passed out. Perhaps it was because of the extreme pain, or perhaps it was the shock of discovering that the Angel he believed in wasn’t real. Any clues they had as to who was behind Angel Fall had now been lost. They had wasted a lot of time, too. They didn’t know where to start next, nor did they even know whether they had enough time to be moving around randomly. “Then if Jinsaku Hino is not the mastermind behind Angel Fall, who could be the criminal?” “Don’t ask me…” Kamijou had nothing to say. They were at a total dead end. They could do nothing but continue to stand there in a daze, without any idea on where they should go from here. Or so they thought. “Hm?” Kamijou had looked away from Kanzaki’s stare, but he thought he felt something wrong with the scene. He didn’t know what it was, though. He drew nearer to where his eyes were looking—to the cabinet Hino was leaning against. The cabinet was filled with miscellaneous objects. It seemed like Touya went on overseas business trips quite often; it looked like he had just thrown the souvenirs he had collected from all over into there haphazardly. Among all of them, there was one single object that couldn’t be classified as a souvenir. It was a framed picture. The amnesiac Kamijou didn’t know for sure, but he had apparently moved to Academy City after graduating from kindergarten. Therefore, the people in the picture were a child Kamijou and a younger version of his parents—or, at least, it should have been. “This is…” The “substitution” didn’t apply only to flesh and blood; it extended to photographs, as well. The fact that Blue Hair was able to wear Index’s habit just fine probably followed the same logic. Everything related to the person—from their clothes and shoe size to their fingerprints and blood-borne information to photographs and videos of them—had been substituted. Those memories inside the framed picture had been distorted by Angel Fall as well. Kamijou was still depicted as his child self thanks to the effects of his Imagine Breaker, but in place of his mother was depicted Index, and in place of his father was depicted— —in place of his father, there was… “…Wait,” he muttered automatically. The sorcerers caught up to his gaze, and they also realized a single fact. What about Touya? Why wasn’t Touya Kamijou substituted? The words they had just exchanged came back to him as if from the distant past. —There was just one person who evaded difficulty. —Is it so strange to think that this young man is suspicious? His strange feeling unearthed more odd feelings from his memories, one after the other. —The “distortions” had their epicenter right on you, Kammy. It’s spreading out from you. —But despite that, for some reason, you stand at the center, alone and unharmed. All of the oddities finally resolved themselves into a single direction and became a question. —In all fairness, Kanzaki and I got lucky. —Well, it’s the distance and the barrier. That’s right, he thought. If even magicians, even professional magicians in their world, were almost all caught up in Angel Fall, too, then… “Could it be…Dad?” Kanzaki knotted her eyebrows at the words he breathed. “What did you say? Are you telling me that he isn’t ‘substituted,’ that he’s the real thing?” Kamijou, however, couldn’t figure out where Kanzaki was headed with that question. But he just needed to think about it calmly. As long as Angel Fall had even substituted photographs and records, then if one were to collect documents regarding “person A” after it happened, the only thing they’d have is data on “other person B.” Even if Touya Kamijou were to appear plainly in the data, it would only be appropriate to judge that he was a different, substituted person. Then, Misha, standing beside him, gave a cold sigh. “Answer one, a self-answer. Target now specified. All that’s left is to prove the theory…Opinion one. It was a very uninteresting theory.” No sooner had she said that than she jumped out of an opened window into the garden and ran off somewhere. “Wait, Misha Kreutzev! What do you mean by target?!” shouted Kanzaki in a panic, but she was already long gone. Her target. That was the word she spoke as she looked at the photograph of Touya Kamijou. “…Tsuchimikado,” Kamijou began, taking a deep breath. “Is it really that rare that someone would remain normal like I have in Angel Fall?” “Well, actually, you should be the only one.” Tsuchimikado looked at the photograph from his blue sunglasses. “Even if someone draws a circle like I did, and even if you were deep in the lowest levels of St. George’s Cathedral or the Mont Saint-Michel Monastery like Zaky here was, you couldn’t have completely escaped from its effects. For example, even though I know I’m Motoharu Tsuchimikado, for all intents and purposes, I’ve been nice and swallowed up by the name tag reading ‘Hajime Hitotsui.’” Right. That was why Touma Kamijou had been mistaken for Angel Fall’s perpetrator. Angel Fall should have spared no one in the world from its effects. If there was just one outlier, just one person who hadn’t been affected by the grand sorcery at all, then… …then, in other words, that was the answer. If the person who hadn’t been affected at all by Angel Fall was the criminal, then… Kamijou looked again at the framed picture on the shelf. He stared at it hard. There was a family of three depicted in the photograph. He knew that Shiina Kamijou had been substituted with Index. He also knew that he himself hadn’t been substituted because of the Imagine Breaker. However… Touya Kamijou was not substituted. And there was no way he had the Imagine Breaker like Kamijou. If it was strange that not everyone the world over was engulfed by the effects of Angel Fall…and if this was just like a computer virus, a man-made “means”…and if only the one who spread it was unharmed… “Damn it…” But that was the only possibility that remained. “Damn it” The criminal was Touya Kamijou. Touma Kamijou couldn’t help but hate himself for having come to that conclusion. 8 Angel Fall was apparently a grand sorcery, a spell that needed a barrier and a magic circle. So if they just destroyed the magic circle, they could stop Angel Fall. “…Go back, Kammy.” However, Tsuchimikado, without even trying to look for the ritual site that might be in this house, suddenly came out with that. “I’ll look around here. Kammy and Kanzaki, you two go protect Mr. Touya.” Kamijou frowned at his usage of the word protect. These two were members of the English Puritan Church. Until now, anyway, they had cooperated under the pretense of stopping Angel Fall’s mastermind, but why did they choose to side with Kamijou now that they knew his own flesh and blood, Touya, was the criminal? Tsuchimikado looked at his face and smiled bitterly. “Don’t underestimate us, Kammy. Our objective is to stop Angel Fall. If we can accomplish that without killing anyone, that’s the best solution, nya~.” He did a one-eighty and spat the next words. “That damn Misha is too hasty. It’s not like killing him will solve this for sure anyway.” Killing him. Kamijou’s spine froze at those words. Misha never showed any hesitation when chasing a criminal. She had broken Jinsaku Hino’s arm and ruthlessly pressed a saw blade against Kamijou’s neck. Would she do that to Touya Kamijou, too? He had no idea what sort of logic enabled him to cause Angel Fall… …but did that mean she would mercilessly bring down hammers and pincers against Touma Kamijou’s father? “Damn it, that’s bullshit…” She would not hesitate. That was the reason Misha Kreutzev came here, after all. Because she was trying to solve the problem by killing the criminal behind Angel Fall. “…That’s bullshit, damn it” Kamijou screamed. The person he should have been taking his anger out on was no longer here.