"I basically understand the situation." After listening to Eriri's long and rather vacuous explanation, Asakura nodded knowingly. "I already have a solution to the problem."
"You understood that quickly and even prepared a plan?! My opinion of you has improved!"
Eriri suddenly became excited. "What do you need me to prepare? Salt? Shimenawa ropes? Wooden stakes?"
Are you going to fight a yokai or hunt a vampire?
"Take this." Asakura, complaining inwardly, stuffed a small slip of paper into the girl's hand. "The path to salvation lies within."
The girl eagerly took it out to look.
→ A Psychiatrist's Business Card
"Why?!" Eriri slammed the card onto the ground.
The movement made Asakura think of the sticker-slamming animations in Gag Manga Biyori.
"Because based on what you've told me, her daily habits haven't changed—even the small ones that others would find hard to notice (at this point, Asakura looked at Eriri with a complicated expression). Therefore, it's not a case of possession—where another consciousness takes control of the body—but rather that something has gone wrong with her own mind. In that case, shouldn't we find someone better suited for the diagnosis?"
He held out his hands.
"No... although it feels like that, something is definitely wrong!"
Eriri tried hard to explain her feelings, but she simply couldn't put them into words.
It seemed the girl was not the type to be good at descriptions.
Actually, Asakura could feel more or less that she was being quite restrained in front of him. After all, normal people harbor a certain degree of awe toward supernatural phenomena they cannot understand. He suspected her true nature was likely even more headstrong or, rather, tsundere.
Watching her anxious look, Asakura rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
To be fair, if the person standing before him were just an ordinary Muggle student, Asakura would likely offer a few perfunctory words and find an excuse to kick them out.
But Eriri was special.
This specialty didn't refer to the fact that she was turned into a child by the Holy Grail during the Sobu High school festival.
Well, though that was indeed very special.
Rather, it was because even without Asakura specifically checking, during these two encounters, he could already feel that she possessed magical power—and a quite massive amount at that.
In Asakura's eyes, the amount of mana in Eriri's body right now was likely no lower than the level when he first met Ruri—roughly around five hundred units.
What caught his attention even more was that even though she had accumulated such mana, there were no signs of a magical surge or going out of control.
This meant that Eriri's current magical capacity was still nowhere near its limit!
In terms of mana capacity, Eriri had surpassed all the witches Asakura knew, jumping straight to the number one spot.
In short, the "intuition" of an ordinary Muggle is meaningless—usually just a lie manufactured by endocrine hormones—but the intuition of a witch possessing a vast amount of mana is trustworthy to a certain extent.
"Do you have any leads regarding your friend's changes?" Asakura continued to ask patiently.
Asked this, the girl knit her brows and fell into deep thought.
"Though I think it's unlikely..." Eriri guessed, "She's actually writing a light novel. Could it be because the novel's performance isn't great, so she abandoned herself and became like this?"
"What's the name of her book?" Asakura asked.
"I think it's Love Metronome." Although Eriri said "I think..." she answered without a hint of hesitation; she clearly knew the answer very well.
"I see..." Asakura took out his phone and checked the online reviews for the novel.
Currently, they looked quite bad.
While not exactly a flood of negative reviews, there weren't many positive ones either. Most comments were things like "dull..." "too slow-burn..." or "descriptions are too trivial."
"I see, it doesn't seem impossible."
Asakura nodded. "By the way, is it really okay to expose the fact that she's a light novel author to me so casually?"
"It's fine. Although she has no intention of announcing it or bragging to her classmates, she doesn't actually plan on hiding it. She even said that if her book becomes a hit, she wants to hold autograph sessions and things like that."
"In that case..."
"In that case?" The girl looked at Asakura.
Asakura looked at the ground.
Following his gaze, the girl once again saw the psychiatrist's business card on the floor.
Eriri's face darkened. "Can you please be a little serious?"
"Let me ask first: will the changes in your friend pose a threat to her life in the short term?" Asakura confirmed with her.
"Probably not..."
Eriri shook her head.
Though Kasumigaoka Utaha's personality had indeed become strange—one could even say introverted and cowardly—honestly, compared to the past where she spoke sharply and easily offended people, she felt much safer now...
"In that case, I'm heading out on a trip in two days. I'll put your request on hold for now."
Asakura said, "It's not a major issue anyway. I'll help you solve it when I get back."
"Eh? How can you do that!"
Eriri's face fell, clearly dissatisfied with Asakura leaving for a trip.
Asakura was certainly not the type to put a vacation above someone's life, but right now, he really didn't know this "Kasumigaoka" she mentioned, nor did he know what her personality was supposed to be like.
Even if he met her now, he probably wouldn't be able to tell heads from tails.
So, Asakura planned to drag the time out so Eriri could continue observing her.
If it really was a mental illness, he truly wouldn't be able to help—you don't take on porcelain work without a diamond drill.
But if she was possessed or had her soul taken over, once she showed even a hint of a slip-up, he would step in and take care of it.
Furthermore, once this trip was over, his True Sight would probably be mostly recovered. That would be the best tool for dealing with these hard-to-detect problems.
"As compensation, I won't charge you a consultation fee this time..." Asakura said solemnly.
"Were you actually planning to charge money?!"
"Didn't you say you'd give me a reward?"
"I'm an advocate of 'he who does not work shall not eat'."
"Then give me back my black tea!"