"Defendant Su Yuzu—"
"Do you understand your crime?"
"…"
Judging purely by the layout of the hospital room, Tsukiyomi Fuya — lying in the bed and staring at Su Yuzu with the eyes of someone who had lost all will to live — should have been the center of the room.
But… standing there in the middle of these girls, these women, Su Yuzu had the distinct feeling of being locked in a cell, besieged from all five directions.
Tsukiyomi Fuya, dead-eyed and done with life.
Sakura Koishin, smiling brightly.
Sakura Mai, lips pressed thin, one hand braced against the wall.
Soga Yura, indignant, utterly unable to work out how her Yuzu had turned into this shameless philanderer.
And… the little rabbit, ahoge swaying as she enjoyed the show.
Su Yuzu sat down obediently in front of the bed, knees together, palms flat on her thighs, and looked up meekly at Sakura Koishin, who was perched sideways on the edge of the mattress in a posture that somehow radiated charm from every angle.
Her expression conveyed one single message: I'm being good.
Sakura Koishin was examining Tsukiyomi Fuya's condition.
The call for help from the base had been about as urgent as a call could get. Sakura Koishin, who had been in the middle of something sweet and lingering with Tennouji Jurei, had gotten into her car and driven straight to the temporary base where Su Yuzu and the others were stationed.
After all, this was a Fifth Sequence Esper.
Losing one in a mere field exercise wouldn't just be a loss for Imperial Capital University — it would be a staggering loss for the entire Tokyo metropolitan area, for the whole human front line.
Although… thinking about it, Sakura Koishin threw a suspicious glance at Su Yuzu.
Maybe she was imagining things.
But she couldn't shake the feeling that this girl always seemed to turn up on the edges of enormous Events.
From the very first Aberrant attack event, to the tragedy of the K423 Laboratory, and then not long ago… the Aberrant incursion Event at Tsukimisato.
No—
Not even the edges.
That whole chain of Events looked less like Little Yuzu had wandered near them and more like they had all unfolded around her.
Still, this "Seat of Evil" business was probably just coincidence… probably.
Looking out the window at the sky still packed with searing cloudbanks that glowed like burning coals, like Flowing Lava spilling across the heavens, even Sakura Koishin couldn't say for certain.
As she checked over Tsukiyomi Fuya, surprise crossed Sakura Koishin's face.
Because according to the medical report the base had sent her earlier, Tsukiyomi Fuya's condition could only be described as a Candle Guttering in the Wind.
The base's Healing-type instructors had already prepared a lethal dose, ready to send Tsukiyomi Fuya to heaven before she could fall into the Abyss.
And now?
Tsukiyomi Fuya's body had miraculously healed itself.
The cluster of "Seat of Evil" Catastrophe Crystals — which the report described as violently destructive to an Esper's body, an outright annihilating disaster — had vanished completely from inside her.
Sakura Koishin suspected that even if the "Seat of Evil" herself had come in person, she couldn't have cured Tsukiyomi Fuya this thoroughly.
Only Kirishika — the rule-type Esper from that same era as the "Seat of Evil," the one who existed mostly as rumor — could have torn a cluster of the Seat of Evil's Catastrophe Crystals out of Tsukiyomi Fuya's body in so short a time.
And the price… would have been Tsukiyomi Fuya's Fifth Sequence power, erased right along with them.
Before coming here, Sakura Koishin had braced herself either to collect a corpse or to settle in for a long war of attrition.
She had handled a case like that once before.
The person who'd been injured survived only by sacrificing nearly half their body.
The cost was that their power regressed, and it might never recover for the rest of their life.
But then again—
For that particular person, maybe that had been a mercy.
"Ms. Tsukiyomi really is fine now." Sakura Koishin withdrew her hand, still wreathed in a faint cherry-pink glow, and the look she turned on Su Yuzu was strange indeed.
On the bed, Tsukiyomi Fuya snatched her hand back at once and burrowed her entire body under the covers.
She stared out at the dense crowd packed into her hospital room.
And she caught it in the air — that faint scent, like gardenias just opening. The smell of Shame. For Tsukiyomi Fuya, this was a public execution, plain and simple.
But—
She was still a Fifth Sequence powerhouse, one who held the stars in her hand and looked down upon the sun and moon.
She glanced at Little Yuzu, sitting primly in the chair beside the bed, so perfectly well-behaved that she might as well have been a different person entirely from the wicked girl of a few minutes ago.
Tsukiyomi Fuya tried to calm herself, to reclaim some of her dignity — or at least her composure.
"She's just a little dehydrated."
"Plenty of rest the next couple of days, plenty of warm water, and she'll be fine."
"Oh, that reminds me—"
"Do make sure she gets her salt and electrolytes back up."
The instant Sakura Koishin finished speaking, the hospital room went terrifyingly quiet.
Everyone present except Sakura Koishin herself had, at one point or another, taken a haymaker from Lady Fate.
Taking two in a row wasn't exactly rare, either.
In fact… there was a certain girl bracing herself against the wall whose legs were still trembling when she walked.
Not a single person in that room failed to understand exactly what Sakura Koishin meant.
The gentle, reserved poise Tsukiyomi Fuya had only just managed to reassemble collapsed on the spot. Her shoulders shook beneath the blanket, and pale violet eyes shimmered with wounded tears — but with Sakura Koishin and Su Yuzu both looking at her with such "concern"…
All she could do was part her cracked lips and answer in an unsteady little tremble, "Okay."
Tsukiyomi Fuya could only pray that young Soga Yura and Sakura Mai — and that little rabbit — hadn't understood what Sakura Koishin was talking about.
But quite obviously—
Her hopes came to nothing.
If the girls crowding in to watch had been a public execution before, then now Tsukiyomi Fuya felt she might as well change her name, change her surname, and move to a distant land.
Though… if Tsukiyomi Fuya had known that this sort of thing was nothing unusual for these girls, she might have felt differently.
Back in the day, Su Yuzu had bullied the Saintess of the Holy Royal Court so badly that the woman lit up with Holy Light right in the middle of the street and blinded an entire block of onlookers. Who knows what Tsukiyomi Fuya would have made of that.
She'd fallen in with the wrong crowd!
Truly, she'd fallen in with the wrong crowd.
After that near-uncanny silence, Sakura Koishin turned her gaze back onto Su Yuzu.
"I heard from Mai that…"
"Little Yuzu drew the 'Sword of Erasure'?"
It sounded like she was asking about Su Yuzu drawing the Sword of Erasure. But the way Sakura Koishin's eyes kept sliding back and forth between Su Yuzu and Sakura Mai…
And the way the Knight Princess, for once, ducked her head in embarrassment — clearly, whatever Sakura Mai and Sakura Koishin had discussed had nothing to do with any sword.
It was just… Sakura Koishin looked at her own Mai, barely able to stand upright.
Then she looked at Little Yuzu, bright-eyed and bursting with energy, a girl who had drawn the Sword of Erasure, gone three hundred rounds with the "Seat of Evil," and then come back and casually devoured a noble, beautiful flower like Tsukiyomi.
Exactly who owed whom responsibility here, Sakura Koishin suddenly found very hard to say.
Of… of course…
It was also entirely possible that her little Mai hadn't inherited her father's martial valor at all, and had instead taken after her mother.
Brave as anything when it came to picking fights.
And then, having personally provoked the other party's "wrath," getting cut down off her horse without the slightest difficulty.
"Does Little Yuzu want to take responsibility for Mai?"
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