It had been almost half a month since they returned to Keigunen Private Academy.
Sitting in her office, Unohana Chiyo gazed out at the sky.
Beyond the window the sunlight was brilliant, the blue running clear all the way to the horizon.
Nothing at all like that night, when the whole sky had seemed to catch fire — flames so fierce they lit up almost the entire Tokyo metropolitan area, the cloud layers themselves burning like some blazing Purgatory.
Unohana Chiyo almost missed that sky.
Because Little Yuzu had borrowed the power of "Saint Michael" to meet the "Seat of Evil" head-on, the holy radiance that had blanketed the skies above the Tokyo metropolitan area for the past twenty years had vanished completely.
The whole Tokyo metropolitan area had gone busy overnight.
The Investigation Bureau and the Assault Department alike had been mobilized. With the shelter of Saint Michael's radiant power gone, countless people were worrying about the same thing — whether the Aberrants would come pouring in.
"The Abyss of Eternal Smiles," which had once come within a breath of breaking the Tokyo metropolitan area wide open… would it march on them in force?
But… everything stayed calm.
Lately the Tokyo metropolitan area had been as quiet as it was more than twenty years ago, back before Kujou Iruka fell into the Abyss, back in an age when that unspeakably horrific Aberrant catastrophe had not yet happened at all.
Unohana Chiyo did enjoy this kind of peace.
And yet a faint premonition kept tugging at her.
The serenity settled over the Tokyo metropolitan area now was nothing more than the stillness before a storm.
A tempest was gathering, slow and patient, around the Tokyo metropolitan area — around Little Yuzu.
The air had that heavy hush that comes before mountain rain.
The storm… was almost here.
Looking at the sky outside, washed a clean, deep blue, Unohana Chiyo found herself thinking back to that day — the day after Little Yuzu had "barely" managed to defeat the "Seat of Evil."
The day she ran into Sakura Koishin at the field hospital inside the base.
Unohana Chiyo had never seen Sakura Koishin looking so thoroughly wrecked.
The woman who had once held the Sword of Erasure feared nothing under heaven or earth; anyone who rubbed her the wrong way was liable to have that Sword of Erasure hauled over for a personal greeting.
It was just that… very few people knew the other side of her.
For all that swagger, for all that she came across as overbearing to the point of absurdity, Sakura Koishin folded very easily where it counted.
In her relationship with Tennouji Jurei, she was always the one being handled.
Hopeless and alluring in equal measure. Nothing about her was hard except her mouth and that Sword of Erasure.
Sakura Koishin had looked startled to see Unohana Chiyo standing there.
Startled, it seemed, that Unohana Chiyo of all people would turn up somewhere so dangerous.
Unohana Chiyo had only turned her gaze, quietly, toward Little Yuzu — the girl wearing the fondest expression, apparently deep in some conversation with Tsukiyomi Fuya.
"Honestly. I was the teacher who got here first, you know~"
"Why is it always Tsukiyomi that Little Yuzu goes running to?"
Every so often, that was the sort of thought that surfaced in Unohana Chiyo's mind.
Still, for the moment, things were quiet.
Unohana Chiyo lay back in the old rattan lounge chair in the PE department office, basking in the warm, mild afternoon sun.
Sunlight this fine made for a perfect day to run a PE class.
And as Unohana Chiyo recalled… today happened to be the PE period for Little Yuzu's class.
She could have been out there on the field for it, whistle in hand, watching her students tear up and down the track in the sunshine, breathless and full of energy.
A pity… she was the one saddled with the persona of the sickly PE teacher.
The weather was this good, and her period had been borrowed by the math teacher.
Unohana Chiyo felt a small twinge of regret.
Yuzu… how long had it been since she last came by the house?
Even Lian missed her.
For days now the cat had been tugging at her trouser leg, wearing an expression that seemed to be asking exactly where the girl she'd brought home last time had gotten to.
Come to think of it, Yuzu did seem quite fond of Lian.
Perhaps she could use the cat as a pretext and get Yuzu to come stay over for a while again.
It was right then that Unohana Chiyo caught the patter of quick footsteps — bright, energetic, unmistakably a girl's.
A shadow cut across the sunlight.
A clean, crisp citrus fragrance reached her, the kind that lingers pleasantly.
Only two people she knew carried a scent like that.
One was Little Yuzu. The other… was Little Yuzu's Sister.
The Soga clan's reigning Eldest Young Lady, Soga Yura.
But Soga Yura would never come looking for her.
Smiling, Unohana Chiyo opened her eyes — just in time to catch the girl braced with both hands on her knees, bent forward with one mischievous little hand outstretched, entirely convinced she'd caught her teacher napping and fully intending to startle her.
Anyone else lying in that rattan chair would probably have caught the girl's hand right then and turned the prank straight back on her.
But Unohana Chiyo wasn't that sort of person.
At least—
not yet.
The woman's pretty eyes, a faintly odd color under the sunlight, settled on Su Yuzu.
"Yuzu…"
"What brings you all the way over to me today?"
Su Yuzu looked at Unohana Chiyo.
Maybe it was her imagination, but she kept thinking there was something distinctly aggrieved in Unohana Chiyo's tone — the sulk of someone who had been thoroughly overlooked lately and wanted it noticed.
Blunt as ever, Su Yuzu simply sat herself down on Unohana Chiyo's lounge chair.
There wasn't much room on it. Even with Unohana Chiyo doing her best to swing her legs aside and clear a little space, the two of them still ended up looking like Su Yuzu had planted herself in her teacher's lap.
Su Yuzu explained what she was there for.
She was pushing enrollment paperwork through for Kirishika and Kirikashi.
Ever since Su Yuzu had carted Kirishika and the "Seat of Evil" home with her, the two of them had been staying in the room across the hall from her dorm.
Partly it made them easier to keep an eye on. Partly it was so Kirishika and the "Seat of Evil" could take a proper look at this new world of theirs.
So Su Yuzu had simply gone ahead and enrolled them both.
Kirishika's name would probably have to be Soga Kirishika now.
As for the "Seat of Evil"… Su Yuzu had given her a name too: Kirikashi.
Judging by the "Seat of Evil's" reaction, she didn't object in the slightest. She might even have liked it.
Officially, Su Yuzu had passed her off as a drowning girl she'd fished out of the sea.
A girl who happened to have a name and a face all but identical to Kirishika's.
Nobody on earth would believe there was nothing fishy about that.
But Su Yuzu was the group's darling, and so everyone simply covered for her.
Besides—
no one was ever going to suspect that the little slip of a girl who looked even more harmless than Kirishika, the one who went meek as a lamb the second she stood in front of Su Yuzu, was the very same "Seat of Evil" who had turned the bay into a bloodbath not long ago.
Beaming, Su Yuzu caught hold of Unohana Chiyo's hand and pitched her voice into a wheedle.
This was the Su Yuzu Offensive.
However—
It was right at that moment that a rapid clatter broke out.
Quick, disciplined footsteps, coming down the corridor outside the office.
Bang!
The PE department office door was shoved open again.
Su Yuzu and Unohana Chiyo both looked up. The person who had barged in was someone Su Yuzu knew.
That Superintendent named Lin Jingjing.
"Sister Jingjing~" Su Yuzu started to call out, then caught the severe look on the young woman's face and the frantic warning in her eyes.
"Sis… ter?" Su Yuzu's voice died where it stood.
Lin Jingjing held up the warrant in her hand for Su Yuzu and Unohana Chiyo to see.
"Soga Yuzu—"
"You have been charged by the Investigation Bureau on suspicion of involvement in multiple Aberrant attack cases."
"Please come with us."
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