The heavy door had barely finished clanging shut when Umi's voice cut through the Odaiba wind again, stopping everyone—including Kanata, who had been staring blankly at the exit—dead in their tracks.
Umi didn't look at the door. Her gaze stayed fixed on the shattered remnants of the Nijigasaki club, but her posture had shifted from righteous fury to something deeply complex, weathered, and heavy with a truth none of them were prepared for.
"We saw everything," Umi said, her voice dropping into a quiet, resonant tone that carried across the rooftop. "We didn't just walk up those stairs. We have been watching. We... u's."
Setsuna's head snapped up, her tear-stained face registering utter bewilderment. "Umi-san... what do you mean?"
"Six of us are with him," Umi stated bluntly, the words dropping like lead weights. "Six of us are with the 'Deadbeat' too. You think your pain exists in a vacuum, Nijigasaki? You think you are the only ones whose lives were completely upended, whose histories are tangled up in his?"
A suffocating silence descended on the roof. Rina's board slipped from her hands, clattering against the concrete. Karin froze, her analytical mind completely short-circuiting at the math, the legacy, and the sheer scale of what Umi was implying.
"Three of us have even given birth to his children," Umi continued, her voice unwavering, though a flicker of fierce, maternal protectiveness crossed her features. "I have a boy. Maki has a girl. Kotori has a girl. And the other three—Nico, Eli, and Nozomi—are right there with us, bound to him just as deeply."
"No..." Ayumu whispered from the floor, her voice barely audible over the wind. She looked up at Umi, her mind racing, trying to reconcile the legendary, pristine image of u's with the raw, messy reality of the man who had just walked out the door. "That's... that's impossible. Why? How could you—"
"Because unlike you, we realized that cutting him to pieces wouldn't put our own hearts back together," Umi interrupted, looking down at Ayumu with a mixture of stern discipline and profound pity. "You thought he was a monster who only left wreckage in his wake. But he is a man who carries a burden heavier than any of you can comprehend. We chose to build something from the ashes. We chose life, and family, over a perpetual vendetta."
Emma sank back against the railing, her hands covering her mouth. Shioriko stood paralyzed, her ledger of logic completely shattered. The legendary predecessors—the pillars upon which the entire modern school idol world was built—hadn't just crossed paths with Agung. They had woven their entire lives, their bloodlines, and their futures into his story.
"He is going to Numazu because his work isn't done," Umi said, turning her eyes toward the Tokyo skyline. "And he will go to Hong Kong because he will not stop until he has answered for every single ghost in his past. But he will *never* answer to a knife. If \mu's could find a way to move forward, to create life and forgiveness out of the chaos... then you girls have absolutely no excuse for the display I just witnessed."
She looked back at Kanata, who was staring at Umi with a mixture of awe and overwhelming relief. The anchor wasn't alone anymore. The weight she had been carrying in silence was a weight that six of the most famous idols in history were already bearing, standing tall beneath it.
"Pick yourselves up," Umi commanded the room, her voice leaving no room for negotiation. "The 'Deadbeat' has left the building. Now, it's time for you to decide if you are going to remain ghosts, or if you are finally going to grow up."