Location: Yuuki Residence – Evening
Lala sat by the window in her room, hair damp from a shower, wearing only a light robe. The moonlight crept across the floor in slanted white lines, and the soft hum of electronics filled the silence.
She wasn't alone.
Not really.
She hadn't been for a long time.
"Haruna," she whispered.
A beat.
Then the voice returned—clear, sweet, but echoing inside her skull like a thought not her own.
"I'm here."
Their connection had grown more seamless since the Seed's full bloom. They could speak without speaking. Feel each other without touch.
"You felt it too, didn't you? This shift…" Lala said.
"Yes."
They didn't need to say the name.
Scourge.
He wasn't just a suit anymore. Not just a presence.
He was with them.
And part of them.
And yet...
Lala frowned. "Why does it feel so... quiet now?"
Scourge hadn't spoken since this morning. No mission updates. No pulses. No suggestions.
Just silence.
Like he was waiting.
"Maybe he wants us to act," Haruna whispered. "To see what we do... when he's not pushing."
Lala's fingers curled into the windowsill.
"Or maybe he's testing us."
She didn't say it with fear.
She said it with curiosity.
Downstairs
Mikan dried the last of the dinner dishes and placed them quietly in the rack. Her eyes darted toward the stairs again.
Rito had gone to bed early, drained from another awkward day of being ignored.
She hadn't.
She walked softly up the steps and stopped outside Lala's room.
Voices.
Two of them.
But only one person inside.
She narrowed her eyes.
That suit wasn't just alive.
It was multiplying.
Elsewhere
In a vacant, unlit corridor beneath the school's west wing, a piece of biomass twitched.
Left behind. Split off. Growing.
It pulsed once, mimicking breath.
Then a whisper rippled through the air like static.
"Next host... identified."
[System Update – Hidden Thread Online]
New Target Seed Path: Yuuki Mikan
Status: Observation Only
Suitability: Unknown
Emotional Resistance: High
Risk: Elevated
Scourge remained silent.
But his web never stopped expanding.