Tears seemed to well up in her eyes, bit by bit.
Her consciousness was gradually drifting toward a blank.
Sakura Mai's shoulders trembled and shook. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined Lady Fate would land such a heavy blow on her at a moment like this.
Known facts—
Lady Fate's "Blessing" could only descend once per day.
So... if one day's Blessing descended at the stroke of midnight, at 23:59:59, and the next day's Blessing descended at 00:00:01, then what would happen was, by now, self-evident.
Gripping the bedding tightly, she listened to the girl behind her, whose voice sounded ever so concerned yet unmistakably carried the faintest trace of little-devil mischief.
The Knight Princess's long, slender legs rose slightly onto their toes, quivering, while her upper body had already collapsed against the bedding of the capsule room.
Her lake-clear eyes brimmed with moisture.
She could dimly grasp it now—
Sister Yuzu had done this on purpose.
She was the one who had manipulated the gods.
Ever since that morning, when she herself had coerced Sister Yuzu—back then everyone but her, her kouhai Saotome and Soga Yura and all the rest, had received Lady Fate's Blessing, yet she alone had been left without.
Even then, Sakura Mai had already caught the faintest whiff of something ominous.
At the time she had wondered whether it might be Lady Fate's punishment.
Letting her taste the ultimate bliss, then abandoning her there, deliberately paying her no mind.
Little did she know... it would turn out to be this.
"Sister Mai?" Su Yuzu gently poked Sakura Mai's thigh.
She watched the girl before her jolt as if something inside her had been switched on. "It's nothing."
"Mm... uu..."
"It's nothing." Sakura Mai's shoulders seemed to crumple inward, her whole body somehow ramrod-straight yet curled, taut yet balled into a knot.
The little rabbit's small head peeked out from her room.
She wrinkled her little nose, as if... she had caught a whiff of something strange in the air.
Even Soga Yura plainly sensed that something was off with Sakura Mai.
For all her poise, Sakura Mai, under the gaze of everyone around her, nearly burst into tears on the spot from sheer Shame.
Th-th-this... this was nothing at all like before, in the shower room.
Was this Sister Yuzu's revenge on her?
"Sister Mai, you really ought to rest for a while." Su Yuzu's voice carried a distinctly meaningful edge.
Though... right now Sakura Mai wanted nothing more than to slip off to the changing room and put on a fresh set of clothes.
Just then, Su Yuzu could hear the biting sea wind howling, the tide surging, colossal sky-high waves crashing against the embankment and the great barrier shields with a roar that was nearly thunderous.
All at once, Su Yuzu felt that something was very wrong.
She ran swiftly out of the dormitory, with Ms. Unohana Chiyo close on her heels.
By all logic, the one with the drive to fall in behind Su Yuzu at once should have been Sakura Mai.
But clearly—
At this very moment, Sakura Mai had lost that capacity for action.
Even the little rabbit, trotting and hopping out of the capsule room, had already followed Su Yuzu out; even the ever-frail Soga Yura had made it to the doorway of the room. Sakura Mai... only barely steadied herself, leaning on the sliver of restorative power that the not-yet-triggered [Lone Bravery] still afforded her.
Soga Yura glanced back at Sakura Mai.
Sakura Mai still wanted to change into clothes better suited for moving first.
The girl braced herself against the wall, shuffling her feet forward inch by inch.
Su Yuzu ran quickly out of the dormitory. The entire base had already sprung into operation moments before.
She gazed out toward the bay.
On the pitch-black, fathomless ocean, a thin silver-white line had suddenly appeared.
The black seawater churned up rolling white breakers, and the towering wall of black water looked like a rampart of water reaching all the way to the sky.
Alarms had already begun to wail over the city.
But they weren't the alarms warning against Aberrants—they were warning the citizens... to stay far away from the sea.
By rights, it should have been low tide.
Yet the seawater, after receding with an unnatural swiftness as if it were being drained dry, instantly reared up into sky-slapping waves and came surging back almost madly.
And besides... if it were only the tide, that would be one thing.
But Su Yuzu plainly sensed that wrongness within the seawater itself.
A violent wrongness.
She stared far off at that white line.
Between the waves... she seemed to see pair upon pair of Dark golden vertical pupils, staring almost madly toward the land.
The seaside fishing huts bobbed on the black tide like matchboxes, then were smashed to splinters by the waves with contemptuous ease.
Su Yuzu understood: the sovereign who dwelt upon the seabed had truly awakened.
She had raised her gaze toward the land and begun her assault.
And this... was merely the beginning of that assault.
A flicker of panic ran through Su Yuzu.
The foundation of this nation beneath her feet had never been stable to begin with; there was no telling when some natural calamity might sink it into the Pacific.
The Seat of Evil's offensive was utterly unlike Kujou Iruka's.
Had it been Kujou Iruka who broke through the Tokyo metropolitan area, the Tokyo metropolitan area would have become nothing more than a stretch of lush green woodland, much like the countryside next door.
Steel and concrete swallowed by a sea of forest, Aberrant Walking Husks running rampant.
But even under such conditions... a fair number of people would still have some hope of survival.
But... the Seat of Evil was entirely different.
Completely different.
She seemed set on drowning the entire city.
And Su Yuzu did not doubt for a moment whether she had the power to see it done.
Too fast—
Su Yuzu watched the tide come sweeping in from the horizon.
The Seat of Evil moved far too fast.
Without giving Su Yuzu and the others so much as a chance to call for aid or discuss any countermeasure, she had already returned from the sealed Abyss at the head of a boundless army.
Straining her ears, Su Yuzu could almost make out the bewitching song of the mermaids carried on the sea wind.
The rolling waves came bearing a swath of black-red domain, crashing straight toward the shore.
On the reef shoal near the base, a girl sat silently upon the rocks, gazing out at the sea.
The seawater had already risen past her waist; it would not be long before it swallowed her chest.
Yet the girl remained as immovable as a monarch.
Those clear eyes mirrored the sky-spanning grandeur of the tide as her hands pressed against the rocks and she listened to the mermaids' song.
A song of suppression.
Just then, she suddenly heard a loud cry from far away. "Hey—"
"The tide's coming in..."
"It's dangerous!!!"
"Get away from there, quick!!!"
The little rabbit had seen that the girl was still out there.
Though there was some hesitation in her heart... some fear, some worry that the girl might be the legendary female ghost who had been carried off by the tide and then called the tide back, or perhaps some other dreadful thing.
But what if... what if she was only an ordinary girl who had gotten separated from her family?
In the end the little rabbit chose to alert the teachers within the base, to have them call out—or rather, to try to bring the girl back.
Grim as the present situation already was, a human life hung in the balance, so the base's researchers still spared a few hands for the task.
The girl in the white dress stared blankly toward the base.
...She'd been seen?
And not just seen—seen by Yuzu?
Hearing the researchers' calls, Su Yuzu and Soga Yura instinctively turned their eyes toward the reef shoal.
And then... both of them froze where they stood at the very same instant.
"Kirishika!??"
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