A faint sliver of an answer seemed to surface in her thoughts.
But Su Yuzu still couldn't fully grasp what Kirishika meant by that hollow shell — or by "her goal is here."
The girl's slender fingertip traced circles over Su Yuzu's chest, as if marking out an inch and a fraction of territory that belonged to her.
"Ki-Kirishika, Sister…"
"What does that mean?" Between the sliding of that fingertip and the words, Su Yuzu's face had gone stiff, almost warped.
"The Seat of Evil is after Yuzu!?" Soga Yura's reaction was a good deal more blunt.
The girl swung her legs back and forth.
The hand that had been drawing circles on Su Yuzu's chest withdrew. Kirishika propped up her own chin and nodded lightly.
"Of course—"
"Because everything she's missing is right here."
"What she needs, what she let slip away… all of it, every last piece, is here with Little Yuzu."
"—It's the reason I'm able to appear here."
Su Yuzu caught the word Kirishika had chosen. Able.
What did Kirishika mean by that?
Was she someone who shouldn't — couldn't — appear here at all?
And what did "here" stand for?
The Tokyo metropolitan area? Or the whole world?
Kirishika's arrival hadn't cleared up a single thing. If anything, the confusion and unease knotting inside Su Yuzu had only multiplied.
"—It's the reason she had to raise a tsunami, to tear apart the radiant power that little Saintess left behind."
"Raise a tsunami?"
Su Yuzu looked at the towering waves in the distance.
Something on that scale hardly deserved the word tsunami.
The only disaster in the Tokyo metropolitan area recently that could truly be called a tsunami was the invasion by Wind, Fire, Mountain, Forest.
So that was it… Kirishika was saying that Feng Ke and the others, on their strength alone, could never have torn open the Word of Command that Saint Michael had left behind as a ward.
Someone else had shredded that protection.
Feng Ke, Dai Ling, all of them — they had merely slipped in through the breach.
"It's all because Little Yuzu 'woke up,' you see~"
"Twelve years ago… after little-little-little Yura and I brought Little Yuzu back, she woke once again."
"Because of… me?" Su Yuzu didn't want to accept it, and had no choice but to.
Kirishika laid her hand gently over the girl's chest, closing it there.
The way Su Yuzu had done, so many times, to Sakura Mai.
As though Kirishika were listening to the voice of her heart.
At Su Yuzu's throat, the Godmother's Laurel — until now nothing more than an ornament on her collar — bloomed in brilliant fullness for Kirishika too.
"Twelve years ago…"
"As part of the bargain."
"I had already left the most important thing here."
"So… that's why the Seat of Evil stirred up wind and waves the instant Little Yuzu 'woke,' and tried to set foot in the Tokyo metropolitan area."
"But some shackle held her back. Some incompleteness. And so she could never quite take that step."
"Except—"
"All of that changed the moment Little Yuzu came here."
Kirishika raised her eyes to Su Yuzu, and for one instant those eyes — rippling like clear autumn water — turned solemn and ancient.
Blazing golden slit pupils, like the opened eyes of some dragon out of myth.
"She's awake—"
"And the awakened her, the incomplete her, wants only one thing now, desperately: to make herself whole."
"To stand upon the earth once more in the shape of the Seat of Evil."
Leaning against the girl's chest, Kirishika gazed off toward the sea.
The falling stars streaked down like fireflies, gorgeous — and yet a sense of foreboding rose out of the depths of Su Yuzu all at once.
She wanted to speak, wanted to scream a warning, but there was no time left.
The erosion domain unfurled again.
Or rather… a complete erosion domain like that deserved a different word altogether. Catastrophe fit it better.
The dark crimson domain spread and grew like crystallizing metal.
Those peculiar markings looked exactly like the Widmanstatten pattern found only in meteorites.
Patterns left behind by nickel-iron crystals growing within the lattice of taenite, under conditions so unforgiving they took tens of millions of years — a cooling rate of only a few degrees per million years.
And then… Su Yuzu saw the arrow that shot up out of the waves.
The woman suspended in the air fell like a bird with a snapped wing.
Su Yuzu shot up off the bench.
At this point she didn't care in the slightest who the Seat of Evil had actually come for.
All she knew was… the Seat of Evil had already hurt someone close to her.
Someone who mattered.
"Little Yuzu doesn't need to get so worked up," Kirishika said, perfectly calm, catching Su Yuzu's hand.
"A Fifth Sequence Esper isn't that fragile."
"And besides…"
"She isn't entirely without help at her side, either." When she said the words at her side, a sudden edge of mockery and wistfulness crept into Kirishika's voice.
As though there had once been a time when she herself had no help at all.
Tsukiyomi Fuya, an instant from plunging into the sea, steadied herself in midair — though Su Yuzu could still make out the way she clutched her wound, and the blood sliding down drop by drop into the water, sending the Beasts below into a frenzy.
"Like I said…"
"The Seat of Evil isn't complete."
"The power she can bring to bear right now amounts to no more than a Sixth Sequence Esper."
"And doesn't Little Yuzu have that trump card the little Saintess left for you?"
"—There's nothing at all to worry about."
Su Yuzu looked at Kirishika.
For someone who seemed so pure and unblemished, Kirishika knew far more than she let on, and her reach ran far deeper.
She wasn't wrong.
Su Yuzu did carry the single greatest trump card of all.
In the game, it was the overpowered Buff that earned a player the right to stand before Kujou Iruka: the Saint's Blessing, from Saint Michael.
But… how could she possibly use that Buff here?
If she used it here, the radiant power Saint Michael had left behind would crumble to nothing — and what then, when Kujou Iruka came pouring in with everything she had?
And yet… if she didn't use it?
Su Yuzu turned toward the sea.
She could feel something far more terrible stirring awake in the deepest abyss.
If she didn't use it, the Tokyo metropolitan area might not survive long enough to see Kujou Iruka invade at all.
Su Yuzu already had her answer.
Now… only one question was left. "Kirishika, and the Seat of Evil—"
"What exactly is the relationship between you two?"
Lovers, the way the movie showed it?
Su Yuzu studied the Kirishika in front of her, and Kirishika only smiled and turned the question back on her.
"What does Little Yuzu think the relationship is… between a Throne and a rule-type ability user?"
A helpless laugh escaped Su Yuzu.
Did that even need answering?
A Throne was simply a rule-type ability user who had fallen into the Abyss.
And then… looking at Kirishika's smile, she understood.
She understood why that movie hadn't been called The Seat of Evil — but The Flowers of Evil.
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