The girl had most of her body kneeling over the hospital bed now, one knee pressed into the mattress edge, her right hand braced beside Tsukiyomi Fuya's ear.
Tsukiyomi Fuya's pale violet eyes went wide.
Her gaze wavered as she watched the girl slowly lower herself, the tip of her tongue slipping out, licking toward the wound like a little cat.
And what drifted against Tsukiyomi Fuya's ear was a declaration from the girl so bold it bordered on outrageous.
"The rest of Senpai's life... already belongs to me, you know."
Before Tsukiyomi Fuya could react at all, she saw the girl's tongue reach that blossom of Catastrophe.
"Yuzu!?" Tsukiyomi Fuya tried to push her away.
As the brightest flower of Imperial Capital University, Tsukiyomi Fuya had heard far more brazen confessions before. But... but this was the first time one had ever struck something inside her.
[She's a girl I met barely any time ago. So why...]
Tsukiyomi Fuya didn't understand it.
But the more urgent matter right now was stopping Yuzu.
The way Tsukiyomi Fuya saw it, Su Yuzu licking at the flower blooming from the Catastrophe Crystal was about the same as following her into death.
Her body was in terrible shape.
The arrow had struck close to her heart.
The Calamity Aura had long since been pumped through every corner of her body with each beat of it.
Tsukiyomi Fuya understood: she probably wouldn't last until the head of the Sakura family arrived.
Preparing the lethal dose had been her own instruction.
But... but she didn't want Yuzu dying for her.
Could a girl really be this foolish?
Did such a thing as "love at first sight" truly exist in this world?
When on earth had it happened!?
Tsukiyomi Fuya suddenly remembered Yuzu trembling in the dark, terrified of it, and herself taking Yuzu's hand and raising the stars.
She had heard of the theory of the suspension bridge effect.
When a person crosses a swaying bridge with their nerves strung tight, their heartbeat quickens on its own.
And if, at that exact moment, she happens to meet another person...
Then she mistakes that racing heart, caused entirely by the situation, for a physiological response to the other person making her heart flutter.
Was it then?
A sense of her own monstrous guilt washed over Tsukiyomi Fuya.
She had planted the seed of disaster back then, without ever knowing.
She tried to push Su Yuzu off.
But... how could Tsukiyomi Fuya, gravely wounded, possibly push Yuzu away?
All Tsukiyomi Fuya could do was watch, helpless, strengthless, as Su Yuzu licked softly at that Catastrophe Crystal.
"Nnh!"
A sensation Tsukiyomi Fuya had no words for — one she hadn't felt since more than a decade ago, when she was still very young, when besides yearning for the stars overhead she had also been curious about her own body, exploring it — that sensation came crashing back over her without warning.
Tsukiyomi Fuya's fingers sank into the girl's hair.
Helplessly, she watched Su Yuzu bite down on the Catastrophe Crystal.
All Tsukiyomi Fuya could do was pray — pray that the girl wasn't throwing her life away.
Espers and Aberrants shared certain things in common.
Ordinarily, an Esper making occasional contact with an Aberrant's Catastrophe Crystal caused no problems at all.
But this situation was a little different.
The one who had wounded Tsukiyomi Fuya was the Seat of Evil.
The Seat of Evil's metallic crystal seemed to possess some extraordinary corrosive property.
Even the blood drawn out of Tsukiyomi Fuya's body, after filtering, retained a corrosiveness that was domineering past all reason.
The specially made metal containers used to seal away Calamity Aura had grown vessel-like networks across their surfaces, eaten into by it.
Tsukiyomi Fuya didn't dare imagine what would happen to a girl who bit into that Catastrophe Crystal.
Set against a consequence that horrifying, the strange feeling rising through her own body hardly seemed worth mentioning.
"Nnh..."
All right.
It was worth a little something after all.
And then... Tsukiyomi Fuya heard a clean, distinct crack.
She watched Su Yuzu bite off the little crystalline flower grown from the Catastrophe Crystal, and swallow it whole.
"Yuzu!" Tsukiyomi Fuya was frantic, until Su Yuzu reached out and covered her lips with a light touch.
"It's fine, you know~" Su Yuzu even offered Tsukiyomi Fuya a perfectly wholesome smile.
Tsukiyomi Fuya stared at her blankly.
Her field of vision was splitting in two.
In one half, the girl's smile was pure and radiant. But in the other... the curve at the corner of the girl's lips sent what felt like a fine current tracing down Tsukiyomi Fuya's spine, and her waist wanted to arch upward on instinct.
"What... what is this?"
"It's a secret~" Su Yuzu looked down at her warmly, then bit off another piece of Catastrophe Crystal.
"A secret that belongs to me and Tsukiyomi-senpai."
The Catastrophe Crystal growing out of Senpai's body carried a sweetness like candied honey.
Such a shame.
If it were allowed to grow and bloom completely, it would probably be sweeter still.
A pity, then, that Su Yuzu preferred the Tsukiyomi Fuya who could hold her hand, raise the stars, and gather her into her arms.
"For someone like me..."
"Catastrophe is nothing more than food."
Su Yuzu meant to devour every last trace of Catastrophe power inside Tsukiyomi Fuya.
But clearly... Su Yuzu had miscalculated a few things.
She had never dealt with this half-Aberrant state before.
Teasing it out thread by thread was far harder than simply eating everything clean.
Su Yuzu wasn't sure where to begin.
Maybe letting Tsukiyomi-senpai fall into the Abyss outright, and then eating her back out of it, would be the better option.
And along the way~
She might even help Tsukiyomi-senpai break through into the Sixth Sequence.
But... lying there beside Tsukiyomi Fuya, Su Yuzu looked at the way the woman bit down hard on her lower lip and endured.
If she did that, she supposed she'd be doing Tsukiyomi-senpai wrong.
And she'd have talked big in front of Tsukiyomi-senpai for nothing.
So Su Yuzu gritted her teeth and did it the hard way — slowly, inch by inch, eating away the Calamity Aura spreading from the wound in Tsukiyomi Fuya's shoulder.
"Ngh..." Tsukiyomi Fuya's waist had already arched, her legs bracing against the bed as she struggled.
She could feel that Yuzu hadn't lied.
The Calamity Aura inside her was thinning, fraction by fraction.
But... but...
Crunch. Crunch.
The sound of the girl chewing and swallowing Catastrophe Crystal drew out thin and unbroken through the hospital room.
But... before the Calamity Aura was eaten clean, she was probably going to break first.
"Yuzu..." "Nn..."
"Yuzu!" Tsukiyomi Fuya had never heard her own voice come out so pitifully weak. "Wait —"
"Just wait a moment..." Not even during the agony of the blood-filtering treatment had Tsukiyomi Fuya begged for mercy this helplessly.
Senpai... Senpai can't hold on much longer.
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