The atmosphere in the classroom was heavy enough to interfere with a magician's breath. When Saori and Satoshi walked in together, the usual chatter didn't just stop—it died. Students who usually crowded around Ayato now sat in petrified silence, their eyes darting between the empty seat of the Saegusa heir and the boy who had broken him with a flick of a finger. Kudou Yuri sat stiffly at her desk, her gaze fixed forward, though her hands were clenched so tightly her knuckles were white.
Satoshi, however, acted as if nothing had changed. He pulled out Saori's chair with a quiet smile, ignoring the stares of the entire room.
"Ignore them," he whispered. "The world looks different when the lights are turned on."
After school, Satoshi didn't take her to a high-end restaurant or a prestigious magical lounge. Instead, he led her to a quiet, hidden café by the river, away from the prying eyes of the Academy.
They spent hours talking—not about magic or clans, but about books, music, and the way the city looked at twilight. Satoshi was attentive and warm, his laughter genuine and light. To any passerby, they were just a normal couple on their first date. For Saori, it was a dream; the pain Ayato had caused was being methodically replaced by Satoshi's presence.
As the sun dipped below the horizon, Satoshi escorted her back to the gates of her residence.
"I had a wonderful time today, Saori," he said, standing under the warm glow of the streetlamp.
"I did too, Satoshi-kun," Saori replied, a genuine smile lighting up her face. "Thank you for everything."
"I'll see you tomorrow," he promised, bowing slightly before turning to disappear into the shadows of the evening.
Saori watched him leave, waving until he was out of sight. Her smile was wide, her eyes bright.
The moment Satoshi vanished around the corner, Saori's smile didn't just fade—it vanished. Her expression became cold, analytical, and sharp.
She leaned back against the gate, her mind racing back to the gym. To the rest of the school, it looked like Satoshi had used raw physical strength. But Saori wasn't a normal student.
Flashback: The Duel
As Satoshi had moved toward Ayato, Saori had done something she was never supposed to do in public. She had activated her Elemental Sight.
The world of color had bled away, replaced by the Information Dimensions. She had expected to see nothing from a "nobody." Instead, she had nearly been blinded.
In that split second, she didn't see a physical movement. She saw a massive, terrifyingly dense surge of Psions. Satoshi hadn't just flicked Ayato; he had executed an incredibly advanced form of Modern Systematic Magic without a CAD. He had used Gram Dispersion to delete Ayato's spell and a high-speed Impact-type sequence so refined it left no "spark" for a normal magician to detect. It was magic at a level that even the Ten Master Clans struggled to master.
Back at the gate, Saori's eyes narrowed. The warmth she had felt during the date was still there, but it was now clouded by a dangerous curiosity.
"That wasn't just talent," she whispered to the empty street. "To process that much information without a device... to hide a Magic Calculation Area of that size..."
She looked at her own hands. She was hiding her identity as a Shiba, but she realized she might be dating someone hiding something even more significant.
"Who are you, Hanamiya Satoshi?"
She walked into her home, her mind already forming a plan. If the official records said he was a nobody, she would have to look into the unofficial ones.
******
While the city of Tokyo hummed with the distant sound of mag-lev trains, the Reikage Estate sat in a pocket of unnatural silence. It was a sprawling, traditional Japanese complex hidden behind high stone walls and ancient wards that distorted the electronic signals of the outside world. This was the seat of the clan that had founded Institute 0, the shadow foundation that had birthed modern magic itself.
As Satoshi stepped through the heavy wooden gates, the atmosphere shifted instantly. The air grew cold, not from the weather, but from a collective intake of breath.
"Welcome home, Young Master," a row of servants whispered in unison. They bowed so low their foreheads nearly touched the gravel.
Satoshi didn't look at them. He didn't have to. Even without his magic active, his Psion count was so dense it acted like a physical weight on their shoulders. He could feel the tremors in their hands, the way their heart rates spiked as he passed. It wasn't respect. It was the primal terror of prey standing before a predator.
Inside the main hall, his "family" was already seated for dinner. His father—the current patriarch of the Reikage—kept his gaze fixed on his tea. His mother adjusted her kimono with trembling fingers. His younger sister sat as still as a porcelain doll.
They were all descendants of the original Reikage, the man the Zero Institute had "perfected" at the dawn of the magical era. The blood of the ancient Kage ninja clan had been rewritten by the Institute's founders, and that terrifying power had been passed down through generations. Satoshi was the ultimate fruit of that cursed tree.
"You're late," his father said, his voice steady but lacking any fatherly warmth.
"I was on a date," Satoshi replied, sitting at the head of the table.
The word 'date' caused a momentary glitch in the room's rhythm. His sister's eyes flickered with a brief, panicked curiosity, but she quickly looked away. They spoke to him with the polite deference one might show a ticking time bomb. They claimed to be his blood, his kin, but in their eyes, he saw only the reflection of a monster. To them, he wasn't a son or a brother—he was the living legacy of Institute 0's disregard for human ethics.
"I see," his father murmured. "Ensure your personal life does not interfere with the clan's status. The Senate expects the Reikage heir to be beyond reproach."
Once inside his room, Satoshi slid the door shut and stood in the darkness. He didn't turn on the lights. He didn't need to.
He looked down at his hands. To Saori, these hands had offered a bottle of water and a warm touch. To the world, they were the tools of a god. Because of his inherited "Double-Capacity" brain, he possessed two innate abilities that made even the Ten Master Clans look like children.
Regrowth. The ability to restore the Information Body of any object to its state up to 24 hours prior. It was the power that had "healed" Saori's heart, smoothing over her emotional trauma. To the clan, Regrowth was a miracle they could boast about.
But then, there was the other side. Decomposition.
It was the ultimate "Zero" ability—the power to dismantle the Eidos of any object, living or dead, down to its basic informational building blocks. With a thought, he could turn a skyscraper into dust or erase a human being from existence. It was why the Senate feared his name. It was why his own mother had stopped hugging him when he was five years old.
"A demon," he whispered into the dark, his voice cracking with a rare, hidden ache.
He recalled the whispers of the clan elders. The Demon of the Reikage. The child who can unmake the world.
Every time he used his dual-processor brain to calculate a spell, he was reminded of his own abnormality. He was a creature designed for war, a descendant of ninjas turned into a biological weapon. He had spent his entire life wishing he had been born with "normal" magic—something simple, something that didn't make his own family sweat with fear when they shared a room.
He slumped against the door, closing his eyes. The only warmth he had felt in years was the memory of Saori's hand in his.
"I just wanted to be a boy," he murmured. "Not a weapon. Just... a boy who could love her without the world fearing I'll turn it to ash."