Shu Ouma's entire worldview had shattered the moment Inori Yuzuriha showed her true face. Watching her deceive everyone now with such a complete lack of remorse snuffed out the very last ember of hope he'd been holding onto for her — extinguished beyond any possibility of rekindling.
This was Inori's first time mimicking Gai Tsutsugami's voice, so even at her most convincing, a careful ear could still pick out the difference. But the signal was already being run through a comm device, which introduced its own distortion — and she was playing the part of a dying Gai, which meant even the sharpest mind wouldn't think to question it.
As long as she fooled Shibungi, no one would challenge the version of events she'd constructed.
There was still one major problem, though — and it wasn't the GHQ forces encircling the island. Inori had already worked out a decoy escape plan for that. The real problem was how to explain everything to Hare Menjou and the others.
This day had always been coming. You can't hide the truth forever. No matter how carefully Inori had concealed it, the moment had finally arrived where she could no longer hide Diavolo's identity from them. She'd intended to maintain the deception right up until Diavolo's fall — but then that Gravekeeping man had crashed in uninvited, and she'd had no choice but to tear off the mask and fight.
So she knew. She couldn't keep hiding it from Hare forever. It was time to come clean — though unlike the original story, where Hare had accepted Shu Ouma's role in Funeral Parlor with open arms, Inori genuinely wasn't sure how this would go. After all, they were only friends with an ambiguous kind of closeness. That was nothing like how a girl in love looked at the person she cared for.
— You're overthinking it, Inori.
Mana Ouma's voice filtered through.
Inori pursed her lips.
— Could you not just speak up out of nowhere like that? It's startling.
Especially now, mid-transit and already tense, with her mind fully occupied trying to figure out how to explain her identity to Hare. Mana had chosen exactly this moment to drop that comment into her head out of nowhere.
— …I only wanted to remind you. Hare Menjou is a very kind girl. The feelings she has for you are no less than anyone else's.
— So you can go ahead and tell her everything without worrying. Even about King Crimson — that would be perfectly fine.
Maybe she really had been overthinking it. The sudden exposure had left Inori unusually sensitive, but an outside observer sees more clearly. Mana's words brought her back to herself, and when she thought about it calmly, it did seem that way.
She wouldn't say anything about King Crimson, though. That wasn't something a normal person could wrap their head around, and it touched on her original identity. Letting people mistake it for a Void was fine enough.
...
...
Before long, Inori made her way back to the villa near the Kuhouin family's estate and regrouped with the core members of Funeral Parlor. Trailing behind her, wearing the expression of a dead man walking, was Shu Ouma.
"Inori... Gai, did Gai really…"
Ayase Shinomiya asked, still clinging to a last thread of hope.
"..."
Inori lowered her head and bit her lip without answering. That reaction alone — combined with the final words "Gai" had left them through Inori's impersonation — was enough to extinguish the last of Ayase Shinomiya's illusions.
She was a girl of iron will, one who had always pushed herself to project strength in every area of her life, determined to make others see past her disability. But right now she had no interest in any of that. She just bowed her head and let the quiet sobs come, her tears falling without restraint. All her so-called strength had lost its meaning — because the one person who would have praised her for it was gone.
Shu hadn't been with Funeral Parlor long, but he'd been the person closest to Ayase in recent days. He'd never seen her this broken. And there was nothing he could do — nothing he could say that was the truth.
All he could do was stare at Inori's slight, pretty silhouette with a complicated look in his eyes, and clench his fist.
"What exactly happened? Inori — can you tell us?"
Shibungi was, comparatively, the most composed. He wasn't panicking. He simply hadn't processed it yet — he couldn't make himself believe that the man he'd trusted and followed was gone just like that.
"We walked into an ambush… there were so many of them… we couldn't find any cover. The whole thing was a trap, designed to lure us in."
Inori wore an expression of subdued fear as she slowly explained.
When lying, the worst thing you could do was make the words flow too naturally. Too smooth, too seamless — and it started to sound rehearsed. Real people needed time to think before they answered, and their accounts would be peppered with hesitation and noise. A story that landed without a single rough edge only made people suspect it had been polished in advance.
"But — but you can fight Endlaves, can't you? How could ordinary soldiers even—"
"Hey! Argo!" The voice was Shu's — forcing himself upright, calling out in sharp rebuke. "Inori is still a person. How is she supposed to take on that many enemies at once? Watch what you say. Don't be an idiot."
— Mm~ not bad. You've been well-trained.
This was the line Inori had coached him on in advance — if anyone questioned her combat capability, he was to stand up and say something.
"S-sorry, I didn't mean it like that…"
Argo Tsukishima had a short fuse, but he wasn't a bad person at heart. Looking at Inori's hollow expression, he figured that she — the one who'd watched Gai die in front of her and been powerless to stop it — must be the most wrecked of all of them right now. He apologized immediately.
"Speaking of which — Shu, where did you go?"
Tsugumi was barely holding herself together, her grief pressing at the edges of her composure, but she kept it reined in and directed the question at Shu with cool practicality.
"I… I got captured by them. There were just so many people. I was pulled out afterward."
"Gai shielded me to protect me… he stepped in front of me…"
Inori wrapped her arms around herself and lifted her face toward the pale wash of the streetlight. In that glow, everyone could see her eyes — swollen red, like two peaches — and something seized in all their chests. However many questions they might have had, no one had the heart to press this girl to keep reliving what she'd seen.
They were also thinking of another person — Diavolo. But from the look of things, he'd probably met the same fate as Gai.
All of them had come together because of Gai Tsutsugami. And now that man no longer existed. Could they really still believe in something called hope?
Even Oogumo was asking himself that. The silence stretched — suffocating, heavy.
The one who finally broke it was Tsugumi.
"All right — everyone, don't be so sad…" She said it aloud even as tears spilled down her own face. "We're not out of danger yet. GHQ will be heading this way soon."
"Then let's hide."
Ayase Shinomiya's voice was barely a thread — drained, adrift.
"Hide? Are we supposed to spend the rest of our time on this island just running and hiding?"
They all knew that road led nowhere.
"Inori, what do you think?" Shibungi's own strategies had failed him for the moment, and he turned his gaze back to Inori. "Gai's final order was for you to lead Funeral Parlor as its new commander."
At those words, every eye in the group shifted to the pink-haired girl.
Her hair was disheveled — none of its usual soft, silken fall — and yet even so, she carried a strange, sickly air that only added to her presence. Dust smudged her face. The clothes she wore didn't even fit her — they were clearly Shu's, oversized like a jacket, draped loose around her frame. No one would suspect anything. They'd only assume it was Shu being chivalrous.
"I can get everyone out. But you have to follow my orders."
"…Understood. Go ahead, Inori — what's the plan?"
Inori raised her eyes slowly, fixing them on the small girl with the cat-ear headset.
"Tsugumi." Her lips parted. "I need your Void."