"..." The girl's crimson eyes flew wide. "He blows himself up... just as I thought."
"You figured that out?"
"Just a guess." Inori's brows knitted faintly. "He managed to trigger that many time reversals while I was hunting him. The only explanation that makes sense is the one condition he can always guarantee."
Because she already knew the original storyline, every anomaly Kira exhibited naturally pointed her toward time reversal. Deducing his activation condition wasn't difficult—but even so, Kira had kept activating Bites the Dust over and over. That meant the trigger had to be something trivially easy for him to accomplish.
Suicide.
"That's not all, Inori-chan! He's even set the bomb to passive activation—as long as he takes a fatal wound, Bites the Dust fires automatically! If we want to beat Kira, we absolutely cannot kill him!"
"Understood."
Inori drew a deep breath, nodded, and turned back to Yasuho.
"Is there anything else?"
"What I really want to know is what his other ability is—the one that can create powerful Stand users. Do you... have any leads?"
The instant that question left her lips, something stirred inside Yasuho Hirose. A pair of terrifying cat-slit eyes snapped open, picking up on the trigger phrase. Someone was trying to pry into the secret of the Fourth Bomb.
"Ah, yes."
But Yasuho noticed nothing. She answered eagerly, desperate to share what she knew with Inori.
"Yoshikage Kira has a Fourth Bomb called 'Great Days'!"
"Its ability pulls a person from a parallel world, and then uses that person as an anchor to bring over a tool capable of creating Stands from their original world—"
She stopped mid-sentence. Something felt wrong in her body—an instinct screaming at her: stop talking.
It was Paisley Park. The Stand that had always resided within objects suddenly materialized beside her. It said nothing—only pressed a finger to its lips in a silent hush. A warning not to reveal this.
—Why? Hayato-kun risked his life to tell me all of this. How can I just let his effort go to waste?
"That person... is you, isn't it?"
Inori hadn't noticed Yasuho's hesitation. The moment Yasuho described the Fourth Bomb's ability, everything clicked—including the reason Yasuho had acted so strangely at Tonio's restaurant today.
"Inori-chan, you—you already knew?"
"I didn't know what his Fourth Bomb actually did. But I knew... you don't belong to this world."
Inori tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, her expression unreadable.
"N-no, that's impossible!" Yasuho's composure shattered. "How could you possibly know I'm from another world? Something like that... how would you know?"
"Because I'm the same as you."
There was no point hiding it anymore. Not at this stage.
Inori chose honesty.
"I'm not from this world either."
"B-but that's—"
"I come from Japan in the year 2039."
"...Huh?"
The staggering number drew an involuntary gasp from Yasuho.
—2039. That's forty years from now. Even by my world's calendar, that's thirty-two years. She's... a girl from the actual future.
"Then the amnesia you mentioned... that was a lie too?"
"Yeah." Inori gave a bitter smile. "The truth is, I'm not human. I'm an artificial human. In my original world, I defeated my nemesis—but after it was all over, I was inexplicably transported here. I still don't understand why."
Yasuho blinked in stunned silence. Under normal circumstances she'd have assumed the other girl was delusional, spinning some third-rate sci-fi plot in her head.
"But what does any of that... have to do with me? How would you know about my situation?"
"It's complicated. I'll explain when there's time."
Telling her that her world is actually a manga was too abstract, and explaining D4C would take forever. Inori couldn't even confirm whether D4C was truly responsible. Now wasn't the time for her own backstory.
"If you knew, why didn't you say something sooner?"
Frustration churned inside Yasuho. She was the only one who'd been kept in the dark this whole time, like a fool—she couldn't even remember her own past. If Pearl Jam's treatment today hadn't happened to restore her real memories, she might never have recovered them at all.
"You... said it, didn't you? Yasuho Hirose! The secret of Great Days!"
—?
A voice cut through the night, and Inori's heart sank. She turned slowly and found the man she'd been searching for all this time standing right there. In a situation where he should have been running for his life, he'd instead brought his big pink cat and charged her head-on.
Inori couldn't quite wrap her head around it, but hey—if he was going to hand-deliver himself, she had no reason not to accept the gift.
"Yoshikage Kira... you've finally decided to show your face."
It was Kosaku Kawajiri's face, but the man wearing it was Yoshikage Kira.
"Indeed, Inori-san." Kira gave a calm, measured nod.
"Oh-ho~" The girl turned to face him with open interest. "So you chose to approach me? After everything you've been through—all that effort just to steal Kosaku Kawajiri's identity—and now here I am, and you're not running? You're walking toward me?"
"If I don't get close, how am I supposed to take your hands?"
The composed salaryman's mask crumbled, replaced by a look of naked obsession.
"Do you have any idea how much work it took to finally get a chance to kill you? Letting you die in some explosion would be such a waste. I'm going to take your hands—as compensation for every single one of my death loops!"
"...Blow me up? What are you talking about—"
—Huh?
Epitaph activated. Inori glimpsed a few seconds into the future—and without any warning, her body detonated. She collapsed in a pool of blood, consciousness fading. Kira strode forward triumphantly, had Killer Queen sever both her hands, then pressed them against his face and rubbed them there as if they were priceless treasures. Then he blew the rest of her to ash.
—What the hell? What did he do? Why am I suddenly going to explode?
"You've already seen it through Epitaph, haven't you?"
Kira saw the shock and disbelief crash across Inori's face and smiled with undisguised excitement.
"Inori-chan, i-it's—it's his Stand! His Stand is inside me!" Yasuho shrieked. Inori whipped around. In those green eyes of hers, the face of Killer Queen was clearly reflected—and now Inori could see a miniature Killer Queen in her own vision too. Just like the original Bites the Dust from canon... was that why she was going to explode? Because Yasuho had told her about the Fourth Bomb?
"To protect me, the user, the Fourth Bomb automatically installs itself on the summoned person. If that person ever recovers their memories and tries to tell someone the secret, it triggers! Everyone who learns the secret gets blown up—silenced for good!"
"Yasuho Hirose, I'm the one who pulled you into this world, but I never intended to use you to protect my identity. All I needed was that tool for creating Stands!"
"But you turned out to be unexpectedly perfect! Not only did you become friends with Inori, you've now triggered the Fourth Bomb's automatic defense mechanism for me. As a tool, you really are magnificent."
—It's... it's because of me?
Tears spilled from Yasuho's eyes. She pressed a hand over her mouth, fighting sobs, and crumpled to the ground.
Paisley Park hadn't wanted her to reveal the secret precisely because it had already known about this mechanism. But she hadn't listened.
—I'm an idiot. I'm useless. I could have killed Kira... but I never imagined his ability would be this insidious.
—Inori-chan... is Inori-chan going to die?
She looked up at Inori. The girl's pale green jacket swayed gently in the wind.
"Yoshikage Kira. Clever plan."
Inori spoke without a trace of panic.
"But you seem to have forgotten—I can erase time to fix this outcome."
"Then go ahead and try." Kira grinned. He was brimming with anticipation now, waiting for the glorious moment when this girl detonated where she stood.
"You can't possibly imagine how well I understand your ability."
"King Crimson drags objects you've touched into the erased-time space along with you... and Killer Queen is already inside your pupils. No matter how many times you erase time—you cannot change your death!"