As soon as I opened my eyes, my body shook with a brr brr.
It was really freaking cold.
Even so, I had lived in a region far north of Tokyo in my previous life and had made my living by dancing between fire and ice, so I always thought that being cold was better than being hot. But this? This was just ridiculous!
For a brief moment, I even wondered if I had somehow stepped into a freezer.
Isn’t it a valid assumption? I had my eyes closed for a long time with my heart punctured, so it’s not strange to think I was in a morgue’s refrigerator.
Even if it wasn’t a morgue… My body, cold from death, would probably take a while to return to its normal temperature.
However, when I opened my eyes and looked around, it at least didn’t seem like I was in a morgue.
I had space to sit up.
Thinking that the corpse was being taken out was a bit off. If I were in a morgue, there would at least be lights on around me, or at least the corridor outside should be lit, but this place had none of that vibe at all.
Rather, it felt like—
…a sewer?
There was a pungent smell that hit my nose. It wasn’t too intense, more like the faint odor you catch while strolling through a damp, hot alley on a very humid day.
…Uh, wait, am I being abandoned?
No way.
Wait, calm down.
Maybe they just hid my body somewhere else. Whether I resurrected with my original body or woke up in a new one, it would be troublesome if others could see me. It was too easy to imagine that government officials would want my corpse for whatever reason.
While I pondered how the hell my corpse ended up in a sewer—
Click clang.
A sound echoed as the area above the sewer opened up.
“…Ah.”
And then there was a sigh of relief.
Surprisingly, the first person I met when I opened my eyes again was none other than Kagami.
…Or maybe it wasn’t that surprising.
I had heard from Kuro.
But still.
If Yuka or some other kids had tried to bring me back, I would have understood right away. I probably… would have made a similar choice myself. Just thinking about Yuka or Koko dying made my heart ache.
But Kagami…?
As I dumbly looked up at Kagami, one by one, other faces started appearing through that opening.
Yamashita, then Koko.
After a bit more time, Yuka.
“…”
And it hit me a bit late, so I quickly glanced down at my body.
Out of instinct, I moved my hands to cover myself as much as I could.
No, c’mon, at least give me something to hide with—
“…Huh.”
A sound escaped me as I got flustered and looked up.
…Kagami was crying.
“…”
I honestly didn’t know how to react to this situation. To be frank, everything felt way too sudden for me too.
Time flows lazily in the dream world. Kuro and I had spent nearly three weeks there together. According to Kuro, we could have stayed longer if ‘needed’, but in the end, we were abruptly kicked out like this.
And during those three weeks, Kuro had kept a huge secret from me. Even while I was calming the moon beasts, he had kept it under wraps.
Having come back to this world without knowing anything and unprepared was quite a shock.
“Kotonē!”
Koko, who had only poked her head in, vanished with that exclamation and immediately appeared right in front of me.
Then she hugged me tightly.
Koko’s arms wrapping around my neck was a tad painful.
“…”
Warmth.
Usually, a chilly atmosphere would snap someone back to reality, but in this case, it was the opposite for me.
My head didn’t work properly in the freezing situation, but as I felt Koko’s body heat, it began to return to normal bit by bit.
“Waaah…”
I heard Koko’s sobbing near my ears.
I stood there frozen, unable to say anything, and slowly wrapped my arms around her back.
Koko was, as always, Koko.
“…”
We stayed like that for quite a while, until I suddenly remembered that I was still not dressed.
*
“Kotonē, Kotonē.”
“Yeah?”
“Do you want to eat this?”
What Koko handed me was chocolate.
Maybe she was saving it to give to me? The chocolate was a bit mushy, probably from being handled too much.
I appreciated that she had held back from eating while waiting to give it to me, but… um, I was in the middle of a meal right now.
For reference, I wasn’t able to step outside.
Kagami quickly ushered me back into the room after giving me just enough time to collect my thoughts.
“This space might be known to others too.”
That made sense; the last time we used this corridor, the government had been tailing us, so it was a valid point. But if they had known, wouldn’t they have sent people into the corridor during the chaos?
In fact, I hadn’t been informed about how they tracked us down back then either.
Perhaps, they had been tracking us since we came out of that corridor? Assuming they could use satellites and such, they might have been monitoring aerial photos of the entire area.
Koko had been hiding in the mountains, so finding her would have been much harder, and her movements would have been too quick to catch in any intermediate steps, allowing her to stay hidden until the end.
My time dead had been quite short, but so much had happened in that span that a flood of information rushed in as soon as I got back to the room.
“I thought I’d never see you again. I’m glad to see you like this. After our last conversation—”
Yuka rambled, her eyes darting everywhere. Looking at Yuka’s eyes, which were hugely dark underneath, she must have had little sleep, too.
I pondered what to say to relieve Yuka’s heavy heart, but the words just wouldn’t come.
Moreover, before I could even respond, someone else spoke to me.
“Senpai, I knew you would come back—”
Shii’s cheeks were red, and tears shimmered in her eyes. It was obvious she wasn’t red just from the cold; it clearly showed she had been hurt. Before I could even ask who had done that.
“…You’re a relative of mine, right?”
Hearing Yamashita’s words froze me solid.
In fact, it wasn’t just me; nearly everyone in the room froze as well.
“…Uh, well.”
I was at a total loss for words.
Well, I mean, she was my cousin. Kosuzu was Yamashita’s mom, and supposedly, the woman claiming to be my mother here was Kagami.
But the reason I was flustered about how to respond to Yamashita was that I had no clue what the word ‘cousin’ meant in the context of Japan.
For starters, I dealt with her at a distance. I wasn’t someone who knew her to the extent of not even seeing her face. I saw her face only during family gatherings or during the new year.
It was always so awkward that our conversations didn’t even last long.
After my family had fallen apart, I barely kept in touch.
So I had no idea whether I should respond warmly to Yamashita here or just treat her like I usually did.
“Um, um.”
My dilemma ended with Kagami seizing the opportunity.
“First, let’s eat something.”
“…Eat?”
“Yeah, there’s some leftover from dinner.”
Could it be that they had saved some for me while cooking dinner? I felt like Kagami would have considered something like that.
“I—”
“You probably don’t know if you’re hungry or not. That body is ‘new’, after all. But at least, since Koko seems to get weak if she doesn’t eat, you must feel the same, Kotonē.”
“…Uh.”
Did Kagami just call me by my real name?
But before I could delve deeper into his words, he said, “Then, I’ll set the table.”
Kagami moved right away after saying that.
—And that’s how it got to this point.
“Do you want it?”
Koko was waving the chocolate in front of me.
For some reason, it seemed like Yuka, who was sitting at the same table, was fidgeting all around even though we weren’t exactly having a meal.
…Not just Yuka, actually.
Everyone was watching me eat curry rice with the gravest expressions on their faces.
“…Yeah. I’ll eat well.”
I took the mushy chocolate and carefully set it on the table for now.
Some Japanese curry recipes include chocolate in them, but I didn’t think it meant to eat ‘curry alongside chocolate’.
“Wow!”
Koko exclaimed with an extremely proud look on her face.
Yuka also had a strangely relieved expression.
…I have no idea how this day is going to unfold.
Kagami insisted we eat first every time we asked him questions.
Besides, he was currently wearing an apron over his shrine maiden attire. Why? Was that his usual character? I didn’t think so?
“…”
Well, anyway.
So for now, I ate.
It was delicious.
…Ah, I guess I was actually hungry.
*
Now that my stomach was full, let’s sort the situation out.
“First… Thank you.”
No matter what I heard from Kuro, I couldn’t disregard the intentions of those who had tried to save me.
From what I heard, a major event had taken place.
Apparently, this building was under watch by government officials at the moment. Luckily, it seemed like no one entered our room, and the curtains were thick enough so that no one outside could see in.
Just as Kuro said in the dream, Kagami had prepared another body for me to respond with.
There were two advantages to this.
One was that I could at least escape from Nirlas’ grasp to some extent.
No one knew how ‘much’ I could escape. Theoretically, this body was still obtained through Nirlas.
But for now, Koko hadn’t been directly controlled by Nirlas yet. Among those who had spoken directly with Nirlas, I was the only one.
Still, it was always good to keep the worst possibilities in mind.
The other advantage was—
“…So you handed it over to the government?”
“I never handed it over,” Kagami said, smiling. His eyes narrowed like the usual Kagami.
In the past, if I saw that expression, I would have thought, “What is he thinking?”
But now, I understood.
Kagami seemed to be feeling a bit of ecstasy.
“No, wait a minute.” I pressed my hand to my forehead.
“Then, that… that’s like handing them a nuclear bomb, right?”
“Well, since I was crying, they just took it away on their own.”
I looked down at the floor.
The floor was stained blatantly with blood.
It was the evidence of a fake body that Kagami had prepared. There was plenty of meat in the fridge. There was enough to be in other rooms, not just this one.
Seeing that I could eat while looking at it, I must have certainly built up an iron stomach.
“So, what’s about to happen to those people is something they chose for themselves.”
“…”
What should I even say to Kagami?
I thought I should rush there immediately, but somehow, it felt wrong to say that from this spot.
Kagami was in a slightly different mood than usual.
He had always given off a somewhat dangerous vibe, but now it felt completely different… Only, I didn’t exactly know what that ‘meaning’ was.
I turned my gaze to the people in the room.
Kagami, Koko, Yuka, Yamashita, Shii.
And the rest were all presumably outside. For some reason, it seemed like Yamashita-san and Fukuda-san were also here, and it looked like they had become subjects of investigation too.
…Hagiwara and Nakahara, Sasaki, too.
Honestly, I was a bit scared.
Kagami didn’t seem to have any intentions of leaving the room at all.
I wanted to talk to the others separately, but it felt like I couldn’t, and I was a bit frustrated. It wasn’t that I had so many people to talk to; there were so many things I needed to discuss one-on-one.
Yuka, who was staring straight at me since her first interaction after I woke up, and Koko, who was practically glued by my side.
There were things I needed to talk to Shii about, and the same went for Yamashita.
“…So, we can’t go outside…?”
“Yeah. The moment you go outside, the government people will come for you. For now, their focus must be entirely on that ‘corpse’, but I don’t think there’s any oversight here.”
“…”
“Don’t worry too much.”
As I kept my mouth shut, lost in thought, Kagami spoke up again.
With a narrow smile.
“When the necessary moment comes, we can escape. I’ve made sure of that so we won’t have to face them all at once this time.”
“Escape…?”
“We just talked about this a moment ago.”
Kagami looked straight at me and said.
“Since you’ve moved into a different body, it must mean there’s something else that occupies that body…”
Seeing everyone’s gaze turn toward him, Kagami clammed up.
It was less about not wanting to let it slip and more tailored as if to collect attention so he could shut himself up.
“You…”
I said to Kagami, my voice slightly cracking.
“You saved me knowing that, didn’t you?”
“…”
Kagami said nothing.
He just gazed at me with that same enigmatic smile.
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