0. Cover
0. Insert
0. Title Page
0. Copyright
0. Prologue: Reminiscence
0. Chapter One: Hollow
0. Chapter Two: Regression
0. Chapter Three: Resolve
0. Interlude One: Delirium
0. Chapter Four: Strife
0. Chapter Five: Steel
0. Chapter Six: Awakening
0. Chapter Seven: Transition
0. Chapter Eight: Discord
0. Chapter Nine: Exposure
0. Chapter Ten: Enough
0. Chapter Eleven: Teardrops
0. Chapter Twelve: Deceit
0. Chapter Thirteen: Promise
0. Chapter Fourteen: Precipitation
0. Interlude Two: Voice
0. Chapter Fifteen: Transfiguration
0. Chapter Sixteen: Awakening
0. Chapter Seventeen: Normalization
0. Chapter Eighteen: Separation
0. Epilogue One: Memory
0. Epilogue Two: Reunion
0. Afterword
0. Yen Newsletter

Everything was foggy. She could hear people arguing, somewhere far away, at the edge of consciousness.

She gently opened her eyes. She didn’t really mind, but the voices seemed so insistent. Now that her eyes were open, however, she realized she was lying on the ground.

A crimson rain was falling. It smelled like rust.

She listened as the rain beat down on her. The voices—whoever they belonged to—were bickering.

“Wait……this is…again……”

“…Be kidding…did she……?”

“…She’s……stop……”

And there, in the middle of it all, he stood. She saw his back, large and dark, protecting her where she lay.

When he turned around, she glimpsed a young man with chestnut brown hair and violet eyes. Several other humans were standing around him.

Her hazy consciousness began to sink back into the darkness.

What a strange scene. It was almost as if…she was reliving a memory.

“…Anyway, like I said, it was a very strange dream,” said Kaguya Shinohara, frowning in the meeting hall of the Charon barracks. She ran her fingers through her scarlet hair, which was meticulously pulled back, as she described her dream from the previous night.

“A strange dream?” said the other young woman with a smirk. It was Kaguya’s roommate, Koyuki Asaharu. “Are you sure it wasn’t just something you read before going to bed last night? You have been reading a lot of strange stuff lately, you know.”

“Hmm… I’m pretty sure the only thing I read last night was a YA novel…”

Kaguya always had to read something before she went to bed. After first joining Charon, it had been mostly scientific papers and research materials, but lately, she was mostly reading novels. Given her routine, it would make sense for something from a book to seep into her dreams, but last night she had been reading a standard coming-of-age YA novel.

It had been a love story set in a school—a place that Kaguya didn’t have much familiarity with at all.

“It seemed like you were having a bad dream, though, Kaguya. You scared the stuffing out of me, jumping out of bed in the middle of the night like that!”

“Koyuki, shhh! You don’t need to go around mentioning that,” said Kaguya, smacking at Koyuki repeatedly, her face slightly red with embarrassment. Koyuki dodged and laughed teasingly.

“It was no laughing matter, Lieutenant Shinohara.”

This time, it was the teal-haired Second Lieutenant Haru Takanashi who spoke as she appeared from behind them. She sat down across from Kaguya with an unopened bottle of soda in her hand.

“Try to put yourself in our shoes, as your roommates. I barely got any sleep after being woken up like that,” she said, futilely twisting the cap on her beverage, which she couldn’t quite seem to wrestle open.

She began to shake it up and down vigorously, growing desperate. The girl next to Haru took the bottle and set it down softly on the table, casting a sidelong glance at the now sullen Haru. The girl was sitting directly across from Koyuki.

“I bet you agree with us, too…,” insisted Koyuki. “Don’t you…Sakura?”

“Hrm?” At that point, the girl, who had pink hair and was sipping on a juice box, turned her eyes toward Koyuki and Kaguya for the first time.

Her name was Sakura Arakawa, and she was the captain of their special ops squad.

“Sorry, I wasn’t listening. What were we talking about?” she asked.

“We were talking about Kaguya waking us up with her nightmares,” replied Koyuki.

“Oh,” said Sakura, a smile blossoming across her face. “It’s not that bad. I think it’s cute. It’s very Kaguya of her.”

“Cute? More like creepy. She really scared us last night,” said Haru.

Kaguya blatantly began to sulk.

Sakura flashed her a sisterly smile. “What was the dream about?”

“Um… Someone was arguing with somebody, I think. And then I heard my name.”

Kaguya tried recalling her dream, which was already growing hazy as she spoke. With each passing moment, the resolution of the dream continued to fade, and only a vague impression was left behind.

“It was from when I was a kid, I think? Maybe it was my brother…?”

“Your brother? You mean Captain Shinohara? He’s with Major Mirai,” said Koyuki.

Kaguya’s brother was currently one of Major Mirai’s colleagues over at the Combat Support Branch.

Kaguya and her brother had not always been close, but after he brought Kaguya back when she had almost turned into a hero, the two reconciled. The dream must have been a memory from that time.

“What was Captain Shinohara’s first name again?” Sakura asked.

“Pretty sure it was Ren, wasn’t it?” Koyuki offered.

“Oh yeah! That’s right. A bit rough around the edges but a pretty nice guy.”

Although she interacted with him daily, Sakura had a strange habit of forgetting the man’s name.

Ren Shinohara. His role at the Combat Support Branch, together with Major Mirai, was overseeing Charon. He was already twenty-four years old and had not encountered a hero for four years.

A voice suddenly blared over the wireless comms.

“Okay, ladies. It’s time to get a move on.”

The voice was low, gruff, and devoid of gentleness or concern. It resembled Rindou’s voice somewhat, but instead of Rindou’s roughness, a cold ruthlessness lurked below its surface.

“R-Ren.”

It was Kaguya’s brother, Ren Shinohara. He supervised Charon together with Mirai over at Combat Support. He was as curt as always, only telling them what they needed to know.

“Tokyo Ward Seven. Tough luck, but it’s close to a nursery school.”

In a place where there were lots of children, panic was sure to ensue. They all stood up, realizing what was at stake. However, their squad captain, Sakura, held Kaguya back.

“Kaguya, are you sure you want to go today?”

“What? Yes, of course, I’ll be fine.”

“There’s no need to push yourself… You went yesterday as well, remember?”

Yesterday—for some reason, that word made Kaguya feel strange inside.

“But if I don’t go…how will I save the hero?”

“That’s a fair point. Back in the day, I knew this was something only you could do, but now we can all do it. I wish you would rely on us a little bit more.”

“What…?”

“You can’t dive into the heroes’ minds and take on their psyches all by yourself. It’s too much for you.”

“I…guess I forgot.”

Kaguya felt strangely confused. She had this sense that she was the only one who could dive into the heroes’ minds—as if she had been handling it all by herself because no one else could. Was that…not the case?

“It’s too much stress, Kaguya, trying to shoulder everything alone,” Koyuki said, her voice scattering Kaguya’s doubts. “It was crazy the last time it was Rindou’s turn, though, wasn’t it? Remember how he stopped the hero? With a punch?”

“Honestly, I think he could do with being a little less violent.”

“He does use that violence to save people, though, Haru. Different strokes, I guess.”

Oh, that’s right. Now Kaguya remembered.

Everyone at Charon could enter the heroes’ minds now: Koyuki, Sakura, Haru, and even Rindou. It had been Haru’s turn last time, and Rindou’s the time before that.

They didn’t have a strict system or anything, but Sakura had suggested cycling the responsibility in shifts to ensure that no one got overwhelmed.

For some reason, Kaguya suddenly felt like bursting into tears. How strange. She had already known that everyone could do this, hadn’t she? And yet, for some reason, she felt as if she had been juggling everything by herself.

“In that case…maybe I will take you up on your offer and stay back this one time.”

“Good idea. You can hold the fort down for us while we’re gone.”

With that settled, Sakura reached for the long weapon sitting by her side—a staff. When had it gotten there?

“Huh?” Kaguya blinked. “You’re not using your katana today, Sakura?”

A hush immediately fell over the hall. As soon as Kaguya said katana, she felt bewildered. No one at Charon used a katana. Why would she say something like that?

“Kaguya, are you sure you’re not still dreaming?” Koyuki asked.

“We’ve never had anyone here who uses a katana. Just who in the heck are you confusing me with?” said Sakura.

Kaguya looked down, embarrassed, while Koyuki and Sakura laughed. Who had she been thinking of? Why a katana? Kaguya was just as confused as they were.

“N-never mind… Ha-ha-ha, maybe I am still dreaming.”

“Honestly…”

Amused smirks appeared on all their faces. The other girls were staring at Kaguya like someone might stare at their goofball younger sister.

A part of Kaguya’s heart grew warm. No one was relying on her anymore; she didn’t have to shoulder all that responsibility now.

I hope things can last like this forever, she thought.

“It has been one week today since Lieutenant Kaguya Shinohara fell unconscious.”

Over in Extermination Bureau Headquarters, several members of Charon had gathered in a hospital room in the specialized medical ward under Azuma’s command. Lying in the bed by the window was a young woman in a coma.

A young woman with scarlet hair—Kaguya Shinohara.

“Since falling unconscious during the hero battle that occurred one week ago, Kaguya has been like an empty shell, with steady vitals but no signs of awareness. As for the hero in question, there were no obvious differences between it and any other hero that has appeared before now,” explained Captain Azuma as he stood next to the bed. He looked tired. “In short, her condition remains unchanged.”

The air in the room seemed to deflate like a balloon. Disappointment filled the space. A week had already passed; at this point, the chance of her waking up again appeared slim. They were all beginning to fear the same thing.

Haru spoke up timidly, a frown on her face. “She’s not…dead, is she?”

“Her vitals are fine. And she’s receiving nutrition via an IV drip.”

Kaguya was hooked up to an IV, just as Azuma said.

“What do you think is happening to her…to Lieutenant Shinohara…right now?”

“As for details…I don’t know, but I suspect it’s not fundamentally different from the fatigue and health problems she was experiencing before from hopping into the heroes’ minds.”

In Azuma’s opinion, this was likely an extreme version of those earlier symptoms. Although to be honest, that was simply the only possibility he could think of.

“The bigger problem facing us right now…”

Azuma glanced toward a corner of the room. A girl was sitting there—Mari Ezakura. Mari was assigned to Technical. She sat on the chair with her knees up, watching Kaguya intently.

“…is the death of Technical’s director.”

It happened last week.

Azuma and the others had returned in a panic, carrying Kaguya, who still had not woken up, only to be greeted by news of the Director’s death. The official cause of death was blood loss. She had been stabbed through her throat and between her eyebrows by what appeared to have been a bladed weapon.

Given the blood-soaked, katana-shaped Chronos that had been found next to her body, her death was being treated as a suicide. Mari Ezakura had been the first to cry foul play. “The Director would never do anything so stupid,” she insisted.

Azuma agreed. Moreover, suicide via a katana would have been no easy task. They weren’t even talking about across the stomach, like some form of seppuku. In order to stab yourself in the throat with a katana, you would need to hold the sword by the blade since it would be impossible to reach the hilt even with your arms extended as far as they could go. However, there were no injuries on the Director’s hands.

The Director’s death—and Kaguya’s coma—had both come as a great shock for Mari.

Considering the state Mari was in, Charon had taken her under emergency protection. Whoever had killed the Director—if they had done it because of the Director’s research, then Mari was in more danger now than anyone.

Due to the Director’s death, the Bureau was shutting Technical No. 2 down indefinitely. Unless Kaguya returned, Technical would likely be dissolved.

The entire situation was hopeless.

“A whole week…,” Azuma said, staring at Kaguya’s sleeping face and scowling as if he had just bitten down on something sour.

He had been worried that something like this might happen.

Diving into another person’s psyche was inherently dangerous. Azuma had once entered someone else’s mind himself, so he understood. But he still hadn’t been able to stop Kaguya.

“Does she have any family…?” Koyuki asked softly to no one in particular.

“No,” Azuma answered. “She was an orphan, just like us.”

Kaguya had no family. Both of her parents had passed away, and her brother had been missing ever since the day that Kaguya had almost transformed into a hero.

About her brother, though…

Kaguya had tried looking into where he had gone, but all traces of him had disappeared seven years ago. It was a dead end. It was unclear whether he was even alive, although he probably wouldn’t have abandoned Kaguya if that were the case; therefore, it was more likely that he was already gone.

“She could still wake up, though…,” said Koyuki, her hollow voice diffusing into the quiet of the hospital room.

The atmosphere was indescribable. Although no one said so out loud, they all knew how unlikely it was that she would awaken.

“It’s still only been a week, right?” said Haru, as if to argue with the silence filling the room. Her voice sounded troubled. “Maybe we’re being too pessimistic. She could open her eyes all of a sudden. That’s how it’s always worked up until now, right?”

“Yes. Up until now.”

Including when they had faced that fog hero.

Speaking of which…, thought Azuma.

While it had only taken a few dozen seconds, Kaguya hadn’t woken up immediately after that fight, either. Perhaps that delay had been a precursor to what they were seeing now.

“I don’t think we need to worry too much, but…,” Azuma said, turning to look at Kaguya, an uneasy expression on his face. She was unable to breathe on her own and had been hooked up to a ventilator. It was difficult to see her like that. “What if…something happens, and she turns into a hero?”

“I don’t want to think about that, but you’re right. If something like that were to occur…”

Haru lowered her gaze. Azuma didn’t need her to finish the sentence. If Kaguya turned, who would be able to save her?

“No one.”

Azuma cast a pained glance toward Kaguya, who continued to sleep just as before.

“No one would be able to save her if that occurred…”

Mari Ezakura had first met Kaguya around when Technical No. 2 had lost most of its staff. Like almost everyone else in the Bureau, Mari and Kaguya were orphans. Mari couldn’t even remember her parents’ faces anymore.

Maybe that had something to do with why—even after learning the truth about the creatures that had stolen her parents from her—Mari had felt nothing in particular toward them. She had never been particularly prone to strong fits of passion since she was more the lukewarm type.

Despite this, Kaguya had never given up on forging a connection with her. Kaguya had even once covered for Mari when Mari, due to her own carelessness, had committed an irreparable blunder.

Something about the way Kaguya treated her reminded Mari of the older sister she had lost. It was around that time when Mari started growing attached to Kaguya.

“…”

Whatever else happened, Kaguya was Mari’s mentor and hers alone.

Kaguya was already seventeen. In a few more years, she would lose the ability to see heroes and be taken off the front lines. Once that happened, Mari figured she would probably quit soon after as well. There would be no reason to stay at Technical if Kaguya wasn’t there. Mari didn’t really care about heroes one way or the other.

“…”

She sat in total silence. Elegant silence. No one spoke to her now.

Garbled static. She tilted her eyes upward at the sound.

The members of Charon seemed to be listening to something on their comms. Someone must have been contacting them.

“Major Mirai,” Azuma said softly, causing Mari to realize he was speaking with Combat Support. “Have things calmed down on your end…?” He made it sound as if the person he was talking to had a lot on their plate. “I see… Lieutenant Shinohara…still shows no change…”

At those words, Mari finally lifted her head. She could see the exhaustion on Captain Yuuri Azuma’s face, even from a sideways glance.

“There’s been a hero sighting…?” Azuma asked. “Understood. In a shopping complex? All members are prepared to mobilize immediately.”

The words barely registered in Mari’s mind. It was as if they were coming from somewhere far away. Who knew that words were such a meaningless string of sounds when you paid no attention to them?

Once the request came in, the looks on everyone’s faces changed. They immediately moved to depart. As Mari watched them go, she couldn’t help but feel the distance between herself and them. How could they just leave Kaguya like this, given the state that she was in?

Alone now, Mari stared intently at Kaguya’s bed.

“Kaguya…”

She still hadn’t woken up.

It was too painful to see her like this. Mari could feel a weight settling in her chest. But not all of this heaviness was related to Kaguya.

The truth about the Chronoses—the Director’s theory that the Chronoses were sentient. Should she tell the others? Should Charon know whose suffering they relied on?

“But…if I tell them…”

It was obvious what would happen next. The members of Charon would not want to use the Chronoses anymore. Then who would be left to oppose the heroes?

This decision had been dropped into Mari’s lap. She was the only one who knew that the Chronoses were sentient now. If she just kept her mouth shut, it would be as if none of it were true.

Should she speak up, or should she stay silent? For whose sake? Obviously, for Charon’s.

“What does Charon have to do with me…?” she muttered, sulking. No one answered her.

The members of Charon were the only people who could use Chronoses without suffering rebounds. The reason for this still wasn’t clear.

But there was one thing that Mari knew for certain: It was their fault that this had happened to Kaguya. They had placed too much responsibility on her shoulders, and the weight had broken her.

First, Charon had stolen Kaguya from Mari, and now, they had left her like this. That was exactly why Mari hated Tactical Infantry.

Azuma had responded to the call and was now facing off against a hero at a shopping complex near the train station.

The hero was on the second floor of the mall. Azuma had heard the sound before even spotting the creature. Its screech sounded like a screaming child.

“SKREEEEEE!”

It was shaped like a wheel, spinning around a single axle at its center. At a diameter of around only twenty centimeters, it was unusually small. However, this size meant it was also extremely hard to hit. It had other advantages as well.

“SKREEE, SKRRREEEEEE!!”

That din was unbelievable.

The blaring shriek had caused most bystanders in the vicinity to fall immediately unconscious. Even Azuma and his team were forced to cover their ears. Its shrill, piercing cry was too much.

“Tsk, this isn’t good.”

Azuma tried to echolocate the heroes’ eggs. Although the sound of the eggs was a different frequency, all this noise was making it hard for Azuma to locate them.

“If we could just shut it up for a little while…”

The sound seemed to be resonating from inside the wheel, which was empty—nothing connected the axle to the rim.

A mantle of darkness protruded from the axle’s tip.

“Erk—”

Azuma could see it with only his right eye. Buried within the darkness was its face.

He felt a shiver run down his spine. The smile he saw beneath its black shroud was painted on a face of madness.

The face belonged to a young girl—a child. But its smile was completely unlike that of an innocent child’s. Azuma reflexively covered his right eye, still not yet used to seeing these faces.

It didn’t make his job any easier, observing the humans inside. Even though they weren’t actually human anymore, it felt like he was taking the life of the person within, assisting them in their act of suicide.

But it’s just a hallucination… Right, Lieutenant?

He drew the katana smoothly from his waist.

A living weapon—beautiful and grotesque. Traced with coiling veins, the blade appeared neither man-made nor organic. For some reason, the blade felt comfortable in Azuma’s hand.

This katana…

The katana that was believed to have been used to stab the Director—through her throat.

I wonder if that’s really true…

If it were, he doubted it would have wound up in his hands so easily. The Chronoses might be valuable weapons, but they would have still qualified as evidence. Azuma had accepted the weapon once it was offered, seeing as he did not have a good enough reason to refuse.

“SKRRREEEEE!!!”

The hero howled again. The force of its scream, which threatened to rupture Azuma’s eardrums, caused cracks to appear in the building’s walls.

“It sounds almost like a child crying,” muttered Haru, having weathered the wave of sound, seemingly unperturbed.

“Then I guess we’ll just have to hush it…”

Azuma dropped down into a loose stance. This new Chronos was longer than his original katana, and at first, the weight had been difficult for him to handle. But he had quickly gotten used to it once he learned how to swing it properly.

For some reason, it didn’t feel like it was his first time handling this blade. Not that he was concerned, seeing as that feeling didn’t get in the way of its use. Still, though.

“Azuma,” Rindou said quietly over the comms. “Where’s the egg?”

Azuma strained his ears.

Ever since the hero attack six years ago, Azuma’s ears had been special. Every member of Charon was a survivor from that attack, but as the person who had been exposed at closest range to the hero factor, only Azuma was able to hear the sound given off by the eggs.

It was of a much higher frequency than normal sound, meaning that even with all this noise he should have been able to isolate its source—should have.

“…?!”

Azuma’s eyes went wide. He couldn’t hear the egg.

Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that something was preventing him from hearing it.

The sound of the egg was lost in a sea of static that was being emitted at the same frequency. No matter how hard Azuma strained his ears, he couldn’t seem to isolate the egg’s sound.

“Azuma?! Where is it, man?!” Rindou asked.

But Azuma couldn’t answer. This was a new type of hero, one that was able to prevent him from locating its egg.

“I—I can’t hear it.”

“What?!”

Just then, the hero started to make a strange new sound, like a whirring twang. It began to spin.

“Ah?!”

Azuma braced himself, but nothing else happened. The wheel simply continued to spin indiscriminately. It didn’t look as if it was trying to come any closer.

I wonder…

If Kaguya were there, maybe this hero would have been among the ones she was able to save. Now he was even relying on her in his thoughts; he felt pathetic. Without Kaguya’s help—

“Azuma.”

Rindou spoke sharply, snapping Azuma out of his thoughts. Indeed, this was not the time for soul-searching.

“What do you mean you can’t hear it?”

“I can’t hear it. Something’s preventing me…I think. It’s like there’s too much static.”

Rindou couldn’t stop from clicking his tongue loudly.

“Sorry… It’s just that’s gonna make dealing with this thing a real pain in the ass.”

The hero they were facing was small, making it difficult to aim. If they tried to slash from outside the rim, the spinning of the wheel would simply deflect their blows. Trying to decimate the entire creature with a single high-powered strike might be a good idea, considering how small it was, but in that case, its speed was going to make actually hitting it a problem.

“First thing’s first, we need to stop it from moving. What’s the plan, Captain?”

Azuma was silent for a moment. The hero, however, was not about to give them even a second to think.

There was a sharp whoosh as the hero swooped toward Azuma.

If Azuma wanted to avoid the rim and hit the center, he was going to have to thrust. But the wheel was so small; if he missed, his Chronos blade might get caught and break.

Unless…

Azuma broke his stance, stepping forward with his left foot instead. He took a large step toward the hero and then, with his next step, kicked the hero as hard as he could.

The creature was flung far, far away, howling like the wind as it was knocked back—or so it seemed at first. But the hero suddenly pivoted. Spinning even faster and more frantically than before, bolting straight toward the person who had kicked it. Straight toward Azuma.

Azuma could not make out the spinning clearly, but he didn’t need to.

What he could see, however, was the hero’s face. Its expression. The young child’s smile, spinning insanely. He felt simultaneously terrified and nauseous. It was horrifying—something he never wished to see again.

The moment the smiling face was pointed his way, Azuma lifted his blade with unerring speed and accuracy—

—but the hero changed trajectory.

“What?!”

It dodged the blade, evading with absolute efficiency before diving straight at Azuma’s face. There was a metallic clang as Azuma blocked with his sword.

The contact was brief but effective. It was now Azuma’s turn to be flung backward, although he was only knocked back by a few steps. He righted himself immediately, none the worse for wear.

Azuma made a series of snap decisions.

“Koyuki, I need a favor,” said Azuma, letting Koyuki know his plan over the comms. “I need you to fire off six shots. Once the hero stops, I’ll move in.”

“That’s…not the worst idea, Azuma, but it’s too dangerous,” Koyuki argued. “You want me to do a preemptive strike, right? So that you can lunge in once its defenses are open? It’s spinning too fast, though. It’s like a barrier at this point. The bullets will just ricochet. Not even Rindou could get close at this rate—”

“Don’t worry… I know what I’m doing.”

The hero continued to scream and spin about. Its behavior was baffling.

Azuma held his katana in one hand and pointed it out in front of himself with the flat of the blade laid across his forearm, ready to thrust. He had wanted to finish this fight with a single strike. Ever since he began seeing their faces, Azuma had started to feel a vague sense of pity for the creatures—a desire to put them out of their misery quickly.

“What are you planning to do, Captain?” Haru asked. “You don’t even know where the egg is, right? You might as well be going in blind.”

Azuma didn’t really need to be told that right now. He tried to think. What would the old Azuma have done? The Azuma from before he had met Kaguya? Right. He would have probably rushed in headlong, throwing safety to the wind.

That seems like a bad idea…

Azuma immediately abandoned that train of thought. He turned his distinctively stubborn stare toward the hero—and toward the little girl inside.

This was a homicidal monster. That was all. Nothing more, nothing less.

“Going in blind or not…it’s time to stop that thing,” he said, his clear and quiet voice resonating in his comrades’ ears.

What was the best way to stop a rampaging wheel? Simply shove something in its spokes. Not his Chronos, of course. That was irreplaceable. Instead, something with inhuman powers of regeneration—a piece of his own body.

“Once its defenses are open, one of you needs to take the kill.”

“…?! Captain Azuma, wait!!”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Haru, who seemed to realize what he was about to do, turn pale. But he couldn’t spare any more time for her right now.

Without another word, Azuma dashed ahead. As he drew close to the wheel, which was spinning faster than the eye could process, he thrust his right arm forward.

“Argghhh!!”

Azuma’s small scream went unheard, lost in the cacophony of the wheel.

His hand was not torn off, but it was badly mangled and bent. It would probably heal quickly, but the sight was still none too pleasant to see.

As soon as the wheel came to a stop, Koyuki took her shot. Gunfire echoed as the bullet hit its mark, blasting the hero to smithereens, egg and all—wherever the egg had been. There was the sound of an explosion, so small it was almost a letdown, and then all of the previous noise instantly stopped.

“…”

The person beneath the hero had been a young girl. As the blackness covering the creature cleared, her innocent face peeked into sight for a moment and then began to collapse. A gloomy undertone of madness and despair lurked behind her smile, but otherwise, it was now the same smile you might see on any young girl. It took but a few seconds for it to gently drift away.

After watching the hero crumble…

“What the hell were you thinking, flying off the handle like that?!” Rindou bellowed. He rushed forward in a panic and was speaking to Azuma face-to-face instead of over the comms. “I don’t care if you heal faster than normal people—”

“Sorry…”

Haru rushed forward as well. “What are you, stupid?!” she shouted before deftly beginning first aid. Azuma watched her blankly as the comms crackled to life.

“Azuma…” This time it was Koyuki. She sounded concerned. “Does it hurt?”

“Not really…”

Although she had phrased it as a question, her tone implied that she knew how he felt.

Koyuki was Kaguya’s roommate. Ever since Sakura passed, she and Kaguya had become particularly close. They ate lunch together almost every day. The only time Azuma got to eat lunch with Kaguya instead of Koyuki was when Koyuki was already busy. They had grown practically inseparable.

Koyuki tended to mask her own pain. But she never managed to hide it completely.

“I’m fine,” Azuma insisted. “You don’t need to make such a fuss.”

Knowing that Koyuki was in pain, too, there was no way he could just unload his feelings on her. It was better to keep it inside.

“Everything is just back to the way it used to be…,” Azuma told himself.

But deep down, he didn’t really mean it.

That night, Rindou sat in the meeting hall and reflected on that day’s fight against the hero.

Azuma’s ability to hear the eggs had been unexpectedly neutralized. That was all it had taken to place them at a disadvantage. The thought made Rindou’s skin crawl. Fortunately, today’s opponent happened to be small. But there was no guarantee the same would be true next time.

If anything, heroes were often too big to slay with a single strike. What would they do then? Rindou wasn’t sure.

“Although I guess this is just what everyone has to go through…”

The ability to locate the heroes’ eggs was unique. Azuma was the only one who possessed it, and Charon had been relying on his ability up until now. Now that Rindou had given it some thought, he realized things had been pretty easy for them. Azuma pointed, and they attacked. It was as simple as that.

“Except…once Kaguya showed up, even that much was no longer necessary.”

With Kaguya on their side, they had been able to eliminate any opponent, no matter how aggressive and powerful. Rindou would be lying if he said they hadn’t started to use her as a crutch.

“We really started relying on her at some point…”

At first, they had rejected her. But at this moment, even Rindou found himself wishing she were there.

“I suppose you could say we got too dependent—”

“Too dependent…? Who do you mean?”

A voice spoke up from the entrance to the hall, interrupting Rindou’s thoughts. He lifted his head. Not that he needed to look to see, but it was Koyuki. She was leaning against the wall.

“Kaguya or Azuma? Which one are we too dependent on?”

“Who said you could eavesdrop? Mind your business.”

“I just got here.”

Koyuki plopped herself down on the sofa without bothering to ask first. The cushion springs beneath her sagged, though not nearly as much as they did for Rindou.

“Both,” he said, answering Koyuki’s question. “The truth is Azuma and Kaguya have been carrying us… Actually, once Kaguya arrived, even the carrying was just for show. At the end of the day, the two of them would be more than capable of handling things on their own.”

“That’s true.” Koyuki glanced down at her hands. Smooth and pale, yet calloused. “I’ve been fighting against heroes all this time, but even though it’s only been six months since Kaguya got here, I’ve started to wonder: What if we could save them instead?”

Rindou did not reply.

“Heroes are just monsters, nothing more and nothing less—that was what I used to think.”

Rindou had felt the same way. He was probably even more staunch about it than Koyuki was. It wasn’t that he held any strong grudge against the heroes or anything. It was just, having thrown his life away once, fighting them had now become his reason for going on.

But something felt different now.

“Things go smoother when she’s here, at least. Being able to immobilize them like that has saved our butts plenty of times,” said Rindou.

“Is that all you care about? Really…?”

Rindou frowned, not liking what Koyuki was getting at. “What’s that supposed to mean…?”

“Why don’t you just admit you like saving the heroes, too?”

“Come on, don’t give me that shit—”

“How long have we known each other, Rindou? You can’t fool me.”

“Get off my nuts, geez…,” Rindou grumbled, scowling. But he didn’t disagree.

Koyuki chuckled. “You’ve been trying to act like some kind of tough guy ever since you met her. It’s fine by me, but you’re gonna give people the wrong impression, you know?”

“Just so long as you guys get me,” Rindou said before suddenly catching himself.

“Hmm?” Koyuki hummed with a devilish grin.

Rindou realized instinctively that he had just put his foot in his mouth.

“You’re gonna make me blush, big guy.”

“Quit acting dumb,” he said, doing his best to come off as intimidating, but it was useless against Koyuki.

The two were stuck with each other by this point. They knew each other inside and out—in a way that was completely different from the kind of awkward relationship that Azuma and Kaguya had. They were used to not holding back with one another.

“Anyway, putting that aside,” Rindou said, forcefully changing the subject, “it’s not good that we’re so dependent on them. Maybe we should rethink the way we do things.”

“You’re right. They’ve been supporting us up until now. It’s our turn to return the favor.”

To pay Azuma and Kaguya back for taking them for granted, Rindou and Kaguya needed to learn how to defeat heroes on their own. If they couldn’t do that, then there was no point in them being there in the first place.

“It’s time we stepped up to the plate, Rindou,” Koyuki said, making a fist and thrusting it out toward him.

Rindou nodded, realizing immediately what she was saying. Obviously, he was on board. He made a fist and bumped it against Koyuki’s smaller one.

Koyuki was his comrade, the best word to describe their relationship. It was different from what he had with Azuma or Kaguya, even a little different from what he had once had with Sakura. Something unique and difficult to describe.

Koyuki’s catlike vermilion eyes and Rindou’s auburn brown ones needed to meet only briefly for the two comrades to know that they were in total agreement. This was a connection that was rare for someone like Rindou.

“Anyway, I’m going to bed,” Koyuki announced, standing up from the sofa. She smiled at Rindou as he glanced up at her questioningly. “I feel a little tired today…”

“Just today?”

This time it was Rindou’s turn to see right through Koyuki. She laughed, her eyes widening slightly.

“I’m tired, too,” Rindou said.

“Ha-ha, I’m sure you are. You should get some sleep as well. Takanashi will get pissed if you stay up too late.”

Rindou stared off into the distance as if the mention of Takanashi’s name had caused him to remember something. Specifically, he stared in the direction of the kitchen.

“Takanashi, huh? Just what the hell has she been up to lately anyway?”

“Apparently, she’s been poking her nose into things at the Bureau. She’s originally from Inspection, after all.”

There was no need to ask what she was poking her nose into. The Director’s death, of course…as well as other matters.

As a former Inspection officer, uncovering answers was what Takanashi did best. It was her bread and butter. Rindou hadn’t had many opportunities to speak with her lately, seeing as she had been so busy with her investigations. Not that he spoke with her much to begin with. Still, though…

“Just what the heck does she get up to all day?”

It was hard not to be at least a little curious.

After Rindou left, Koyuki leaned back on the sofa and let out a huge sigh. The sound, as it settled into the quiet of the deserted meeting hall, seemed a little sad.

“I told her, didn’t I?”

That there was no need for a girl from Technical to try so hard to prove herself with Tactical Infantry.

“Or did I never say that out loud…?”

How could any of them have said it out loud?

Kaguya had completely changed the way that Charon fought. She had shown them a new way forward. It was easy to see what Rindou was getting at.

Charon had grown complacent in the end—despite knowing how dangerous that could be.

There hadn’t been anything different about the hero they had fought last week. Meaning that whatever had occurred, it must have been on Kaguya’s side. But it was their own fault. They were the ones who had pushed Kaguya to the breaking point like this.

“Everything is just back to the way it used to be…”

Like Azuma said, things were just back to the way they once were from Charon’s point of view. Back to their original way of doing things.

Kaguya probably would have been livid had she known.

“As for that other girl…”

From Koyuki’s point of view, Mari Ezakura was practically a stranger. But thinking about how she must be feeling now caused even Koyuki’s heart to ache. Ezakura’s boss was gone, and her mentor, Kaguya, was stuck in a coma.

The door squeaked on its hinges, and Koyuki lifted her head. Due to shoddy installation, even the slightest movement caused the door to protest.

“Oh… Azuma,” she said.

Azuma entered the room, seemingly lost in thought, as usual. There were thick worry lines between his eyebrows. He always had a tendency to brood, but that tendency had become even more pronounced since losing Kaguya.

“You look like you’ve got one foot in the grave…,” Koyuki said, causing Azuma to finally notice her presence. “What’s gotten into you? You sure you’re getting enough sleep?”

“You’re hardly one to talk…,” Azuma said with a smile of uncharacteristic chagrin as he sat down opposite Koyuki. “You don’t seem very eager to go to bed yourself.”

“Hey, don’t change the subject… But no, I can’t sleep. It’s too quiet.”

Kaguya had always been working on something late into the night. Now that the room was quiet again, Koyuki found it surprisingly difficult to sleep. The fact that there was nothing actually keeping her awake made her insomnia all the more aggravating.

The same had happened after Sakura left.

“Come to think of it, Azuma, there was something I wanted to discuss with you.”

She’d just remembered what it was and decided it took priority. She patted the seat next to her, causing Azuma to look blatantly annoyed. He probably expected she was going to nag him about something—not that he was wrong.

“Well? What is it…?”

“It’s about today. I know it’s always been your tendency, but aren’t you getting a little too reckless lately? You’re not immortal, you know.”

“I didn’t mean to fly off the handle or anything—”

“It doesn’t matter if you meant to or not. I’m telling you that you did.”

Koyuki knew Azuma was probably wrestling with his own demons. When you got down to it, it was their fault that Kaguya was in a coma right now, after all.

“I was just trying to… Never mind. I don’t think there’s really a difference now from how I used to do things.” As expected, Azuma was deflecting. “But I’m sorry if I worried you. I’ll try to rein it in going forward.”

“That’s all I ask.”

Koyuki settled back into her seat on the other side of the sofa while Azuma frowned. She had a feeling there was more to whatever was making Azuma behave this way. Even despair wouldn’t drive a person to such lengths.

“You don’t need to get so carried away. We’re all in the same boat, Azuma.”

“…”

Azuma was silent for a moment, seeming to understand what she meant. A moment later he turned away.

“Even if Kaguya wakes up tomorrow, we can’t go on like this. The same thing will just happen again because she won’t stop. We need to find a way other than just defeating the heroes.”

“Yes, you’re probably right…”

So that was what was behind all of this.

Azuma had tried sending Kaguya away once before out of concern for her mental and physical health. At the time, they had all agreed—Azuma included—that they would just defeat the heroes like they used to. No more saving them.

But then Kaguya returned—and she showed them. They were forced to realize that they couldn’t go on just killing the heroes.

“We were doing just fine before she came along. We can be fine again, so long as we just keep defeating them.”

“Yes, so long as we just defeat them… You can see them now, right? The human faces inside the heroes.”

Azuma had told her about it a little while ago. As an aftereffect of temporarily turning into a hero, he could now see into the shadows that covered the heroes’ faces.

“Yes… Not that I want to.”

“That’s tough…” Not only could he hear the heroes’ eggs, but now he could see the heroes’ faces as well. “Is that why you’re always in such a hurry to take them out so quickly?”

“Maybe… It’s not a very pleasant thing to see. It would be hard to scrub their faces from my memory, no matter how hard I tried.”

Unlike Kaguya, Azuma couldn’t speak with the heroes. He could only see them. The stress, Koyuki imagined, had to be tremendous.

“But not so much that you want to stop going on missions, I’m guessing? What if you just covered your right eye while you fought?”

“No… I mean, Kaguya’s not here right now,” Azuma said, a faint smile playing on his lips as if he was embarrassed. “If I don’t look…there will be no one to remember their last moments. They really will die as just monsters.”

“So you’re looking at them on purpose…”

The captain can be a real softie in the most unexpected of ways sometimes, Koyuki mused. The creatures they fought had already transformed into heroes; it was too late to save them. And yet he was purposely putting himself through the pain of looking at them just so that there would be someone who would remember their faces.

“You used to say they were just monsters, nothing more and nothing less.”

“Yes, but the past is the past… Speaking of heroes,” Azuma said, annoyed and purposefully changing the subject. “Today’s hero gave us some trouble. I couldn’t tell where the egg was. We got lucky earlier, but…”

Today’s hero had been small, meaning they had been able to destroy it with a single strike—egg and all. But if it had been as massive as some of the heroes they had faced in the past?

“Things won’t always go as easy as they went today,” Azuma added. “We need to come up with a better plan.”

“You’re right… Maybe we should try asking Second Lieutenant Takanashi. She’s used to fighting heroes without knowing where their eggs are located, after all.”

There was another slight squeak as the door opened, and Koyuki and Azuma turned to see who was there.

Speak of the devil—it was Haru Takanashi. Her eyes widened slightly in surprise.

“What are you doing here at this late hour…?” she asked Koyuki.

“You’re one to talk.”

It was already past one AM. Haru would have usually been fast asleep.

“I had business with Captain Azuma,” said Haru. “Since he wasn’t in his room, I figured he might be here. But I didn’t expect you to be up as well.”

“Well, excuse me for wasting space.”

“That’s not what I… Never mind. You can be really high-maintenance sometimes, you know that?”

Haru looked overtly annoyed. While her reaction was a little aggravating, even annoyance was far more emotion than she had originally been willing to give them. Now her reaction was almost charming in a way.

“You wanted to speak to me?” asked Azuma. “If it’s not too urgent, maybe it would be better to wait until tomorrow…”

“No… It’s not an emergency, but I do think it’s something that qualifies as fairly urgent.”

“What is it?”

At the word urgent, Azuma tensed involuntarily. He leaned forward slightly so that he could better listen to what she had to say.

“You don’t need to be so formal about it. But…well, it’s something that feels a bit heavy for me to handle on my own.” Haru spoke to both Koyuki and Azuma. “I have a favor to ask…”

A favor?

Koyuki and Azuma glanced at each other.

The two looked puzzled. Haru sat herself down on the sofa in front of them, their four eyes boring into her.

“What do you mean?” Koyuki said, the first to speak. “What kind of favor?”

“I want to look into why Inspection was so interested in Kaguya.”

“You think they’re up to something? Something to do with Lieutenant Shinohara?”

“Before I can answer that, there’s something I need to explain…”

And she did. Haru explained what had first brought her to Charon and the things she had done after she arrived. It was actually her first time confessing all of this, but Azuma and Koyuki did not seem very surprised by what she said. They remained fairly levelheaded as she spoke.

“Because I was transferred from Inspection so suddenly, I still have access to the database. Someone will probably notice before long, but in the meantime, I’ve been extracting all of the data that I can.”

“E-extracting…? Isn’t that a problem?”

“Oh, it’s a big problem. But this is no time to be sticklers for the rules. The Director was just murdered, after all. But here, look at this,” Haru said, pulling a photograph from her inner breast pocket.

“Is this…a photo? On paper? I didn’t know stuff like this still existed,” Koyuki mused.

“Warrant Officer Ezakura discovered it with Lieutenant Shinohara in the archives at Headquarters.”

Azuma and Koyuki were barely listening, however. They were too shocked by what the photograph showed.

“Judging by this picture,” Haru began, “the origin of the term ‘hero’ might be somewhat different from what we were led to believe. But if so, then I wonder why they are called heroes.”

And why was it kept hidden?

“Obviously, the Director was murdered. There’s no doubt about that. And I think it is somehow related to their interest in Lieutenant Shinohara.”

Azuma lifted his head slowly, fixing his eyes on Haru.

“That means…,” he said.

Haru could see the panic in his face. He looked like a wild animal that had been spooked.

“What if—what if Kaguya is in danger, too? Just like the Director?!” Azuma demanded.

“Calm down. None of this is for certain. But…yes, it could be dangerous to leave her alone.”

“C-could be…?”

“There’s no need to panic. Warrant Officer Ezakura is almost always in the room with her. However, that does have something to do with the favor I wanted to ask you.”

Azuma stared at Haru dubiously.

“I wanted to talk to you about taking me off mission duty for a little while,” she continued calmly. “I don’t make much of a contribution to battles to begin with, so I don’t think it will be much of an issue in terms of combat strength.”

“But why…?”

“It’s not just about Kaguya Shinohara. There’s a lot of things I need to dig into, and I need to do so as quickly as possible.”

Azuma furrowed his brow ever so slightly. In that brief moment, a million thoughts ran through his head. But his expression immediately returned to normal. He nodded, giving his approval.

“I’m interested in knowing the truth myself. Fine. You’re off missions for the time being.”

“Thank you.” Haru’s eyes relaxed with her warm smile before immediately taking on their usual hard glint. “The Bureau is hiding something…”

And whatever it was, she had a feeling it was big.

Kaguya cocked her head to the side. She had the feeling that she had forgotten something very important.

She was currently watching the other members of Charon as they returned from battle.

Sakura, Koyuki, Haru, and Rindou. The battle had ended without any serious injuries, and no one had been lost. They were just as they had been when they’d left.

This time Haru had been the one to enter the hero’s psyche. Exhausted, she was pressing a hand to her temple as if her head hurt.

“Just my luck. Why did I have to wind up being the closest…?”

“You did a great job out there, Haru,” said Sakura, patting her on the shoulder. “It took you a while, though, didn’t it? Did you have trouble persuading them?”

“Yeah… To be honest, I’m not too cut out for that part.”

Kaguya giggled slightly. It sounded like Haru had worried for nothing.

The door to the hall opened, and several young men and women continued to file in, making small talk as they entered. Kaguya, who had been left to look after things while they were gone, went to greet them. The first face she spotted was Sakura’s.

“Oh hey, Kaguya. We’re home,” said Sakura.

“Sakura, everyone, welcome back.”

Kaguya greeted the other members as they settled into the room, but she was overcome by a feeling that something wasn’t right. As if there was something bizarrely missing. Something that should have been there but sadly was not.

No, it’s more than that…

This wasn’t just an inkling. She felt certain. There was definitely something wrong about this image, something that was missing. But she had no idea what it could be. She scoured her hazy mind—trying manually to connect the dots—but nothing came to her.

Something abnormal—indistinct and indescribable. A feeling that couldn’t be explained, like something was off. An oppressive malaise that was constantly weighing down on her.

“Hey, what’s that?” said Koyuki. She had just noticed what was on the table—what Kaguya had put there. “Oh wow! Is that…cake?!”

“Y-yes, I just made it.”

Since she was staying behind anyway, Kaguya figured that the least she could do was bake. Everyone was delighted, just as she had hoped.

“A homecoming cake? Kaguya, you’re the best. Nothing beats something sweet after battle.”

“I don’t think you’re using that word right, Sakura,” Koyuki remarked. “We were just away on a short mission.”

“Oh… Well, then it’s a welcome-home cake.”

“A welcome-home cake”? What a goofy thing to say. Everyone burst out laughing, charmed by Sakura’s cute turn of phrase. Even Kaguya.

“There are more cakes in the refrigerator, too,” she told everyone. “I made a bunch.”

The team members were visibly excited. Haru immediately went to the refrigerator, opened it up, and peered inside. She cocked her head in surprise.

“It looks like there are ten in total. Isn’t that a bit too much?”

“Too much? Is that a joke? If anything, I was worried I hadn’t made enough,” Kaguya said in her defense.

Koyuki rolled her eyes. “Kaguya, I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but the weird one in this situation is you and your stomach.”

“Really? Maybe you all just eat like birds. You need to eat if you’re going to keep up your strength, you know?”

“Yes, but only enough! It’s amazing you’re able to pack so much away without making yourself sick…”

Kaguya cocked her head to the side. She didn’t really eat that much, did she?

“Oh, what’s the harm? We’re not that tired today anyway. Might as well stay up and eat some cake,” said Sakura, coming to Kaguya’s rescue.

The squad disbanded temporarily. Sakura and Koyuki, who stayed behind, began chowing down on the cakes. Kaguya took a piece for herself as well.

Everything has been so great these days, thought Kaguya. Nobody was dying. Nobody was turning into a hero. It felt like she had been waiting for something like this forever. Her eyes began to well up with tears.

What’s wrong with me, crying at a time like this…?

Kaguya wiped her cheek surreptitiously so that no one else would see. She could feel the wetness on the back of her hand. Even that trail of warmth on her cheek felt precious.

Azuma and the rest of Charon were in Ikebukuro. They had just received a report of a hero sighting.

“SKREEE!!”

An insect-like screech rose into the air. The hero looked like what might be described as an amalgamation of books. Its body was shrouded in numerous volumes that functioned almost like appendages.

A hero comprised of countless books forming a single creature. It was shaped almost like a snake—its belly looking like an accordion’s bellows with how the alternating books connected. They could hear the pages fluttering with the creature’s every move, which made their hair stand on end.

“Azuma, do you have a read on the egg?”

“No…”

Azuma strained his ears, but once again, he couldn’t hear it. There was a kind of static scream that interfered with his ability to hear the egg.

Unfortunately, the hero was much larger this time. It was about as thick around as a child’s trunk and looked as if it could swallow at least a smaller human without trouble.

The mouth, however, was not visible due to the dark shadow that blotted out the space around its face.

Inside that void, Azuma had a clear view of the face of the young girl who had turned. It was like a hallucination that was only visible to his right eye. Bleakness, like heavy lead, spread throughout Azuma’s body as he witnessed the sight.

They just had to defeat a hero—same as always. This had once seemed like the most natural thing in the world to Azuma, but no longer.

Now he could see them—their faces. And he had chosen to look so that he could remember their final moments for them.

“…Hah…”

The mental strain it caused was extreme. Koyuki had warned him not to get too reckless, so he was making an effort to tone things down. But sometimes, when he saw those faces, it took a moment for his emotions to catch up with his thoughts.

I thought…I would be able to get over it, but…

A hideous grin of madness confronted him with each swing of his katana. And there he was, like a reaper delivering quietus. A merciful executioner.

Before, against the fog hero, he thought he would get over it eventually.

But ever since Kaguya wound up in a coma, I’ve been stuck. At the end of the day, all I can really do is defeat heroes.

Every time he saw one of the heroes’ shattered smiles, he was reminded of the fact that he, too, had once been in their shoes. The thought was like agony.

“Azuma, are you okay?” Koyuki said, sounding concerned.

“Don’t worry. It’s nothing. Right now, we need to focus on trying to find the egg.”

“Y-yes, you’re right. And it doesn’t look like this hero is going to make it easy for us.”

She could say that again. The members of Charon had relied on Azuma’s ability for so long that they didn’t know how to fight properly once they were forced to go in blind.

The hero began to make its move.

“Ah…!”

The snake hero suddenly reared up, baring its belly to Azuma and the others. The countless thick, mismatched books on the creature’s underside opened up, exposing their contents to the other squad members. But there were no words or pictures inside, only darkness. It was a blinding dark, as if every page had been doused in blackness.

“Don’t look at it!” Azuma shouted. He knew his voice was trembling. “It’s the same as the darkness around its head. It’s all the same!”

The hero’s face awaited within the blackness of the books. An illusion, of course. A glimpse into the depths of the hero and the shadows inside.

The girl was approaching adolescence but still younger than Azuma and the others. Her childish face—distorted in a hideous smile—repeated infinitely in each of the open books.

Her visage bore a twisted cackle, but there was no time for panic. Azuma heard someone click their tongue over the comms. It was Rindou.

“I hate when they go for quantity over quality. We’ll just have to cut a path open by force. Isn’t that right, Koyuki?”

“I guess, but you’re making it sound so easy. Each of those books might be weak on their own, but it’s always the heroes that try to overwhelm you with numbers that turn out to be the worst.”

All the many books began moving independently, like butterflies, each taking on their own twisted forms to attack. They morphed into birds, insects, trees, and other shapes and began harassing the members of Charon.

A hero could not move without an egg. Parts that were sliced off from a hero’s body, apart from the egg, became mere meat. There was always an egg. But Azuma could no longer hear it.

“SKRRREEEEE!!”

The hero’s scream caused Azuma to snap out of his thoughts. No amount of confusion was enough to put a damper on his fighting instincts. It was almost laughable in a way.

The books flocked to attack. These books that colored the girl’s interior world were all different sizes and thicknesses.

The first book to enter Azuma’s field of vision resembled a dictionary.

Blotted out in darkness and transformed into a blunt weapon, the book flew toward Azuma. He slashed through it as easily as silk and then prepared for the next attack. A novel, a picture book, a comic—he chopped through each with a single slice of his blade.

They were like ordinary books. All it took to cut through them was to connect.

“However…,” Azuma said, hesitating for a moment.

He had once started to turn into a hero himself. He could no longer remember it clearly, but immediately before turning, he had seen things.

Images of his younger sister completely transformed into a hero. A girl scattering into pink. Many other visions. So many humans who had become heroes—the ones he couldn’t save. The images were still burned into his eyes.

Don’t think about that now.

Azuma shook his head. A trip down memory lane could wait until later.

“Azuma, maybe you haven’t noticed the way you’re just standing around…but things are starting to look pretty bad here.”

Apologizing briefly, Azuma turned to face the hero again. He took it all in—the mad smile resting within the darkness around its face.

If Kaguya were here…

…What would she do? What choice would Kaguya want him to make? What was it she expected from him?

“Captain Azuma, please.”

A memory of her voice, lingering in the evening light, suddenly passed through Azuma’s mind. He remembered what he had said to her in response. That he would do what he could, when it came to the heroes.

More books attacked. This time it was some sort of illustrated encyclopedia series. There must have been dozens of them lined up in impressive spectacle. They formed a clump as if the cover of one were glued to the back of the next. Azuma stood in their way.

Koyuki had fired her rifle several times by now, causing relatively serious damage with each shot. She seemed to have realized something.

“There, it’s protecting that area over there…,” she muttered. “Rindou, look!”

Rindou did as he was told. Azuma also turned his attention in the direction that Koyuki was indicating with her eyes.

The area corresponded to what would have been the snake’s eye. A thin book was placed there. It was an extremely small notepad, noticeably different from the swarm of books currently causing havoc all around them.

Encyclopedias, comics, and other thick books were rotating in the air around the notepad as if to protect it.

“That’s it! Koyuki, cover me!”

“Leave it to me!!” Koyuki hollered, readying her weapon.

The hero realized that the jig was up, and its main body, which was made up of countless books in the shape of a snake, suddenly began to rampage. The chaos prevented Azuma from getting close.

Koyuki, however, did not back down. She kept her gun at the ready, paying the commotion no mind.

She had made plans with Rindou in advance.

Their first priority had been locating the egg. The egg was the core of the hero. It was like the heart of a living creature. If heroes were in fact living creatures, then surely heroes would also attempt to protect their hearts.

“So the plan is, I attack with everything I’ve got,” Rindou had said, “and you stay back and keep your eyes peeled. Try to figure out if there’s an area it’s trying to protect.”

While Rindou served as bait, Koyuki would watch how the hero moved and countered and try to identify where its defenses lied. Once she identified the spot, she would shoot.

Despite the sheer volume of matter rampaging about her, Koyuki never broke her stance. She was waiting for an opportunity. A single moment was all it would take. One moment when nothing interfered with her line of sight toward the egg.

It was a delicate task, like threading the eye of a needle. Several of the rampaging books seemed to recognize Koyuki as a new threat as she took aim. They moved to attack.

With enough of them together, even books made for fairly dangerous weapons. Koyuki, however, held her ground. A hardcover illustrated encyclopedia flew her way. It was sure to hurt if it made direct contact, but just as a corner of the heavy tome was about to connect with her face, Rindou kicked it out of the air.

The two functioned like a well-oiled machine while Azuma stared in amazement from the side. Each time Rindou found himself in a pinch, Koyuki came to his rescue. Likewise, whenever Koyuki was in danger, Rindou swooped in to her aid.

Up until now, they had relied on Azuma’s power and then later Kaguya’s power at the end of the day. But now that neither Azuma nor Kaguya could use those powers, it was up to them instead.

“Duck!”

Rindou dropped down immediately. There it was, just above his head.

Koyuki had her line of sight. She could see the notebook, which formed the creature’s red eye, clearly in the middle of her scope. Although she could neither see nor sense them, she also spared a thought for the original human who must be resting inside. Whoever they were, they, too, must have had a reason for ending up like this.

“What kind of dream are you dreaming, I wonder?”

She pulled the trigger.

Instantly, the bullet launched from the barrel and hit its mark—easily destroying the snake’s face, along with the egg inside, and causing the book to catch fire and explode. As the crimson flare seared itself into her eyes, Koyuki offered up a solitary prayer.

Whatever frustrated wish, whatever dream this hero might have been dreaming—may it end gently, at least.

“…”

Kaguya, of course, continued to sleep. Haru felt indescribably sad.

She was sitting in the hospital room, staring at a single photograph. She had gotten her hands on it after Mari had told her about it.

This photograph was exactly what she had been seeking for so long. However, she had too many questions now to feel happy that she had found it.

The date displayed in the photograph was April 6, 2030. Thirty years ago—it was a marvel that a paper photograph from that time still remained. But the real issue was with what the photograph displayed.

“A hero…”

A hero, one of those creatures that Haru knew so well, standing majestically in the middle of an urban neighborhood, just existing. As if it belonged there. There was no sign in the photograph of the hostility and destructive behavior she was used to seeing in heroes.

She flipped the photograph over. The words Technical Research Lab No. 1 were written on the back. Meaning this photograph had likely been in Technical No. 1’s possession.

Then what was it doing in the archives at Headquarters of all places? Since Mari had found it, it must have been somewhere fairly easy to discover. That was just one of the questions Haru now harbored.

“Hmm… It seems like answers only bring more questions…”

The whole reason that Haru had gone rogue, operating separately from the other members of Charon, was to uncover the truth. Both because she was originally from Inspection and because she felt like she was in Charon’s debt. She had originally come to Charon to betray Kaguya, after all.

“Based on this thirty-year-old photograph, however, something clearly must have occurred to change things over the following twenty-five years.”

There were no documents or records from that period, unfortunately.

Haru decided to start by investigating the katana that had been left behind at the scene of the Director’s murder instead. With a little bit of scavenging, it hadn’t taken her long to uncover more details about the sword.

She had also learned a certain piece of information about the Chronoses. Something she wanted to let everyone know.

Just then, the sliding door rattled opened. Haru, whose back had been facing the door, turned around in surprise.

“Umm…?”

“You’re…Warrant Officer Mari Ezakura, correct?”

The girl’s golden eyes widened as if she hadn’t expected anyone to be there. This was Haru’s first time finding herself alone, one-on-one, with Warrant Officer Ezakura. Haru could not help but feel awkward. Warrant Officer Ezakura was hardly someone she would have gone out of her way to spend time with.

“U-umm… What are you doing here…? Isn’t Charon on a mission…?”

“Yes… I had something else to deal with. Did you come to visit Kaguya?”

Mari didn’t answer. Like a wary cat, she kept her distant eyes fixed on Haru.

“What are you so afraid of? It’s not like I’m going to bite.”

“Who said I was afraid…? I’m not. And I don’t have anything against you personally.”

Mari slowly settled into the other chair in the room. She had a clear view of Kaguya from her new position.

“So why are you keeping at arm’s length like that?” Haru asked.

Mari, who barely took up a corner of her chair, answered curtly in a voice that could barely be heard.

“Because I hate you…”

Haru Takanashi. The young woman who had only just recently joined Charon. Mari knew she was being harsh, but she didn’t apologize.

Naturally, Mari had barely ever interacted with her before. Never, really, unless you counted simply being in the same room together.

Haru seemed more than a little offended by Mari’s words.

“You hate me? I don’t see what I’ve done to deserve being spoken to like that, considering as I’ve barely said two words to you before.”

“Not you, specifically… Charon.”

Mari’s voice came out surprisingly barbed. She knew she was just lashing out at this point.

“I’ve been by Kaguya’s side since the beginning. It was Charon. They’re the ones who put her in this state. That’s why…that’s why I hate them all.”

“Oh, is that all?” Haru said, sounding surprisingly indifferent. Or even as if she was laughing at Mari a little. “In other words, you just want someone to blame so that you don’t have to face up to how unfair reality is.”

“…!”

“If you really need someone to blame, it should be the heroes, not us. But I suspect you already know that.”

Mari did. She understood it very well. Which is why she remained silent now. She wasn’t about to apologize, though. She was still simmering quietly when…

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it like that.”

Haru apologized first, taking Mari by surprise.

“We all understand how you feel. We just haven’t said anything about it… It was obvious you never approved of Lieutenant Shinohara working at Charon.”

“Well…I didn’t exactly hide it.”

In fact, she had consciously chosen not to hide it. She thought that if she made her feelings obvious, there was a slim chance Kaguya might have changed her mind. Although that didn’t pay off in the end.

“So if you hate us, I guess that’s just the way things are. Although you should probably keep that information to yourself.”

Mari wasn’t sure if Haru was being philosophical or just didn’t care. It was hard to get a read on someone like her. But Mari could tell that Haru wasn’t a bad person.

“Umm…,” Mari ventured timidly. “Second Lieutenant Takanashi? What are you actually here for?”

“I learned something about the Chronoses and wanted to let everyone else know.”

“Something about the Chronoses…?”

Mari was also harboring a secret about the Chronoses. She braced herself, worried about what might be coming.

“I uncovered some records at Inspection… Records related to Technical.”

“Records related to Technical…?! What kind of records?”

“I learned some details about how Chronoses are created.”

Haru visibly hesitated for a moment. It didn’t seem like she was hesitating over whether or not to tell Mari what she had learned, so much as she was actually afraid to put the truth into words.

“It’s related to the Director’s death as well.”

“What?” Mari leaned forward impulsively. “Wh-what do you mean, related? What does this have to do with the Director?”

“There was something that was bothering me. That Chronos that was apparently found by the Director’s body? It shouldn’t have existed, but there it was after the Director died, just lying there. I think the Director’s death may have been the trigger for it.”

Mari could only open and shut her mouth reflexively. This was too much to hear.

“And…you’re going to tell them that? You’re going to tell the other members of Charon?”

“Yes… Is there a problem with that?”

“But if you tell them the truth, won’t they stop fighting?”

Haru looked Mari straight in the eyes for the first time since arriving.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, that would mean that someone needs to die in order for a Chronos to be made. If Charon were to hear about that, they might not be able to bring themselves to wield the things anymore.”

Haru stared at Mari silently. The lack of expression on her face made it impossible to tell what she was thinking. Mari felt more and more uncomfortable with each passing second.

“S-so wouldn’t it be better, maybe, not to say anything?”

“Warrant Officer Ezakura,” Haru said, a reprimand in her voice. “Don’t you think that’s being disrespectful to them?”

“Disrespectful…?”

“Charon have kept fighting all this time, regardless of whatever obstacles they had to face. They’re hardly soft enough to throw in the towel over something like this.”

“H-how?” Mari rose to her feet involuntarily. “How can you be so sure?! If…if Captain Azuma decided he couldn’t bring himself to use that sword anymore…”

“If he did decide something like that, then he was obviously never cut out to be the squad’s captain in the first place.”

Cold—Haru seemed as cold as ice to Mari at that moment. But beneath that coldness, Mari also sensed burning passion. Mari wasn’t sure how to respond.

“You’ve got a secret of your own, don’t you?” Haru asked as if she could see straight through Mari. “Something you’re keeping to yourself. Whatever that secret is, I’m guessing that it’s something that would be difficult for Charon to hear.”

Mari was mortified that Haru had caught on to her so easily. But Haru was right. Regardless of the outcome, Mari was fairly sure that her secret would hit Charon like a ton of bricks.

“I don’t know what your secret is. It’s up to you to decide whether or not to share it in the end. However…”

The only other sound in the hospital room was the measured noise of Kaguya’s breathing. Haru’s voice hung deliberately in the air as if she had a point that needed to be made.

“In my opinion, they have a right to know.”

“A…right to know?”

Mari considered this. What Haru was preparing to tell everyone was indeed shocking news, but it was hardly crucial information. Mari doubted that anyone would get hurt if Haru just kept that information to herself.

Mari’s secret, however, was like a lit grenade. Something inside Mari was screaming at her not to let it out.

“B-but—”

“What do you think she would do?” Haru said, directing her eyes toward Kaguya. Mari followed her gaze. “What would Lieutenant Shinohara think about all this? Do you think she would choose to stay quiet out of consideration for Captain Azuma’s feelings?”

Mari’s thoughts ran to Kaguya and to everything she knew about her.

Kaguya would tell them.

The answer came to Mari more quickly than she had expected.

Kaguya would never act so fainthearted. Even if that meant causing Azuma pain. Even if that meant Charon would stop fighting. She would just laugh and say, “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

Kaguya was Mari’s mentor, an object of love and respect. And whether Mari liked it or not, Kaguya believed in the other members of Charon. Mari doubted Kaguya could be so wrong about something like that.

“Kaguya would tell them…”

Mari made up her mind. She decided to follow her heart.

“I know she would. She would do it for Charon’s sake… You’re right. She would consider it disrespectful not to tell them the truth, just because it might hurt them.”

“I agree. But what about you?” Haru asked, turning her gaze toward Mari in expectation. Mari answered her gaze head-on.

“I’m going to tell them. I’m going to tell them what I know.”

“Good. Then we can both tell everyone what we know once they get back.”

Although Mari couldn’t see it, she could sense Haru’s bemused smile.

“So do you still hate me now?”

“Absolutely.”

That remained the same, but…

“However…Kaguya trusted you.”

“You really do think the world of Lieutenant Shinohara, don’t you?” Haru said, shrugging her shoulders in an exaggerated fashion like a character from a movie.

Watching her out of the corners of her eyes, Mari steeled her nerves. Charon was ready—ready to hear the awful truth.

Once the battle ended, Azuma noticed he had a message on his terminal.

However, it was just one sentence long: I’m waiting in Kaguya’s hospital room.

Haru must have learned something. There would be no need to message him if she was only visiting Kaguya. He hurried toward Kaguya’s hospital room.

“Warrant Officer Ezakura…?”

Upon arriving, he saw that Mari was there as well.

She had probably just come to pay Kaguya a visit. But the expression on her face was a complete turnaround from the gloomy look she usually wore. It seemed as if she had made up her mind about something important.

Her presence, however, was slightly inconvenient right now. Azuma had come to speak with Haru.

“I’m sorry, but would you mind leaving the room for a little while? Takanashi and I—”

“No, Captain Azuma. Mari should stay.”

The expression that appeared on Haru’s face was difficult to describe. Like someone staring ruefully at a cup of spilled coffee.

“Oh? I suppose that’s fine.”

Azuma gave Haru a questioning look. The only people in the room were Haru, Mari, Koyuki, Rindou, and Kaguya, who was unconscious.

Haru began without further ado.

“I’ve learned more about how Chronoses are created.”

“You’ve what…?”

“I was able to access Inspection’s database and get my hands on some data connected to the Chronoses. There were a lot of things about the Director’s death that didn’t seem to add up…”

Haru began explaining in a soft voice. She spoke about how the final stage of creating Chronoses involved bathing the weapons in human blood and how this was also part of the reason the Director was killed—that it wasn’t just to keep her quiet.

“How sinister…,” Koyuki said in disgust. “In other words, that means that the Chronoses we use every day were created out of blood and death.”

They had left their weapons in the transport truck, so there were no Chronoses in the room with them at the moment. Azuma’s thoughts ran briefly to his katana, which had been found at the scene of the Director’s death. It must have absorbed the Director’s blood.

Azuma, however, was not too affected by the news. He was used to such revelations by this point and was not about to lose his head over every new surprise.

“This may just be my own opinion, but I would rather prioritize those who are still alive over those who are no longer with us,” he said. “I’m sorry, but choosing not to use these weapons out of some compunction just doesn’t seem like an option to me.”

“Good… I’m glad to hear it.” Haru looked toward the corner of the room. “That’s all I had to say. But Warrant Officer Ezakura apparently has something to share as well.”

Azuma’s gaze settled on Mari, and he tried not to show surprise. A mixed expression appeared on the warrant officer’s face. Determination rippled with fear.

Mari began speaking somewhat timidly.

“What I wanted to speak about is related in a way—well, possibly, I think. But I need to ask you all something. Are you willing to keep fighting, no matter what you learn?”

“…? What do you mean, no matter what?”

“Well, if something even more awful were to occur, for instance. If something were to come to light that was completely untenable. Are you sure you could keep going on, just like before?”

“I don’t know what it is you’re suggesting…,” Azuma answered calmly. “But it wouldn’t change anything about what we need to do. We all know how important it is to defeat the heroes—”

Azuma paused mid-sentence. If defeating the heroes was all they cared about, there would have been no need for all this handwringing in the first place.

“No, not just defeat heroes. To save people as well. To prevent any more people from dying whenever possible, including even the heroes.”

“Okay… Then my mind is made up. The Director confided something in me before she died… Something about the Chronoses.”

Mari’s voice commanded the room. Azuma and the others simply listened in silence.

“According to what she told me, they can think. These Chronoses… They have minds of their own.”

“Minds…?”

Azuma misheard her at first. He thought she had said mines. As if there was some sort of secret metal that was used. But obviously, that would not merit such a fuss.

“Sentience, I suppose you could say.”

“Sentience…?”

Azuma was still confused. What was she trying to say? Sentience was something found in humans, not in inanimate weapons. How would anyone even confirm something like that?

“They retain their awareness and are still conscious, even now, of what happens in the world around them.”

“…? What do you mean?”

“It’s, um, sort of like locked-in syndrome,” Mari explained, scrambling to remember what the Director had told her.

Mari explained how Chronoses contained the consciousnesses of the original humans they were created from, still sealed inside. She also told them about the rebounds—how they were the consciousnesses’ manic attempts to resist.

Azuma was speechless. As were Rindou and Koyuki.

“Is that—?” Azuma’s mouth felt unpleasantly dry. “Is all of that true?”

“It is. I learned it firsthand when I visited the Director’s lab…,” Mari explained, almost as if she was trying to defend herself. But they weren’t worried about that right now.

“Is there any proof?”

“Nothing that could rise to the level of conclusive evidence. But I witnessed some of the Director’s experiments in person.”

Mari elaborated on what she had seen in detail: Yuuji Sakigaya and the stress response tests. And the tubes of liquid, red like blood.

“Sorry, but I’m not buying it,” Rindou said, looking uneasy. “This is probably all just speculation on your part.”

“You’re right; it is. I can’t deny that. But I’m telling you, you have to believe me. What reason would I have to lie about something like this deliberately?”

“Tsk. So what are you telling us for?” There was something dangerous in Rindou’s voice, wild like an animal’s. “It doesn’t change anything, does it? Whether we know the truth or not? So then why even tell us?! What possible reason—?”

“Rindou, stop.”

Azuma held up a hand to restrain Rindou, just in case. He almost looked like he was about to strike Mari. After managing to get his own breathing under control, Azuma turned to face Mari.

“When you say they are conscious of the outside world…does that mean they can feel pain as well?”

“Th-that’s what the Director said.”

“Weapons that can feel pain…?” Koyuki was starting to grow belligerent. Perhaps it was her fatigue speaking. “What kind of nonsense is that? Do you even hear yourself? What makes you think we would ever believe something like that?”

“Well… I don’t…I guess…”

Mari cowered in response. However.

“Permission,” Haru said, softly, as if coming to Mari’s aid. Everyone turned their eyes toward her. “She said that the weapon had given her permission.”

“She? You mean Kaguya?”

Haru nodded. She seemed to be working out her thoughts as she spoke.

“If Chronoses really do have minds of their own, that word choice would make a lot more sense.”

“B-but that was just Kaguya speaking off the cuff, wasn’t it?! The idea that Chronoses could be conscious and feel pain is ridiculous. They’re just weapons—”

“Living weapons. And the rebounds, which only those of you in Charon are immune to, may in fact be an expression of that will.”

But to what end?

“In other words, the rebounds may be their method of communicating that they do not want to be used as weapons.”

The room fell quiet. It felt like something cold and silent was pressing down on them from above.

“So what makes us different, then…?” Azuma asked, his voice shaking slightly.

The idea that these Chronoses, which they swung around like tools without a second thought, might in fact have minds of their own—he didn’t want to admit it might be true.

He briefly remembered his katana, now tossed haphazardly into the armory. Was there someone in there? A person inside?

Someone who had witnessed the Director’s death?

“I’ve never felt any kind of resistance. Yes, there’s physical recoil with the guns, but as for what everyone else experiences…”

Azuma trailed off. He wanted to insist that Mari was wrong, but it was difficult to do so with much confidence.

“That’s just speculation, though, right…?”

“It’s speculation, yes, but everything adds up.” Haru had never handled a Chronos and was able to consider the matter with more detachment than the others present. “The reason that none of you experience rebounds is because you were altered by the hero six years ago, correct?”

“Yes. At least, that’s what I’ve been told,” Azuma said, answering for all of them.

It was Kaguya’s theory. That also fell into the realm of speculation, but even to a layman like Azuma, her explanation seemed reasonable enough.

“Everyone in Charon contains a hero factor due to your contact with the hero from six years ago. It’s why the weapons are unable to resist you. Either that or their resistance just has no effect on you.”

“What do you mean…?”

“The reason is unclear. But even if we speculate that Chronoses are sentient and are able to reject being used by humans, it may simply be that this pushback has no effect on people who contain the so-called hero factor. Remember, even though Lieutenant Shinohara once started to turn into a hero herself, she does not actually contain the hero factor, so—”

“Stop it.” Koyuki’s voice, like a soft cry, interrupted Haru’s train of thought. “Stop talking about us like we’re monsters.”

“I’m sorry…”

Haru averted her eyes uncomfortably. No one spoke. Unable to bring themselves to agree with what she was saying, yet unable to refute her. Not even Azuma could think of anything to say that might lighten the mood.

This was all so much to process. The notion that Chronoses could contain a hero’s consciousness was already mind-boggling enough. Add to that the idea that rebounds could be an intentional manic act of resistance on the part of sentient creatures? One that was only ineffective against them because they had been, in essence, bred by the heroes?

The silence was petrifying.

As difficult as it all was to believe, there was no indication that any of it was a lie. First and foremost, why would Mari make up such a thing in the first place? And as for the Director? Well, the Director had been killed. If this were all just unhinged paranoia on her part, constructed from whole cloth, then there would have been no reason for her to meet such a fate.

“So Chronoses are sentient and can feel pain. If that’s true…,” Rindou said at last. “Could that have something to do with the fact that heroes also possess psyches of their own? The two things can’t be completely unconnected, right? That would have to be a pretty wild coincidence…”

“Well…”

Mari fell silent, seemingly uncomfortable. It wasn’t that the question had been unexpected. Rather, it seemed as if she had anticipated they would ask that but had no answer. At least, that was what her expression seemed to say.

“I don’t really know…”

“In my opinion,” Azuma continued, “this must have something to do with why the Director was killed. The Director must have learned something that was inconvenient for someone. It’s the only explanation I can think of. And that something is almost certainly what Warrant Officer Ezakura has just informed us of.”

“But why?” Mari asked, lowering her eyes in thought. “Obviously, I can understand why they wouldn’t want to let the soldiers who use Chronoses know something like this, but would that really be enough of a reason to take things this far…?”

“There’s probably something more. Something else they want to keep hidden.”

No one disagreed with that assessment.

After the others had dispersed, Azuma remained behind, leaving just himself and Kaguya.

She lay upon her hospital bed like Sleeping Beauty, the hero’s egg still in her throat.

Azuma was used to the sound. He could hear it clearly right now. Apparently, the only reason he couldn’t hear the eggs during battle was because of the static that was getting in his way, not because he had actually lost the ability.

Azuma hesitated and then stroked Kaguya’s throat lightly as she continued to slumber wearily. Of course, she did not stir.

Azuma obviously wasn’t going to do any more than that.

“I…I hope this really is just fatigue.”

Hypothetically, Kaguya had fallen into a coma from all the mental stress she had been under. However, no one knew for sure.

“It turns out the Chronoses might be sentient…,” Azuma said, taking a step away from Kaguya. “And apparently, it takes every drop of blood in a person’s body to create one. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it…?”

Azuma no longer felt very comfortable using his katana. Not to the point that he was actually going to stop. But he didn’t like it.

“You can talk to the heroes, right? I wonder if you can talk to the Chronoses as well.”

Kaguya could hear the heroes’ voices.

“How would you feel about all this if you knew, Kaguya? I mean, it’s not like we can just stop fighting at this point…”

Kaguya had attempted to use a Chronos herself several times in the past. She would probably be as shocked by this news as they were.

Azuma leaned over Kaguya as he spoke, peering down into her face. He stood up straight again. As he did so, he caught a flash of silver light out of the left-hand corner of his eye.

It was his earring. The cross-shaped accessory his sister had left for him. He took a moment now to remove it. He only took the earring off once a day before he went to sleep. But he had been so busy lately that he had been forgetting to do that. He went to stuff it into his pocket casually.

“Ah!”

Instead, he dropped it. It landed on Kaguya’s throat.

The earring was pure silver, but fortunately, it wasn’t very large and didn’t land with much weight. Kaguya’s eyes remained closed.

Apologizing to her internally, Azuma scooped up the earring and tucked it safely into his pocket.

No one said a word. It was as if time had stopped, but only within this one hospital room.

If Kaguya were to wake up now—Azuma had spoken about this with Koyuki earlier—would they finally be able to get her to stop what she had been doing?

“No. I doubt I could, at least… It’s not so easy to change a person’s heart.”

Azuma turned his back toward Kaguya. His thoughts were on today’s fight with the hero now.

He walked toward the room’s sliding door without turning around. Just as it began to rattle open beneath his hand—he heard the sound of cloth shifting behind him.

“?!”

Azuma spun around in shock. What now? What was happening?

And then he froze. Every previous thought had flown from his head.

“…Kagu…ya…”

Kaguya Shinohara had woken up.

It took the girl a moment to realize she had no idea where she was.

A white ceiling. Her eyes settled on the thin blanket, almost as white, draped over her where she lay in bed. An astringent smell, like disinfectant, filled the room. There was also a young man in the room wearing a turquoise uniform.

Huh…?

Upon waking up, Kaguya Shinohara promptly cocked her head, confused. She could have sworn she had been somewhere fun, somewhere amazing. What was she doing in this bed?

Wait, where am I…?

She took a slow, careful look around. The young man in the turquoise uniform was staring at her in shock. He seemed astonished. Kaguya wasn’t sure how to respond.

After all, she had only just woken up. Her thoughts were still in a jumble. It felt like there was a fog hanging over her head.

Part of Kaguya realized she must have still been half asleep. She felt like you do when you wake up in the morning after sleeping for too long and the blood won’t circulate fully to your head.

But those bluish eyes were staring straight at her. Kaguya was still trying to shake the dust out of her mind when the young man with the silver hair spoke hesitantly.

“Kaguya…?”

It took her a moment to realize that this was her own name. She then remembered the name of the young man as well.

“Captain…Azuma…?”

Her lips felt like they were operating separately from the rest of her body. After saying his name, Kaguya finally registered the situation she was in.

She was in a hospital room. At Headquarters. And the young man standing before her was one of her colleagues from Charon. Yuuri Azuma.

The boy suddenly skyrocketed in resolution, eventually materializing into a solid concept in her mind. From a theoretical sign to a flesh-and-blood comrade. One whom she had fought with, side by side.

“What…what in the world is going on? Why are you staring at me like that?” she asked him.

“Y-you don’t remember what happened to you?”

Before she could ask what he meant, it all started to come back to her. The last thing she could remember was fighting a hero. And then she had lost consciousness. She had collapsed after fighting heroes before. Perhaps this had been something similar.

Satisfied with that explanation for now, Kaguya put on her biggest smile and said nothing.

“Kaguya… Do you know what day it is?”

“What day?” Kaguya cocked her head to the side. It was early July, wasn’t it? The fifth, maybe? “July fifth, right? But why are you asking me that?”

Azuma furrowed his brow uneasily. “Kaguya…,” he said gently. “It’s already August. It’s the first week of August. It’s been nearly a month.”

“What?”

That didn’t make any sense. Did he just say August?

“It’s August…? Today? Now?”

“Do you remember the last thing that you were doing?”

“Th-the last thing that I was doing was fighting a hero, wasn’t it…? If I remember right, you pinned the hero down for me, like you always do. And then I entered the hero’s psyche…,” Kaguya said, listing the events as they occurred to her.

But that was where she hit a wall. She couldn’t remember anything after connecting with the hero. No, that wasn’t entirely true—there was something she could still recall.

“And then…I think I entered some kind of darkness…”

Kaguya recoiled slightly in fear. After that, there was nothing. Apparently, she had lost consciousness. There were no further memories to be found.

But what about the hero?

“H-how long have I—?!”

“A whole month. You’ve, um…been unconscious.”

Azuma explained how she had been in a coma.

But why…?

Not just unconscious but fully comatose. Kaguya didn’t think she had been in poor health beforehand, physically or mentally.

“I’m sorry for worrying you…,” she told Azuma.

“It’s fine. More importantly, how do you feel? It will probably be hard to move at first, but other than that?”

Kaguya shook her head, indicating she was okay. He was right—she could barely move her body. But that was natural, considering how long it had been since she had used any of her muscles.

“What about the others?” Kaguya managed to croak out. Where were they? Koyuki, Rindou, Haru, Mari, and the Director? For some reason, she wanted them there right now. “Where is everyone?”

She had barely managed to get the words out when the door to the hospital room slid open.

“Speaking of which, I forgot to mention—,” Koyuki said, already mid-sentence as she entered the room.

“What…?” Koyuki froze in obvious shock, the door still half open. Kaguya waved. “Kaguya…?!?!”

Koyuki’s voice was so loud it bounced off the walls. Kaguya didn’t even have enough time to register the shock before the other members of Charon came rushing back into the room.

Kaguya gasped as their familiar faces became real once again—she could physically feel the change.

“G-good morning, every—”

“Waaahhh!!”

“?!”

Kaguya was thrust backward into her bed as Mari catapulted into her arms. She clung to Kaguya, crying in a way that Kaguya had never seen her cry before. Mari could be a little childish at times but never so impetuous as this. Kaguya was flabbergasted.

“M-Mari, what’s gotten into you?”

“Into me?!” Mari cried unreasonably. “There was no one left… I was all alone…”

“No one left? What do you mean?”

Kaguya glanced toward Azuma for help. Azuma moved with a start, forcibly detaching Mari from her. Mari meekly allowed herself to be pulled away. Kaguya could see tears welling up in Mari’s eyes.

Azuma took Mari’s place, stepping in front of Kaguya.

“Warrant Officer Ezakura, Kaguya has only just come out of her coma.”

“O-of course. I’m sorry…”

Mari reluctantly gave Kaguya breathing room. Before she could get away, however, Kaguya spoke up to stop her.

“Mari, what did you mean earlier, when you said you were all alone?”

“Oh…!” Mari covered her mouth as if realizing she had said something she shouldn’t have.

An uncomfortable silence ensued. Something was wrong. Kaguya could feel some sort of tightness building in her chest.

There was only Mari and her colleagues from Charon in the room right now. Someone was missing. Not that Kaguya would expect the Director to come visit her in the hospital, Kaguya knew she could be standoffish about such things. But still…

“Where is the Director…?”

Once the words left Kaguya’s mouth, the air in the hospital room seemed to freeze.

Something was clearly amiss. At the mention of the Director’s name, several of the others averted their eyes, unsure of where to look. The expression on Azuma’s face as he stood in front of her was visibly pained.

“Kaguya, the truth is…,” Azuma said, his voice soft with concern. His face was contorted in pain, and he seemed worried about what effect his words would have on her. “The Director is already…”

Kaguya stopped hearing what he was saying halfway through. The Director was dead—not only that but she had been stabbed through the throat with a Chronos and was found with a gaping hole in the middle of her forehead.

“B-but…,” Kaguya said, finally managing to string together her words. “How could something like that happen? An accident? It was an accident, right? What did the Bureau say?”

“They’re calling it a suicide.”

“That’s not possi—hurk!”

Kaguya wretched harshly, the sudden strain on her vocal cords having apparently been too great.

There was no way the Director could have wounded herself twice if it had just been an accident. As for suicide, regardless of which wound she caused first, the throat or the forehead, she would not have had enough strength left to cause the second.

It had obviously been murder.

Kaguya was in so much shock that she didn’t even cry. Maybe it just didn’t feel real yet; Kaguya’s boss, someone she had spent the last two years with, was suddenly gone.

“In any case,” Koyuki said gently as she rubbed Kaguya’s back, “now isn’t the time for this conversation. You’re probably going to need a lot of rehabilitation. You should take your time.”

“You’re right… I’m sorry.”

Azuma looked uncomfortable. The atmosphere in the hospital room felt strange and dour. Kaguya was still having trouble accepting the situation.

Ah…speaking of which…

Suddenly remembering something, Kaguya began scribbling across a notepad as she pressed a hand to her throat. The battles with the heroes. These were very important. What had they been doing while she was gone?

“Wh-what about the battles with the heroes?”

“…”

There were many things that question could mean, and Azuma registered them all.

“Things have returned to normal,” he said, keeping his face neutral, as if they were just making small talk. “Back to how they were before you came here. We’re back to just defeating the heroes again. I know you must not be happy to hear that.”

Kaguya looked disappointed, as expected. “No, I’m sorry. I know it’s the only way.”

There was nothing Azuma could say in response. It was the truth, after all.

Kaguya’s eyes were downcast. She lifted her face again and turned toward Azuma, cocking her head slightly. “You know, it’s kind of funny… Seeing that expression on your face.”

“This expression? What do you mean?”

“I guess you’ve changed. You used to insist that heroes were nothing but monsters.”

“Oh…” Azuma felt oddly wistful. Come to think of it, there had been a time when he had thought that way. “You must have rubbed off on me, I guess.”

“I have? On you?”

“Is that so hard to believe?”

There was a mischievous twinkle in Kaguya’s eye. Azuma waved his hand in the air dismissively.

“You can be very adorable when you want to be, you know that, Captain Azuma?”

“You’ve just woken up. Stop babbling and get some rest.”

“Rest is the last thing I need. I’ve been asleep for a whole month. If anything, it’s about time I got out of bed and got some work done.”

Her attitude made Azuma uneasy.

“There’s no need to overdo things…”

“Overdo things? Who’s overdoing things?” Kaguya said, smiling like normal. “I’m just trying to get back in the saddle. When have I ever not tried to save one of the people inside the heroes?”

Never. Not as far as Azuma knew. Even when it was impossible, she had still given it a try. Which was precisely what was making Azuma feel so uneasy right now.

Someone who didn’t know when to quit was sure to break eventually. Break into so many pieces that there would be no coming back.

“Her full workup came back fine. There’s some physical atrophy, but she should recover from that quickly,” Azuma said, summarizing the results briefly.

For some reason, Koyuki felt a little depressed. Kaguya was almost back to where she was before entering the coma.

“Two weeks,” Kaguya said, explaining what she had been told about her condition. “I’m supposed to get some rest and a little rehabilitation before getting back to work, but supposedly, two weeks should be enough.”

“Hmph…” Koyuki felt a complicated mix of emotions. “That seems pretty short. Wouldn’t it be better if you rested a little longer?”

“Short? I actually thought it seemed a bit long.”

“Kaguya. You’ve been unconscious for a whole month, and not just from normal exhaustion. There was contact with a hero. Two weeks is hardly enough time to recuperate from that.”

“I don’t know,” Kaguya said, cocking her head. As far as she was concerned, two weeks was overkill.

“Look at it this way, Kaguya, what would you say if it were me? If, after being in a coma for a whole month, I said I only wanted to take two weeks to recover…?”

“Hmm… I suppose I wouldn’t like it.”

“There, you see? That’s exactly what I mean. That’s how I feel. I’m worried you’re taking things too fast.” Koyuki slipped into the chair on her left. “Listen, Kaguya, I was talking with Azuma and… Hey, are you even listening to me?”

Kaguya had glanced at the bottom bunk, where a sheet of paper of some sort was placed. She snatched it up suddenly. A document. It looked like it had been ripped out of some kind of report.

“What was I thinking, leaving something like this just lying around…?” she muttered.

“What is it?”

“This? No, it’s nothing…”

“Huh…?” Koyuki said softly, rising from her chair. She stood in front of Kaguya and peeked over the top of the page that Kaguya was holding in her hands. “A document? Is this…a personnel report?”

Based on the format and what she could see from this angle, the piece of paper seemed to be from a physical of some sort. There were two types of handwriting on the page. One was Kaguya’s. Looking more closely, she realized that the other handwriting was Azuma’s.

“Is this report…about Azuma?”

“It is…”

Kaguya reluctantly handed the piece of paper to Koyuki. It was indeed a self-assessment on Azuma’s physical condition, written in his own handwriting. Kaguya’s additions only seemed to be notes and addenda. At a glance, the paper didn’t appear to be anything particularly special, certainly not worth holding onto.

Koyuki cocked her head as she read the words written on the page.

“Elevated pulse, increased body temperature, sweating, redness in the face. And hold on… It says these symptoms only occur when he’s in your presence, Kaguya.”

Koyuki wasn’t sure if these symptoms qualified as a disorder per se—but they certainly occurred in response to some very specific stimuli.

“Kaguya? Did you have any reason for saving this?”

“I… Um, I wasn’t really sure what it all meant…”

“You weren’t? I thought you couldn’t stand not to get to the bottom of things?”

“Y-yes, that’s true…” For some reason, Kaguya blushed slightly and turned away. “But I mean, it’s very unusual, isn’t it…? What if Captain Azuma is experiencing some sort of issue with his nervous system? What would we do then?”

“Yes, what would we do then? But as far as I can tell, it seems like Azuma’s heart only races when he’s near you, Kaguya.”

A certain possible—okay, completely obvious—interpretation had occurred to Koyuki by this point.

“Are you really sure you don’t understand what this means, Kaguya?”

“N-no… Is it something I should know about? Please…tell me, Koyuki.”

“Well, if you need to be told…”

It felt a little tasteless to just spell things out. And a little embarrassing, to be honest. Not that Koyuki was completely inexperienced in such matters, but who wouldn’t get a little tongue-tied when it came to talking about stuff like this out loud?

If she didn’t say something, though, Kaguya would probably go her whole life without ever noticing. Maybe Kaguya just needed a push. A little one.

“Kaguya, do you know what a ‘crush’ is…?”

“Huh?” Kaguya was taken aback. She made a sound Koyuki had never heard from her before. “Crush? What do you mean, crush? What kind of crush?”

“I mean love,” Koyuki said. She took the paper from Kaguya’s hand, laid it on the desk, and began writing it out in pen. L. O. V. E. “Of the romantic variety.”

“Romantic love… Yes, I’m aware of the general concept. But why bring something like that up right now…?”

“If not now, when? This seems like the perfect time.”

Koyuki peered into Kaguya’s face. As far as Koyuki could tell, Kaguya looked perfectly cool and collected. There were no signs of even the slightest hint of self-consciousness in her face.

“What about you, Kaguya? Have you ever had a crush on anyone?”

“Me? You’ve got to be kidding,” Kaguya laughed in exasperation, as if Koyuki had just said something hilarious. “First of all, the emotion of love is just a temporary glitch in the brain. What more proof do you need than the fact that the feeling lasts no more than three years at most? Just the amount of time that is needed for smooth procreation and some basic initial rearing of offspring…”

“Maybe, but I have a feeling Azuma probably likes you.”

“Huh…?”

“Elevated pulse, increased body temperature, sweating, redness in the face. His heart might as well be doing backflips. And it only happens when he catches sight of you.”

Several long seconds passed as Kaguya gave the idea some thought.

“And this is what love feels like?” she asked.

“Yes. I’m glad you’re so quick to catch on. I was worried I was going to have to explain the birds and bees to you next.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense… These sound like aftereffects or some kind of arrhythmia. Or possibly a disorder of the autonomous nervous system—”

“Think again, Kaguya,” Koyuki said, cutting her off. Kaguya was just being silly now. “What kind of syndrome would it be if his heart only races when he’s in your presence? There is no way the effects of turning into a hero would be so arbitrary and ridiculous.”

“R-ridiculous…?”

“Poor Azuma. I really think you would have never noticed without someone telling you.”

Everyone knew how Azuma felt about Kaguya. They just didn’t talk about it. Even Haru seemed to have picked up on it, meaning it was practically an open secret.

And yet Kaguya herself seemed completely clueless. On top of that, even Azuma seemed to be ignorant of his own feelings. Without a helping hand, these two were never going to get anywhere.

“H-he likes me? Captain Azuma…?”

“Well, the only one who knows for certain is Azuma himself. What if you tried just asking him?”

“Asking him? I mean… I mean…,” Kaguya repeated herself, continuing to say I mean several more times in a row. “Imagine how embarrassing it would be if you were wrong.”

“Then what about you, Kaguya?” Koyuki asked, deciding to tease her friend a little. “How do you feel about Azuma? Is he just a colleague? A friend? Or is it love?”

Kaguya must not have been used to conversations like this. She seemed absorbed in her own thoughts, but in an awkward way. Like these new thoughts were quicksand, pulling her deeper and deeper within.

“No, I don’t think I’m in love…,” Kaguya said, carefully tidying away the document in a drawer. “I’m pretty I’m just experiencing a disorder of some sort.”

“The only one who can know your feelings for sure is you, Kaguya. I think it might be a good idea to sit down with your feelings and really work them out.”

“My feelings…?”

“I get the impression it’s something you haven’t taken the time to do before. With so much going on all the time, it’s important to rest and take stock of yourself.”

They had now found their way back to the original topic.

Apparently, after being in a coma for a month, a rehabilitation period of around two months was usually called for. Two weeks would barely be enough time to just get back into the swing of daily life.

“I understand the importance of rest,” Kaguya said, nestling back into the darkness of her bunk. “I heard about the Chronoses from Mari. Finding all that out… It’s shocking, isn’t it?”

“Yes… I suppose it is.”

Kaguya’s face was hidden in the shadows of the lower bunk, making it impossible for Koyuki to discern her expression. The height of the chair made it easy for her to hide her face in the shadows. For a moment, it reminded Koyuki of the darkness that clung to the heroes, but she quickly chased that thought away.

“I know there’s no clear proof, but if the Director said this was true, then I think it probably is,” Kaguya said, speaking frankly. Kaguya had full faith in the Director’s abilities.

“Koyuki.” Kaguya lifted her face again. “What do you plan to do, now that we believe the Chronoses are sentient?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Koyuki said honestly. “We can’t defeat the heroes without using them…at least once.”

Haru had explained how the soldiers who were unable to use Chronoses safely made do with other weapons for the most part—utilizing explosions, traps, and other tricks to immobilize the heroes and only resorting to the Chronoses once they had a guaranteed shot.

“You’re not sure how you feel yet, then?”

“Can you blame me?”

Mari had given Koyuki and Kaguya more details. Major Mirai had managed to get her hands on a report that she then backed up to an information terminal for safekeeping. Honestly, Koyuki barely understood most of it, but Mari summarized the contents for them in an easy-to-understand manner.

Every time Koyuki fired a gun—a Chronos—a bullet traveled through its interior cavities at 250 meters per second, exiting the barrel with proportionate pressure and heat. The impact from being fired was equivalent to being dropped from a height of several hundred meters.

Koyuki only had to move her finger by a few centimeters to fire a gun, but that small gesture was all it took to create so much pain. She still found it hard to believe.

“Just because I’m not sure doesn’t change anything about what we’ve done in our battles up until now.” Koyuki was proud of herself on that front. By killing heroes, they had saved many, many people along the way. “But if possible…going forward, I would rather avoid using the Chronoses whenever we can.”

“That’s understandable.” Kaguya lowered her eyes, apparently having thoughts of her own. “In any case, we’re going to have to change the way we fight.”

“The style Takanashi explained might be a good idea,” Koyuki suggested. “Where everyone works together to corner the hero before delivering a final blow with a Chronos.”

A look of pain crossed Kaguya’s face, but Koyuki pressed on.

“I know you don’t like it, but it’s the only way. We can’t just leave the heroes to run amok, can we?”

Kaguya nodded reluctantly. She was probably feeling sorry for the young men and women stuck inside the Chronoses. Some things never change, thought Koyuki, amused.

“You’re just as sweet as always, Kaguya. You feel sympathy for the people inside the weapons, even though we can’t even sense them.”

“Of course I do. It’s just so sad, the way they’re trapped in there.”

“Yes, I guess it is…”

When a human transformed into a hero, a Chronos was manufactured using a piece of the detached flesh of that hero. But the consciousness of the original human remained within the new Chronos.

The young men and women who became heroes did so out of a craving for solace and dreams. Instead, they only became Goddesses or Chronoses in the end. It was more like a nightmare than a dream.

“It’s not exactly pleasant to hear, is it? There were probably people like that inside the heroes we’ve faced up until now. And in the weapons we use.”

“Don’t, Koyuki. None of us knew any better. If Mari hadn’t remembered what the Director had told her, all of this might have stayed a secret forever.”

“I know…”

Koyuki understood what Kaguya was saying. And regardless of the truth, nothing could be done about it now, one way or another. Koyuki knew better than to blame herself for her ignorance, but that didn’t mean she didn’t feel a sense of responsibility anyway.

Rebounds didn’t exist for the members of Special Ops Squad Charon. Meaning that they had essentially denied the people trapped within the Chronoses that one manic cry of resistance. Koyuki decided not to pursue that train of thought any further.

“I’m probably just overthinking things… No one did any of this on purpose, after all.” Upon calmer reflection, maybe things weren’t so complicated. “Besides, as long as we keep defeating the heroes, that will mean fewer boys and girls winding up in that same situation in the end. All we can do is keep the faith.”

“No…I don’t think that’s all we can do.”

Kaguya’s and Koyuki’s expressions were like night and day. Kaguya looked troubled. Koyuki may have wanted to keep things simple, but something was obviously weighing on Kaguya. Enough so to cause Koyuki to worry.

“What do you mean…?”

“Chronoses are created from pieces of flesh cut loose from heroes. But what if we could prevent that from happening?”

“Prevent it…? I think I understand what you’re trying to say, but how would that be possible? We would have to defeat them without attacking at all, wouldn’t we?”

Consider Azuma’s slashing attacks, for example. No matter how carefully he chose to swing his sword, a blade was still a blade. It was going to cut.

“And not just Azuma’s sword, either. My guns and Rindou’s blows cause damage. The heroes’ bodies are going to be affected by that.”

“No… Theoretically, it’s perfectly possible. Assuming I participate, that is. We just do things like we did before—Captain Azuma, yourself, or Rindou takes the lead while I make a beeline for the hero. That way, no one has to wind up as a Chronos.”

“That’s…easily said, but…” Koyuki’s anxiety was beginning to spiral. “You’re still not going to stop, are you? That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”

“Stop? You know me better than that—”

“Don’t you see? No one wants that.” Koyuki’s voice suddenly grew pointed. “I’m not mad, but…why are you so dead set on acting this way…?”

“I just don’t want to give up, and I don’t see any other choice. This has to be what I’m here for.”

“Kaguya…”

Koyuki was already speaking before she even realized she had opened her mouth. This was something she hadn’t been able to say until now. Because of how indebted they all were to Kaguya.

“…I don’t like that,” said Koyuki. “That’s something I don’t like about you.”

“Huh?”

“The way you don’t give up. It’s one of the best things about you, but honestly, sometimes, I absolutely hate it.”

Never give up. Never quit. The words had such a cruel ring to them. How could a person ever run when they had already convinced themselves that never giving up was a virtue?

As soon as a person decides they won’t give up, they are trapped by those words. Every individual has their limits, and properly understanding those limits and stepping back when necessary is the most natural thing in the world. And yet Kaguya was allowing herself to be ground down beneath the curse of never giving up.

“Maybe hate is too strong a word. But it certainly doesn’t make me happy.”

“I guess I can see how you would be a little upset with me. I’m sorry, Koyuki.”

Koyuki lifted her face suddenly, not having expected to hear that. Was Kaguya beginning to see reason?

But no—Koyuki’s faint hopes were dashed to pieces as soon as she looked into Kaguya’s eyes. Nothing had changed. It was that same expression that Kaguya held in her eyes the day they had first met. Koyuki sensed, intuitively, that she was already too late.

“Kaguya.”

Koyuki took a step closer. There was something she wanted, no, needed to say to Kaguya. But Kaguya smoothly evaded her, striding toward the door. She must have already known what Koyuki was about to say. Koyuki shouted after her from behind.

“Kaguya!!”

Something took hold of Koyuki. A feeling that she had to stop Kaguya now while she still could.

“I’m not saying you need to quit. Of course not! That side of you is something that I love. But try to understand how I feel…! Can’t you see what I have to go through every time I’m forced to watch you collapse?!”

Kaguya looked like a deer caught in headlights. Koyuki continued.

“I shared this room with her—with Sakura—for so long. And then, after she was gone, it was just you and me. Me on the top bunk, you on the bottom.”

Kaguya nodded silently, overwhelmed, but Koyuki wasn’t finished. She had needed to let Kaguya know how she felt for so very long.

“Every time I climbed that ladder to the second bunk, I caught sight of you asleep down there. I saw you from up close, closer than anyone, even closer than Azuma. Saw what you were going through each and every time.”

Koyuki was the one who had been there. Who knew better than anyone the way Kaguya had been suffering. No one could tell her otherwise. They had shared the same room every single day before and after battle. They had lived their lives together. So Koyuki knew full well what Kaguya’s reckless behavior was doing to her. She had seen it intimately, whether she wanted to or not.

“It’s why I eventually came around and opened up to you.”

At first, Koyuki had not wanted to accept Kaguya. It was only after seeing what Kaguya was going through that Koyuki slowly began to change her mind. She knew that someone had to keep an eye out for her.

“But the way you’re acting now… It’s not like before. You’re not just trying to save the heroes anymore. You’ve let Sakura’s words—no, your own words—paint you into a corner.”

“Wh-what is that supposed to mean?”

“You keep saying you won’t give up, and now that promise has trapped you. But you’re worth more than just that. No one is going to be upset with you for not keeping your word!”

“I’m not trapped! And, of course, I know no one would be upset with me. I don’t care. I’m not doing this for respect.”

“You know that’s not true.”

Koyuki could see through her. They may have only known each other for half a year, but Koyuki understood what went on in Kaguya’s sharp mind. A kind of intuition, girl to girl, that Azuma couldn’t see.

“You’re afraid of letting someone down. I know it. But it’s not us you’re worried about letting down, Kaguya. It’s yourself.”

Kaguya couldn’t see outside herself. No, not couldn’t. Wouldn’t. That stubbornness had saved them countless times in the past. For instance, when Kaguya had come back to them after Azuma had begun to turn. That was part of the reason why Koyuki felt like she didn’t have a right to press Kaguya on this issue.

But she had a duty. An obligation as a friend.

“Don’t you see?! You were in a coma for a whole month. The next time you enter a hero’s psyche, you might never wake up! And even if you do, what if it’s two months this time? What if it’s years? Don’t you even care?”

Kaguya seemed too overwhelmed to respond. Maybe she cared, maybe she didn’t. Who knew? She was just standing there, saying nothing. Like a coward.

“Well, I’m not okay with it…” Koyuki just barely managed to get the words out, probably too quiet for Kaguya to hear. “I’m not okay with the possibility of you never waking up again.”

Tears suddenly began to well up in Koyuki’s eyes.

“This room…is too quiet for just one person, Kaguya.”

With that, Koyuki fell silent. If she said any more, she was worried she would begin crying for real.

“Koyuki…,” Kaguya said, concern in her voice.

Instead of leaving the room, Kaguya walked back toward where Koyuki stood. Koyuki reflexively looked up, and they were face-to-face. A little above her own eye level—but nowhere near as high as Sakura’s—Kaguya’s beautiful violet eyes were fixed on her.

Kaguya hugged her gently. Koyuki meekly accepted, unable to stop her.

Koyuki already knew what Kaguya was going to say next. Don’t, she prayed softly. Please don’t say it.

“I’m not going to stop. But…I am sorry,” Kaguya whispered, her voice like a sigh.

Koyuki swallowed, her eyes widening. But she had known what was coming, and she didn’t cry.

Kaguya gently separated herself from Koyuki and turned to leave once more.

Now alone, Koyuki sank to her knees. It wasn’t that Kaguya hadn’t understood. It was that she hadn’t even tried.

The next battle happened several days later.

This hero had an aquatic theme, and just as expected, it was able to manipulate water. It resembled an enemy out of a comic book, but fighting a creature like that in real life was much more difficult than in the comics. It had appeared in the locker room of a swimming school. Next to it lay a red swimsuit and swimming cap.

Of course, water couldn’t be cut or punched. This battle was mostly on Koyuki.

“It’s so cold…!” she moaned.

The hero activated almost as soon as the fight began. With its ability to gradually fill the locker room with water, their work seemed cut out for them.

Koyuki took up position on top of a row of lockers as the sound of trickling water filled the room. So far, the water level was only up to their knees, but it was enough to sap the heat from their bodies subtly.

The hero’s egg was visible, ensconced deep within the creature’s liquid body. On the one hand, that made life simple, seeing as they didn’t have to search for it this time. But on the other, it seemed the egg was only visible because the hero didn’t need to hide it in the first place.

Azuma firmly gripped the hilt of his katana, which felt fairly familiar to his hand by this point, as he withdrew the blade in one smooth and silent motion, steady against the scabbard. He knew even this motion would cause a fair amount of pain.

But he wasn’t so weak that he would hesitate to draw his weapon in combat.

“What do you think, Koyuki? How many shots will it take?” Azuma asked.

“Ten might be enough to reach it… It seems pretty viscous.”

Koyuki had just fired off one shot earlier to check the creature’s viscosity. The bullet had penetrated the hero’s body with a quiet thwump, stopping just a few centimeters in.

“But if its body is thick and viscous…,” Azuma said, taking a step forward—he was both the captain and the point man. “That also means it will be slow to recover. I’ll secure a trajectory. You just shoot once I’ve opened up a path.”

“Fine by me, but try not to get hit. I only have so many bullets,” Koyuki said coldly before turning her attention back to finalizing her position.

Azuma took several steps toward the hero. Keeping his movements as economical as possible, he carried through with the momentum and struck at the creature in a flash.

The water split open. There was no blood. No screaming. It felt like cutting through slime. Almost immediately—before the cleft had a chance to close again—the sound of gunfire filled the air. The bullet, shot from behind by Koyuki, whistled past Azuma’s ear and buried itself into the hero’s body. Azuma quickly struck again, widening the gap.

They repeated this operation several times.

“We’ve gotten pretty deep.”

“Yes. This next shot should finish it.”

Azuma heard her quickly reload—the sound of metal dropping and bouncing and then splashing into the water. That’s going to be hell to clean later, Azuma thought, slashing as deep as he could this time before leaping back quickly. As he moved, he caught sight of Koyuki out of the corner of his eye, hunkering down into position, her eyes like steel. She had swapped Chronoses and now had a rifle suited for indoors but still capable of powerful impact.

She rose up slightly to redirect the fearsome weapon’s recoil, allowing Azuma to see her finger as it moved clearly. Then she fired.

Bam! Almost immediately, the air echoed with the sound of gunfire, and a hole split open in the hero’s body. There, inside that opening, was the egg.

Kaguya was not with them at the moment.

After learning of Koyuki and Kaguya’s conversation, Azuma had initially wanted to ban Kaguya from participating in missions for the time being. Koyuki had pleaded for him to do so as well. It wasn’t like they could rely on Kaguya all the time.

But there was always the possibility that being too heavy-handed could backfire and make things worse. Unable to ignore that possibility, he gave Kaguya permission to join them but only on the proviso that she keep her distance from the heroes. As a result, Kaguya was currently stationed farther back, on standby.

“Koyuki, I need to match your timing. How many more seconds?”

Koyuki didn’t answer.

“Koyuki,” he added more strongly. That seemed to snap her out of it.

“Sorry. Two and a half seconds.”

“Got it… Koyuki, I understand how you’re feeling, but right now—”

“Yeah. I got it. I said I was sorry,” she repeated, sulking slightly.

Azuma sighed inaudibly. He understood that Kaguya and Koyuki were fighting, but Kaguya wasn’t even here. Why was Koyuki letting it bother her so much?

The door to the locker room was closed. The only ones who were inside now were Azuma, Koyuki, and Rindou. Participation had been limited to those who could use Chronoses. Because the hero had appeared inside a pool locker room, the situation was more cramped than they were used to.

It looks like we’re going to wrap this up faster than I had thought.

Azuma opened another gash in the hero’s body, acquiring visual confirmation of the egg. Ignoring the unpleasantly gummy water that clung to his body, Azuma swung his katana as the creature continued to heal rapidly and aimed to slice the egg in two.

He felt the blow make contact. It was over. Now all they had to do was retrieve Kaguya and the others, head back to base…and think about how they would handle things the next time.

That was when Azuma noticed something was off.

The hero hadn’t dissolved.

There was no collapse. No dispersal. No breaking down. No fall.

Was this some new type of hero that didn’t die even once its egg was destroyed? Impossible! No organism could evolve to survive the destruction of its heart.

But the hero was still alive, despite the fact that Azuma had destroyed its egg. That could only mean one thing.

“A decoy!!”

There was a cracking sound, and then the egg broke. The hero’s body vanished, and a flood of water began pouring into the room, equal in volume to the size of the creature’s body.

“The real hero must be—”

Somewhere else? Outside—probably. Outside, where Kaguya was waiting.

Azuma tried to open the door, but the water pressure was too strong. He screamed, his voice lost in the sound of rushing water.

“Kaguya!!”

“…!!”

Kaguya froze, staring at the creature in front of her.

It appeared as soon as the locker room door was closed. It looked like a doll made of craggy stone.

“T-two heroes at once…?! Or is this some kind of clone…?!”

Kaguya fought back as hard as she could. She was essentially facing a boulder. She could see weaker chinks of flesh between the stone, but Kaguya was clearly outmatched, forced onto the defensive with her tiny little pistol.

Clone or not, it didn’t make much difference. This fight was all one-sided. She was doing what she could with her pistol, but the deficit in strength was too much. She was stuck on the back foot the entire time.

“Ah…!”

Before she knew it, the creature’s stone arm was coming straight for her face. Kaguya was trapped with nowhere to run.

But there was still hope. She wasn’t done yet.

Kaguya was holding her pistol, a Chronos, in her hand—and she was in the perfect position to shoot and enter this hero’s mental world. If she could get inside the hero, she could stop it.

Kaguya readied her weapon, just like always. She held it up to shoot, as she had done a thousand times before. All she had to do was squeeze the trigger, and the person inside the hero was sure to—

“Huh?”

She couldn’t do it. And it wasn’t because she had been attacked first. No, for some reason, her legs wouldn’t move. Her hands. All she had to do was pull the trigger, but…

“Wh-why?”

She froze. This wasn’t some ability the hero was using against her. She had been fine just a moment earlier.

“Lieutenant Shinohara!!” someone shouted.

The hero’s arm was moving straight toward Kaguya. Unless she did something now, she was going to die.

From out of the corner of her eye, she could see that someone was trying to force open the door. But it was obvious they were never going to do it in time.

In time…?

Since when did Kaguya need anyone to save her?!

“…!”

Just as the stone arm was about to connect, Kaguya dodged it by a hairsbreadth, pointed her gun at the hero, and pulled the trigger. Instantly, as if her consciousness were being funneled down, she disappeared within her target.

“Oh…”

She was standing in the middle of an exquisite beach that spread as far as the eye could see. The white sands were deserted. The waves approached and receded at regular intervals, creating a constant cadence of beautiful sound.

Looking up, she saw the clear sky, which was just as blue as the ocean. Not a single cloud in sight. Just steady, unbroken blue, as if filled in by the hands of an untalented painter.

The sand crunched beneath her feet. She hesitated for a moment and then removed her sandals. They would just get stuck in the sand anyway.

After standing aimlessly for a moment, Kaguya began walking with no particular direction in mind.

They had to be here somewhere. The young man or woman who had turned into the hero.

Kaguya had a sneaking suspicion it was a girl. Not that she had any particular proof—it was just something about the appearance and scent of this world.

After walking for a little while across the sand, she reached a place where the sound of the waves changed. A figure was waiting there, wearing a white, wide-brimmed hat and a dress of the same color. She stood still, like a subject in a painting.

Kaguya had been right; it was a girl, after all. She was a little bit younger than Kaguya.

“It’s chilly today, isn’t it…?”

Kaguya stood next to the girl on the white-sand beach as the sound of the waves filled the air.

The girl showed absolutely no response. Kaguya continued to stand beside her silently, like a pebble.

The water ebbed three times before the girl finally turned around. She fixed her eyes on Kaguya, almost as if she had only just realized that Kaguya was there.

“Yes, it is,” the girl agreed. “It’s almost as if the warmth has vanished from this world.”

What a poetic way to put it. But the girl’s words were on point. It wasn’t cold per se, but it wasn’t hot, either. It all depended on your own interpretation. Kaguya, in her turquoise uniform, felt a chill coming off the ocean as it swelled and receded. Something cold.

“What…are you doing here?” she asked the girl.

“I’m watching the ocean. Can’t you tell?”

But what Kaguya wanted to know was why the girl was just standing there, staring at the water. Following the girl’s gaze, Kaguya made a small exclamation of recognition. It wasn’t the ocean the girl was watching, but a boy swimming inside it. He looked a bit younger than the girl.

“Tell me… Are you happy?” Kaguya said to the girl.

“What?”

The girl turned her eyes toward Kaguya suspiciously. Kaguya met her gaze head-on.

“What do you mean, happy? Why would you ask me that all of a sudden…? What are you up to?”

“Nothing. I just wanted to know more about you. What your hopes are… Your wishes,” Kaguya replied, phrasing herself in a roundabout way.

The girl turned to face her. “What did you come here for? In fact, how did you even get—?”

“I came here to stop you.”

The girl reacted as if she had no idea what Kaguya was talking about. Just as Kaguya had expected.

“Stop me? What do you mean, stop me? I’m sorry, but…this is private property. I’d appreciate it if you would just leave.”

“You’re right that this is a private place. We are actually inside your mind.”

“Are we…? Well, perhaps you should hurry up and get lost. Now, before he gets back.”

Kaguya glanced toward the ocean. The boy was coming their way, having apparently realized that something was off.

He was probably the Goddess. As Kaguya watched him with this thought in mind, she suddenly narrowed her eyes, realizing that something was amiss. He rushed toward them in a hurry, the distress on his face plain to see.

He wasn’t behaving very much like a Goddess. Goddesses always acted aloof, as if they believed they were calling all the shots. Just like the girl in white was behaving, actually.

“Oh, of course.” Kaguya finally put two and two together. “You’re the Goddess.”

The younger boy playing alone in the water—he was the real master of this world. The girl did not deny it, flashing Kaguya a pretty smile instead. Kaguya could see the insectoid shadow deep in her eyes.

“Don’t get in the way,” the Goddess said just as the boy raced toward them. He eyed Kaguya with obvious hostility. “You can see how happy he is, can’t you? What right do you have to rob other people of their happiness?”

“Maybe…”

The boy did seem extremely content.

Was the Goddess supposed to be his older sister? Some sibling whose presence the boy found indispensable in his life? If so, this might be happiness of a sort. Just leaving things the way they were. But Kaguya knew she could never do that.

“This is my mission. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks, it doesn’t even matter how I feel about it myself.”

“You could have fooled me. That look on your face isn’t very persuasive,” the Goddess said as if she could read Kaguya like a book. Goddesses were highly skilled at manipulating human hearts.

“What do you mean? What kind of look…?”

“Maybe you should stay in here as well. Nothing is painful or difficult in this place.”

What was she saying?

“I’m not interested in intruding in someone else’s private thoughts,” Kaguya said, although technically that was exactly what she was doing.

The Goddess’s eyes grew colder in response. She stared at Kaguya with a fake smile plastered across her face as if she were taking measure of something formlessly simmering inside Kaguya.

“Oh? And just what are you going to do about it?” the Goddess asked bewitchingly.

Kaguya responded with action rather than words.

“I’m going to do this.”

There was a splash as something heavy fell into the water. Kaguya had shoved the Goddess just as the boy drew near, causing the Goddess to fall into the ocean.

This wasn’t a cliff but merely a sandy beach. The Goddess’s hat fell off, and she got soaked, but it wasn’t like she was injured. The boy, however, realizing that his sister had been attacked, angrily thrust himself into Kaguya’s face.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

Kaguya turned to the foulmouthed boy. That was hardly the kind of language expected from a child who didn’t even look to be ten years old.

She wasn’t used to interacting with small children, but something seemed off. Kaguya was having trouble putting her finger on exactly what it was, but perhaps it had something to do with the way the boy carried himself.

She remembered encountering a similar phenomenon before.

Yes, that’s right. This is like that time with the sand creature.

The sand hero. When she first made contact with him, he had been a young boy, but it later became clear that he was actually an adolescent. He had been in a coma for the past ten years.

Maybe something similar was happening here. Kaguya bent down and made eye contact with the boy.

“How old are you?”

“…?”

The boy narrowed his eyes at the strange question. He was just about to answer when there was another loud splash as the Goddess rose up out of the water. Surprisingly, not a single drop of water clung to her body. As if she had been shoved into an illusory sea.

The boy rushed to his big sister’s side. She embraced him, smiling beautifully as if she were a saint. She directed a gaze of kindness his way, so profound that it was difficult not to believe that it was sincere.

The boy seemed truly happy. Kaguya found herself oddly loath to ruin that happiness.

But I have to see this through.

That was Kaguya’s role. It was her mission.

She would never give up, no matter how much resistance or animosity she faced. But that didn’t mean she didn’t sometimes want to give up.

“Can we…talk for a little while?” she asked.

The Goddess was resisting more stubbornly than Kaguya had expected. Kaguya tried to get the boy away from the Goddess. She also repeatedly shoved the Goddess into the illusory sea or openly insulted her to her face, not even caring that she was doing so in front of what was supposedly her younger brother.

At first, of course, the boy reacted to Kaguya angrily, but he slowly grew intimidated by her unusual ferocity. The Goddess, after all, was only imposing on the boy’s mind. All she had were flimsy illusions, whereas Kaguya was flesh and blood—real.

“Wait…”

Kaguya peered at the boy closely. His eyelashes fluttered in surprise, and he took a step backward. He quickly recovered, however, and squared off, facing her. He held a water pistol full of seawater in his right hand, which he pointed toward her now. The way he held it told Kaguya everything that she needed to know.

“You’re with the Extermination Bureau, aren’t you?”

Even though it was just a water pistol and thus completely harmless, he kept his finger off the trigger. It was common sense to keep your finger off the trigger of a gun when not in battle, but that wasn’t something that a child would have any way of knowing. And even if they did know better, that knowledge wouldn’t apply in this case, seeing as this was just a water pistol.

Which meant this must have been an ingrained habit.

The only people this young who could have formed such a habit were the soldiers of the Extermination Bureau.

“The ex…termination bureau…?”

“Yes. It’s the organization I belong to. And which you belong to as well. It was created to save people from the heroes. Don’t you remember?”

“I don’t know anything about that!” the boy shouted, sounding suddenly like a petulant child. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just playing with my big sister today! But if you don’t—”

“Listen to me,” Kaguya said, kneeling down. She was certain now. “You remember, don’t you? Who you are, and what you were doing. And what you’ve become now. You caught on to who I was as soon as you saw me, didn’t you? You weren’t angry because I had hurt your ‘sister.’ That look on your face doesn’t lie.”

Kaguya spoke coldly and without leniency. Speculation or not, she was giving the boy no room for denial. There was no real reasoning behind what she said; all he had to do to end this matter was insist she had no idea what she was talking about. However, the boy did no such thing.

Instead, the sound of the waves began to grow louder. As if they were coming from inside her own ears.

A voice mingled with the sound of the waves. A grating sound, like scraping glass.

“Aaaggghhhhh!!”

It was a scream. A man’s scream.

The scene suddenly changed.

Two blood-soaked humans were standing before Kaguya. A young boy cradling a young girl. It looked like it was already too late for the girl.

“Of course I didn’t forget.”

The boy’s voice was deep. He was almost old enough to be called a young man now. He stood next to Kaguya and stared at the scene before them. He didn’t reach out, however, because he knew it was already too late.

“How could I ever forget? My sister was killed by a hero.”

“I see… Of course.”

At some point, the boy’s clothing had changed to a turquoise uniform. He glanced toward Kaguya and sighed, sounding tired.

“If you’re wearing that uniform, you should understand. All this fighting is pointless. There’s no way for us to know if it will ever end, and there’s no reward for us in the end. It’s all so damned awful, so why do we keep doing it? What are we even here for? It’s like we’re trapped in some tiny sandbox garden with no escape,” he said plaintively.

What could Kaguya possibly say in response to that?

“Will you remember for me? Remember what I wished for?”

“I will. I won’t forget. Both the way you died and the way you lived will remain etched in my heart. So long as I remember, it means you didn’t die as a monster in the end.”

“I’m sorry…” The boy looked genuinely apologetic. “Your being here saved me. Now I can die as a human being…”

“I…hope so.”

The scene around her suddenly vanished. In the blankness, total whiteout, a smile of surrender formed on the boy’s lips.

“Don’t forget us.”

There was a loneliness to his words. Kaguya felt uncomfortable. It felt like a piece of herself, something inside her, had once again been shaved away.

Unaware of what Kaguya was feeling, the boy trembled and disappeared, much as a wave dissipated into foam.

“…guya! Kaguya!”

She could hear a voice coming from somewhere far away.

People were staring down at her, half-destroyed building walls visible behind them. Azuma and Koyuki stood at the front of the crowd.

Kaguya gasped and sat up. She felt something like dirt scattered across her palm. Several small stones had embedded themselves lightly into her skin. It was this pain that finally pulled her entirely awake.

She took a look around. They were watching her with trepidation. She could feel the heat and humidity against her skin. Kaguya breathed a sigh of relief, realizing the world was just as it had been before she had entered the hero. She had not been asleep for another month like last time.

“Are you okay…?” someone asked, their voice gentle.

It wasn’t just a perfunctory question—the person sounded genuinely concerned. Kaguya had heard that same voice, been subject to that same look of pity, countless times before. It was Azuma who had actually spoken this time, but she knew they all felt the same way.

Kaguya tried to tell them she was fine. She sat up without trouble, her usual smile upon her face, and—

Wait, what’s wrong with my voice?

I’m fine, she tried to say again, but something rose up in her throat, clogging her mouth like a dam clogs a stream. The words wouldn’t come out.

“Kaguya…?”

Kaguya remained silent. Azuma looked worried. She needed to let him know that she was all right, that she wasn’t injured.

“Ah…” It took every drop of willpower she had to squeeze out the words. “Fine. I-I’m…fine…”

Why did she sound so strange? Every time she tried to speak, she felt that lump in her throat threatening to overflow. She needed to tell them. The others stared at her, speechless, as she tried to form words.

This didn’t make any sense; she wasn’t injured, was she? She felt something hot streaming down her cheek—tears.

It was only then that Kaguya realized she was crying.

Fortunately, the fight ended with only minor injuries.

By the time Azuma arrived, everything was already finished. The hero crumbled before his eyes, leaving only Kaguya behind.

Before Azuma could take even a step closer, Kaguya opened her eyes. He asked her if she was all right, but Kaguya remained silent, making him worry even more.

With some trouble, she eventually managed to say that she was okay. However, Azuma and the others weren’t focused on her words. Instead, they were focused on her tears, and she even didn’t seem to be aware of them herself.

“Are you feeling better now?” Azuma asked Kaguya.

“Yes…I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me… I feel like a child.”

“It’s fine. You’re probably just tired.”

They practically had to force her into one of the barrack’s infirmary beds. She was sitting up at the moment, smiling in embarrassment.

“Tired…? Yes, maybe I am.”

“Of course you’re tired. It’s been less than a week since you came out of your coma and barely over a month since you first entered it.”

Although she’d been awake for only a few days, it felt like years already.

“What were they like…? The hero?” Azuma asked hesitantly. “Male? Female? How old were they? What did they look like? What were their last words? Can you remember?”

“He was male. A little older than me. I think probably around eighteen. His face was…pretty normal. As for his final words, well…”

Azuma regretted asking. He hadn’t been trying to stress her out by asking about what had happened in the hero’s mental world. He was hoping it might help to lighten the burden for her instead, if only by a little. But her face grew darker as she spoke. He watched as she struggled to find the words, her long eyelashes downcast.

“‘Don’t forget us.’ That’s what he said. His wish was…not to be forgotten.”

“That was a pretty cruel thing for him to ask…”

“Cruel?”

“Yes. Cruel, arrogant, and cowardly.”

He meant it. Asking someone not to forget you was brazen and conceited. And trapping someone emotionally like that, even if you were about to die, was just craven.

But no one was forcing Kaguya to do this. She had accepted all of this of her own free will.

“What are you going to do? Are you going to remember him?”

“Of course. That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it…? The whole reason I intervene in their minds, even when it’s already too late, is so that there will be someone to remember their last moments as humans.”

“Are you sure that’s all there is to it…?” Azuma said.

Kaguya lifted her head in response.

What Azuma saw there was a face on the verge of collapse. There was something pleading in her pale violet eyes, something which perhaps she herself was unaware of. Although Kaguya was attempting to keep up a calm facade, it was apparent at a glance that she was anything but.

“Is that really what you want? I can’t help but feel it’s not and that you’re just forcing yourself to continue at this point.”

“I’m not forcing anything!” Kaguya said, scowling. “The entire reason I’m out there fighting is to save people who have become heroes. Sure, I was a little tired and needed to rest for a bit, but I can hardly just ignore a hero when I come face-to-face with one.”

“Why not? I don’t see how you’re under any obligations.”

Azuma stood and whipped open the curtains. Sunlight suddenly streamed into the room, causing Kaguya to close her eyes and hold up her hand to block the light.

“Captain! If you wanted to open the curtains, you could have at least told me before you—”

“You’re too hard on yourself.”

Azuma stepped toward the window, likely leaving him backlit from Kaguya’s point of view. He was standing there on purpose because he didn’t want her to see his face.

“All of the heroes we’ve encountered so far, today’s included, had absolutely nothing to do with you. How much do you really know about them? You don’t even know their names or where they come from.”

“Yes, that’s true, but—”

“Kaguya, you’ve got a goodness that is almost blinding. It’s hard not to appreciate that. I’ve always felt that way about you, and I even look up to you for it.”

“Y-you look up to me…?”

“Yes, because you have something I don’t. We used to take it for granted that heroes were just monsters, nothing more and nothing less. You’re the one who changed that for us, and I am always going to think highly of you for that,” Azuma said, explaining calmly and honestly how he had felt for so long. At times like this, he believed it was important to be honest about your feelings.

“Y-you’re not acting like your usual self, Captain Azuma… You didn’t eat something you found lying around on the ground, did you?”

“Do I look like someone who goes around eating food off the ground?”

“What if I said yes?”

“I guess I would feel pretty bad about myself,” he replied.

Kaguya gave a little laugh, dry and forced. Even on the surface, Azuma could tell her heart wasn’t in it.

“In any case,” she began, “I can’t agree with what you’re saying, Captain Azuma. I’m the only one who can see them like that, remember? If I don’t remember them, who will?”

“I’m telling you that you need to take better care of yourself. I probably shouldn’t say this, but who cares if they are remembered? It’s not like you’re getting a gold star for it or anything.”

Kaguya scowled even harder. Maybe because what Azuma was saying made sense. He pressed further.

“Why are you even being so stubborn about all this?”

Azuma didn’t understand why she was so determined to stick to her guns on this issue. What was holding her back?

There was, of course, an obvious answer.

“Is it Sakura…?” he asked.

Kaguya’s eyes wavered for a moment. She didn’t say anything. Azuma sensed intuitively that he had just hit the nail on the head.

Still, he doubted that was all. After all, that didn’t explain why she had been so zealous about this even before coming to Charon. If there was another reason, it could only be one thing.

“Or is it your brother?”

Her older brother, who had vanished before Kaguya’s very eyes, and was now quite possibly dead.

This, too, seemed to have hit the mark. Kaguya’s eyes remained closed as if in defeat. She looked like a criminal, wrestling with her own guilt. Azuma had a sudden flash of insight.

“It’s that you want to be forgiven, isn’t it?”

This wasn’t justice or even obsession. She may not have been aware of it herself, but she was seeking salvation. Salvation for herself.

“You still want to be forgiven. By Sakura for not being able to save her. By your brother, who became a hero. All because you couldn’t help them.”

Azuma was finally beginning to understand the motivation behind Kaguya’s self-destructive behavior.

“This is about saving yourself, not the heroes. About absolving yourself of what happened seven years ago and of what happened a few months ago. I’m right, aren’t I, Kaguya? You’ve been fixated on your own past shortcomings, haven’t you? Not on others, after all.”

“I…”

Kaguya’s voice sounded feeble. She pursed her lips and grew quiet. A look of fear surfaced in her violet eyes. As if, until Azuma said those words, she had never realized that about herself.

Azuma had just poked at something at Kaguya’s center—deep at her core—which had left her unable to speak.

Obviously, Sakura’s words were a motivating factor for Kaguya. Every time she felt unsure or like she wanted to quit, she found herself remembering the last words Sakura had said to her.

However, it would not be incorrect to say that Kaguya’s focus had shifted. When she started, her feelings had been pure, but at some point, those feelings had festered into a kind of compulsion, a conviction that this was just something she had to do.

Kaguya did not want to admit that her own feelings had turned into a curse inside herself. Because if she did, then she would have to reject even Sakura’s final wish.

“I just…thought that this was my mission…”

“Your mission? Don’t kid yourself.”

Azuma sneered. His attitude had grown ruthless. Did Kaguya really think she was being righteous? No, she could see the truth by now.

It was fixation.

“This has all been for your own self-gratification. Can you tell me I’m wrong? I don’t think you can.”

“How can you say something like that…?”

“It’s the truth. This may be unfair of me to say, but we never forced you. No one forced you to do any of this. And no one would have blamed you if you had chosen not to. There’s nothing righteous about being so pigheaded.”

“Oh, but you weren’t against it, were you…?” Kaguya could hear the accusatory note in her voice, but she couldn’t stop herself. “No one would have blamed me if I hadn’t handled everything, but none of you really cared if I stopped, did you? At least, not until it put me in a coma. What else was I supposed to do? No one had to force me. I wanted to do what I did, but it seems damned cowardly to me now to pretend that you had nothing to do with it.”

Azuma was obviously at a loss for words.

“You were happy to let me be pigheaded because it made things easier for you. If you really thought I was in so much danger, then why did it take you this long to—?”

Kaguya suddenly came to her senses, realizing what she was saying. She felt ashamed.

Azuma had in fact protested her behavior, on one occasion at least. Kaguya was the one who had steamrolled over all his objections.

“I’m…I’m sorry. That isn’t what I meant to say.” She was acting like a spoiled child. It didn’t matter how the others around her felt or reacted. Only she could take responsibility for her own words and actions. “I’m trying to shift the blame for what I did onto others. I shouldn’t have—”

“No, you’re right,” Azuma said, surprising Kaguya. “I’m sorry we let it go on like that. We were cowards.”

“Captain Azuma…”

Azuma bowed humbly, which only caused Kaguya to feel more flustered.

“However, there is still something I need to say,” he added, not backing down. “I don’t want to watch you keep hurting yourself anymore. None of us do. If Sakura’s words are what is holding you back…”

Azuma hesitated for a moment. At least, it seemed that way.

“…If that’s what’s holding you back, then just forget them. You’ve got no obligation to keep clutching onto that.”

“B-but how could I just forget what she said?! Sakura was our friend. She meant so much—”

“Yes, she did. But she’s gone.”

The simplicity of his words left Kaguya dumbfounded.

“Sakura was important to me, too. I have no intention of forgetting her, even now. But she’s already dead, Kaguya. Don’t beat yourself up over a few words. You need to live your own life.”

“But…,” Kaguya whispered. That wouldn’t be fair. How could she just allow herself to forget about what Sakura had said to her? Sakura had trusted her.

And what about Koyuki?

“I agree with Azuma…”

Someone else had entered the room.

It was Koyuki herself. She leaned against the door as she spoke and then approached slowly. She was standing on the opposite side of the room from Azuma, who was by the window where the curtain divider stood.

“We’re not telling you to forget about Sakura. I think it’s good to remember her. But we don’t want to see you destroy yourself like this because you’ve let the past control you,” Koyuki said, mirroring Azuma’s earlier words.

They stood on either side of Kaguya, leaving her trapped with her feelings.

“There was no choice today. Things just worked out that way. But what about the other heroes we’ve encountered so far? Did you really need to take everything on all by yourself? Just let it go. All of it. Even Sakura.”

Even Azuma lifted his head in surprise at that.

“Sakura…?”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean forgetting her. Let me put it a different way. Stop trying to hoard her death all for yourself. Yes, you were the only one able to hear her and speak to her directly in the end. That’s true…”

Koyuki crouched down. She made eye contact with Kaguya, her catlike vermilion gaze crossing with Kaguya’s distinguished violet hues.

“…but Sakura was our friend and colleague, too. As are you. Don’t try to carry all this weight on your own shoulders.”

This room is too quiet for just one person.

“That was what I was trying to tell you the other day, Kaguya.”

Kaguya finally understood. What Koyuki said was true. Though it may have appeared as if Kaguya was valuing their memories, the truth was that she was hoarding them all to herself, and she had let that get to her head. She meant it when she said she didn’t want to shoulder everything by herself but also took some sort of perverse pride in doing so.

“Even Mari Ezakura stepped forward to tell us the truth about the Chronoses,” Azuma interjected. “She trusted us, even though that must have been scary for her.”

“She did…?”

“People from Technical seem to have a habit of keeping things bottled up inside.” Azuma’s smile was blatantly uncomfortable rather than accusatory. “Even the Director had apparently failed to mention what she knew to anyone else, despite how important it was.”

Come to think of it, Kaguya recalled that was true, too. For someone with so much responsibility for someone so young, the Director had rarely—if ever—shown weakness. But she must have been struggling with a lot of things in her own way.

Kaguya quickly turned to the windowsill, which was adorned with red flowers—the same color as Kaguya’s hair. These appeared to be roses, which didn’t fit the setting.

Roses had thorns; it seemed unlikely that those would be allowed in a hospital room.

Kaguya stared at the flowers and said softly, “I’m sorry, Koyuki… I finally get it.”

The difference between Kaguya and the Director was that Kaguya had someone she could talk to. Someone who was there to stop her before she crossed that final point of no return.

“Thank you for everything. For worrying about me all this time.”

Koyuki lowered her gaze slightly and then asked a question.

“What about today’s hero? What was it like…?” she asked as if it were a casual discussion topic. Kaguya slowly began to share what she had seen.

The human inside the rocklike hero had originally been a member of the Extermination Bureau. His ideal world had been a gorgeous beach with a young woman who he called his sister and doves—the image of peace. He must have hated fighting, so much so that he had willfully abandoned reality.

Once Kaguya began, it was like a dam had burst. Before she knew it, she was talking about all of them, all of the heroes she had come into contact with so far.

Yuuji Sakigaya. Sakura Arakawa. Even Azuma. Yuki, Shinji Takamura, Suzume. There were fifty-two of them in total—the people inside whom she had connected with. And Kaguya remembered each and every last one of them. All fifty-two names, faces, and last words.

“It’s amazing that you managed to remember all that,” Azuma said, sounding impressed.

Maybe it was. With over fifty people to keep track of, you would expect it to be difficult to match a name to every face. But she even remembered their last words, despite the fact that she had never written anything down. Maybe this really was a curse.

Kaguya told them about all of them, every last one, up to and including today’s hero.

No, not all of them. There’s still one left.

“That just leaves my brother…”

Her brother, who had turned into a hero long ago.

“I had been afraid all this time. I haven’t seen him in seven years, not since that day I turned into a hero.”

Of course, she had searched for him. But she had zero information to go on. And then, at some point, a possibility entered her head. One that she couldn’t manage to shrug off.

What if she had actually killed her brother?

“If he had just gotten sick of me, that was one thing. But I started to worry… What if, when I turned, I actually killed him? How would I ever cope with that?”

Maybe it was self-indulgent, but she truly wanted to believe that she could not have killed her brother. She suddenly found herself confronted with a rush of feelings, however. Things she had always pretended to ignore while Charon’s eyes were on her.

Although these feelings were always on the verge of spilling over, she had managed, one way or another, to keep a lid on them until now. But at the moment, she couldn’t hold it in any longer. She clamped a hand over her mouth. If she didn’t, she was afraid of what might come spilling out.

It was just Azuma and herself in the room now. Koyuki must have quietly stepped out at some point.

“Should I leave, too…?”

“What…?”

“You want to cry, don’t you? I can tell from your face and your voice.”

Who was he to tell her how she felt? Kaguya was about to insist he was wrong, but as she opened her mouth to speak, she finally recognized the strange agitation she had been feeling for the past several moments for what it really was.

She just wanted to cry.

Loneliness, toil, hatred, burden, despair, regret, and fear—they all pointed inward, forming a sluggish mass in her chest. Eating away at her from the inside, whether she knew it or not. Well, she certainly knew it now.

It was all in front of her, and the rest followed quickly. The feelings rose up into her throat, and she couldn’t push them back down, try as she might. Azuma turned his head away, unable to bear seeing her like that.

“I should probably go after all. You can come join us again once you’ve settled down.”

“Wait.” Kaguya clutched at his sleeve. “Please…stay with me.”

Azuma hesitated, frozen in place. He could hardly just brush Kaguya’s hand away. But even Azuma likely understood that no one liked to be watched while they cried. Certainly not Kaguya, of all people.

But this is about trust.

She trusted him enough to let him see her at her weakest. Before long, the sound of steady sobbing filled the hospital room. The sound was measured, as if she was trying to hold her breath or to hold back slightly.

Azuma didn’t try to comfort her or urge her to stop. He just stood there quietly while Kaguya gripped his sleeve. That was all. But in that moment, it was the greatest redemption Kaguya could have hoped for.

“Are you feeling better now?” Azuma asked once more.

“Y-yes, thank you…”

Eyes red, Kaguya hugged her pillow and cast her eyes downward, seemingly embarrassed. She had pressed the pillow to her face partway through, leaving clear streaks behind. Her hair was slightly disheveled as well.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… I got tear stains everywhere…”

“It’s fine. I can wash it later.”

“I know. But I got so carried away I used you as a handkerchief. I’m sorry.”

Before Azuma had pressed the pillow into Kaguya’s hands, she had been crying into his sleeve instead.

Azuma started to wonder if that was the real reason she had asked him to stay but decided not to assume the worst. After all, learning he had just been used as a substitute handkerchief was not going to do any favors for his self-esteem.

“To be honest, I feel relieved. It’s good to know you’re capable of crying like everybody else.”

“Why…? You’ve got a thing for crying faces? That’s a pretty niche fetish, Captain.”

“No,” Azuma said. He didn’t want people to peg him as some sort of pervert. “I just don’t think you’ve cried even once since meeting us. Out of sympathy for the heroes, sure, but I can’t remember you ever crying just for yourself. Even when Sakura died. Or the Director. Particularly the Director. You knew her for a long time. Or over the stuff with your brother, for that matter.”

“Now that you mention it…I guess I hadn’t. But it’s not that I didn’t feel sad, you know. There were just too many other things demanding my attention.”

“That’s what we meant about taking on too much by yourself.” A pained smile played on Azuma’s lips. It obviously wasn’t Kaguya’s responsibility to solve all their problems for them. “After Sakura died, it was the heroes. And now it’s whoever killed the Director. There’s always something else to worry about… You need to rely on us more. You don’t have to keep everything bottled up. You can believe in us a little more.”

“Okay. Then that’s what I’ll do going forward.”

This time it was Kaguya’s turn to smile uncomfortably. Azuma knew he was being a little pedantic, but he also knew that was what it would take to get through to Kaguya.

In any case, she no longer seemed convinced that she could solve everything all on her own. In particular, when it came to the current commotion surrounding the Director’s death.

“Regarding the situation we’re in right now, I doubt I’d be able to do anything about it on my own.” Kaguya turned her eyes upward toward the ceiling. “Seriously, what is happening around here? To us?”

“I know. It’s been one crazy thing after the next ever since you came to us.”

No, even before Kaguya arrived. It all began six years ago. Even earlier than that, actually. This whole thing started thirty years ago. And it continued ever since.

But it was true that something about the situation had changed recently.

“I don’t think these changes would have happened without you being here… This whole idea that the Chronoses are sentient. The Director only reached that conclusion after you made her aware of the heroes’ interior worlds. Which…is why she was killed, I suppose.”

“But why…?” Kaguya placed a hand on her chin, lost in thought. “I understand that the Director was killed because she learned something that someone didn’t want her to know. But why didn’t they want her to know?” she pondered aloud, the light dancing in her violet eyes. No sign of her previous sadness remained there now.

Why didn’t they want the Director to know this?

Kaguya gave the question some thought. If the information that Chronoses were intelligent was to be shared with Chronos users, it might negatively affect battle. That was one possibility, of course. But if that was all, then why hadn’t this information been shared with even Technical?

“It doesn’t seem like sharing the information with those who don’t use Chronoses should have been such an issue. All they really needed to do was to keep it a secret from Charon. With that in mind, it seems odd that they kept Technical in the dark.”

An uneasy lump had settled in Kaguya’s chest. A mystery that she was absolutely determined to solve.

Why? Why hadn’t Technical been allowed to know the truth?

“Chronoses are sentient…and the heroes possess mental worlds…”

As shocking as it would be to some to learn that Chronoses are sentient, there had to be more to it than just that. Something else. Something important, just out of reach.

Chronoses and heroes. They both possessed awareness…

“Of course…!”

Kaguya’s brain may not have been as brilliant as the Director’s, but it was still of very high caliber indeed. With a flash of inspiration, Kaguya’s brain now made a sudden beeline toward the answer. Although she could not check her work, she was almost certain she had discovered the solution.

“It’s the other way around,” she said.

“The other way around?”

“Chronoses weren’t derived from heroes. Heroes exist for the sake of Chronoses.”

What were Chronoses? Were they sentient weapons randomly created from pieces of flesh taken from the heroes, who just so happened to possess a similar mental world…? Or were the heroes created so that the Chronoses could be made?

“Chronos… It’s right there in the name.”

“Chronos? The god of time…?”

“No, I don’t think that’s it. I don’t think it has anything to do with time. There is another meaning to the name.”

A portion of heroes didn’t just happen to become weapons randomly. This must have been what the heroes were intended for from the start. The entire reason they were created.

“Chronoses possess—or rather, have been instilled with—human consciousness.”

In other words…

Kaguya quickly rifled through her thoughts. She remembered once looking into how Chronoses had received their name. She had found something interesting in the documents she had uncovered, though it hadn’t made much sense to her at the time.

“Chronos is often associated with Chronus as well, the Greek god of agriculture…”

Chronus, the god who had eaten his own children. Who had instilled himself with his own children. Kaguya hadn’t understood what it meant at the time, but she could see it now—the true nature of Chronoses had been there in the name all along.

“It’s why they both have consciousness. The heroes and the Chronoses.”

It was no coincidence. It was what they were created for from the start.

Someone had created these sentient monsters in order to create sentient weapons. It all fit. Or at least it fit more than the notion that it was all a coincidence that heroes possessed mental worlds and Chronoses happened to be conscious.

“The heroes exist so that Chronoses can be created. No, let me rephrase that. The Extermination Bureau created heroes so that they could create Chronoses.”

Kaguya got out of bed swiftly, already forgetting that she had been in tears just a moment before.

“I think, maybe, the Director must have realized this. When you look at things this way, it changes everything.”

The lump in her chest began to loosen, growing lighter the more she spoke.

“It’s why the hero in that photograph seemed harmless. Heroes originally existed for humanity’s sake. They weren’t our enemies at first.”

“But then…why?” Azuma asked. It was the most obvious question. “Why have things turned out the way they have…?! With us always teetering on the verge of death…?”

“Something must have happened. Something from which there was no coming back.”

Maybe a simple miscalculation, some kind of accident. But once heroes grew dangerous and began to cause carnage, that had been the start of it all.

“What about the Extermination Bureau?” Azuma asked shakily. “Do they only exist to hide their own mistake? Just an organization dedicated to keeping all of this a secret…?”

“No, I think there must be more to them. Covering their own tracks doesn’t seem like enough of a motivation for what they’ve done.”

If the truth came out, people in the Bureau might lose positions of power, but that alone wasn’t enough of a secret to require murder. There must have been some other reason.

Something more was at stake beyond the mere fact of the Chronoses’ sentience.

Just then, one of their comms chimed. It was Azuma’s device.

It seemed to be a message, not a telephone call.

“What is it? Who is it from?” Kaguya asked.

“It’s Takanashi…”

“Second Lieutenant Takanashi? What could she want?”

Azuma did not answer. Kaguya looked away, not wanting to pry. Finally, Azuma whispered softly.

“Design specs…,” he said.

Kaguya looked up at him. “Design specs?”

“Takanashi sent data. We intentionally caused a crash, and she was asked to handle recovery.”

Before Kaguya could ask him to explain, Azuma showed her a photograph.

“This is…” Kaguya stared at the photograph and gulped.

It did indeed seem to be design specs. But that wasn’t what Haru wanted them to see—what she thought they needed to see.

A single word was written beneath the photograph.

“‘Hero.’”

It looked as if both the word written underneath the photograph and—more importantly—the photograph itself, which had apparently been included for reference purposes, were from an important section of the document.

“This is how it looked, the first hero.”

A hero—someone who saves the innocent and protects the world. The creature in the photograph fit that image perfectly. Of course, there were aberrations, but it still resembled a hero from out of a children’s show. The explanation that the first hero had resembled something from an anime had apparently been true after all. This was the starting point.

They had finally found it. The reason the creatures were named heroes. Kaguya was only starting to figure it out now. The Director must have arrived at the same answer, only with far less information to go on.

“What…what does it mean? What is this?”

Azuma looked confused. Kaguya considered the possibilities as she stood beside him.

Heroes were clearly created by human beings. And so much about the Extermination Bureau just didn’t add up. Not least of which was the fact that they had been willing to kill to keep all this a secret.

Kaguya suddenly remembered what the hero from earlier in the day had said—about being trapped in a sandbox garden.

A box, isolated from the outside. So that those inside were unable to see the truth of the situation they were in.

Didn’t that describe the state of the very Bureau itself? Of the mystery of the heroes? And, of course, of the Bureau’s test subjects—the Bureau soldiers, who were treated as practically disposable?

That was why things were the way they were.

“It’s a closed diorama…,” Kaguya said, her voice sounding distracted as she arrived at an answer. “This place…is all an experiment.”

“A diorama? What do you mean?” Azuma asked Kaguya.

“It didn’t exist at first. This so-called Extermination Bureau.”

“What…?”

“There was no organization dedicated to defeating heroes at first. This whole place is just the setting for an experiment.”

The hypothesis had only just occurred to Kaguya. She began to mull over her thoughts, confirming her suspicions in order. The Extermination Bureau had been their entire youth. But what was its true identity?

Kaguya had experienced a lot. She had joined Charon, been at loggerheads with Azuma, and lost Sakura. She had fought battles, and as she fought, she had begun to shoulder the tragedy of these heroes all on her own. She had met Haru, learned that there were some people who didn’t want to be saved, and then made up her mind to try to save these people anyway.

But what was the truth behind the Extermination Bureau?

“It’s all a sandbox designed to help perfect the weapons known as Chronoses. That’s what this fighting has been for.”

The existence of the heroes. The existence of the Bureau. All of it. It really was to defeat the heroes. But not for humanity’s sake. Just for their own.

A million thoughts ran through Kaguya’s head, which she tried to corral together.

“Thirty years ago, heroes were created by the Extermination Bureau in order to make Chronoses. But twenty-five years ago, they made some kind of mistake. So what did they do next…? Naturally, they would have begun investigating the cause and implementing countermeasures. That is almost the most fundamental process in clinical research.”

And the Extermination Bureau likely carried out this process correctly. Clinical research into the Chronoses, investigation of the causes, and application of countermeasures. They did it all.

And they did it within the closed sandbox known as the Bureau.

For instance, their fights with the heroes. Every fight with each of the many heroes they had encountered to date must have provided the Bureau with extremely valuable data. Data as to why the heroes had suddenly turned dangerous and aggressive. Those many long years of research were all for a single end.

“B-but…who’s doing all of this…? What did you call it…? ‘Clinical research’?”

“I suppose it must have been Technical No. 1. The group wiped out by that hero that appeared six years ago.”

Appeared? No, that probably wasn’t quite right, either.

Were they really supposed to believe that every member of Technical No. 1 just happened to be present where the hero appeared? That didn’t add up. The Bureau must have been involved in the hero incident six years ago as well.

“But so then why was the Director killed? Wasn’t she carrying out their work? It wouldn’t make sense for them to kill her.”

“I think she must have caught onto something. Something inconvenient for them. Such as the fact that the Chronoses were sentient, or maybe the organization’s real goals.”

The fact that the Chronoses were sentient would have been very inconvenient for the Bureau. A spark that could lead to the complete destruction of their sandbox. Already, the cracks were beginning to show.

Why had the sleeping dogs been left to lie for twenty-five years? There must not have been anyone capable until now of putting the pieces together. After all, who would ever imagine that a weapon could possess a mind and awareness?

But the Director had figured it out. And the reason she had been able to do so…

“Of course… It was me.”

It was because Kaguya had discovered that the heroes had mental worlds. The introduction of an outsider, the external element Kaguya Shinohara, had caused the sandbox to break.

This had clearly been a major miscalculation on the Extermination Bureau’s part. Enough to make them eager to collect Kaguya. But they had made an even bigger miscalculation along the way. Mari knew the truth. And—according to Mari—the reason she had decided to tell Azuma and the others what she knew was because of the strong will displayed by the members of Charon.

It was their powerful will to save people. That was what had led to the sandbox becoming broken. It was almost ironic in a way.

“But what about the Bureau’s real motive? What in the hell are they after?”

“They want to reengineer Chronoses. Without the rebounds, I suspect. To perfect them… That was what the Director was trying to do. It was the same thing.”

The same thing, but their methods had been as different as night and day. As had been their motivations.

The Director was so idealistic and direct that she sometimes came across as mad. Everything she had done, however, had been for the sake of humanity. That was why Kaguya had stayed by her side.

But the Extermination Bureau’s motives—this experimental sandbox’s motives—were not the same as hers. The Bureau did not hesitate to sacrifice people for their own ends. Why were they so desperate to develop new Chronoses?

“What in the world are Chronoses…?” Azuma muttered, voicing Kaguya’s exact thoughts. “Who are they for? What are they for?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we don’t need to know. This all dates back to something from thirty years ago. Something they failed at.”

Kaguya gave the matter some thought. How did the people attempting to reengineer the Chronoses view Charon? Charon’s members were the only people capable of using Chronoses without rebounds, which was exactly what the Bureau had been hoping for.

Hence why they had brought them all together into a single squad and forced them to fight heroes. The data collected from Charon’s battles would have made it evident that Charon’s members possessed extraordinary physical attributes. But just having them fight heroes may not have been enough to answer the question as to why they didn’t suffer rebounds.

That explained why they had sent in a technological liaison.

At least, it accounted for why they had suddenly transferred Kaguya—someone who was researching how to turn heroes back into humans—to Charon and why they had gone so far as to approve of her participation in battles.

“But things didn’t go quite as they had expected.”

Because Kaguya had discovered the interior mental worlds that existed within the heroes. According to what Azuma told her, his decision to temporarily remove her from the squad had been precipitated by panic from someone higher up.

After she had returned to Charon, they had sent Haru in another failed attempt to detach Kaguya from Charon.

But Kaguya had stayed. And then, just as they were running out of options for how to deal with her, the Director had sent that report. And they knew, of course, that the Director and Kaguya were in close contact with one another.

I was on a mission at the time. She would have told me once I got back. And then—just like now…

The sandbox was starting to come apart at the seams. That was why they had her killed.

That explains their behavior, but there’s probably still more that needs answering.

“Kaguya?” Azuma’s voice snapped Kaguya out of her reverie. “Are you all right?”

“Oh… I’m sorry. There’s just a lot to think about.”

“You’re telling me. It’s not only the Chronoses or the heroes. There’s a lot about the Extermination Bureau that doesn’t make sense.”

Azuma had summed it up perfectly. Kaguya guessed, from the lack of deliberation in his tone, that this wasn’t his first time giving the matter thought.

“But it makes you wonder who they are…”

“They?”

“The people inside my sword and in Koyuki’s and Rindou’s weapons. I can’t help but wonder…who are they?”

“Good point… Not to mention that pistol…”

Whose consciousness was it that was sealed inside the pistol that Kaguya sometimes used?

“Do you think…this is something we should share with Koyuki and the others?”

“Of course. They have the obligation and the right to know, Kaguya. If you don’t tell them, I will.”

The members of Charon held strong attachments to the Extermination Bureau. As did Kaguya, to be honest. They had spent their whole lives fighting for the Bureau, on the front lines, after all.

“I don’t believe any of us are so weak as to run away over something like this. Do you?”

“No, of course not. They’re all strong… You’re right. We should tell them.”

Their faith in the members of Charon was unshakable. If this was what it took to cause them to lose their will to fight, they would just have to cross that bridge when they got there.

It wasn’t until several hours after Haru’s message that Kaguya told them.

The reason she waited was because both she and Azuma were in agreement that Haru needed to be there to hear this as well. Once Haru finally returned, everyone gathered in the meeting hall to hear what Kaguya had to say.

That the Extermination Bureau was no more than a testing ground for the research and improvement of Chronoses, the weapons refined from heroes.

That heroes existed for the creation of Chronoses and had not originally been hostile. That something happened that had caused the heroes to run amok—and that the Extermination Bureau existed in order to clean up that mess and to collect data.

Once Kaguya finished explaining, the room fell silent. No one knew what to say.

The silence was uncomfortable. They all kept their mouths shut, aware of what the others were thinking. But after a bombshell like that, they couldn’t just trudge back to their separate rooms as if nothing had happened.

Azuma was Charon’s captain. If anyone was going to break the silence, it was up to him.

“Everyone.” Azuma’s voice diffused softly throughout the room, his tone gentle but sharp. They all turned to stare. “I understand how you must feel… I still haven’t fully accepted this myself.”

The truth behind the Extermination Bureau—that it was no more than a facility for lab rats.

“However, that doesn’t change what we need to do, does it?”

“Maybe not…,” Rindou said, scratching his head reluctantly. “But I don’t understand how you can be so okay with all of this.” He glared at Azuma. “You’re saying everything we’ve done up until now has all been some faceless jerk’s experiment. That it was all for shits and giggles. How are you not losing it right now? That would mean that what happened to Sakura when she became a hero, to all of them… They were all just somebody’s guinea pigs.”

Rindou was right; there was nothing Azuma could say to that.

“And you’re fine with this?! With letting something like that go unpunished…?!” Rindou demanded.

“Of course I’m not fine with it.”

Azuma’s voice was hard as steel, as if he was barely containing his anger.

Azuma’s reaction seemed to have spooked Rindou. Azuma, however, ignored him and let out a loud sigh. This was a ridiculous amount of information to unload on them all at once. It was too much to expect them to process it all immediately.

Koyuki was the next to speak. “I can’t do this. I can’t do this right now.”

For Koyuki, the Extermination Bureau was both her youth and her curse. It was all she had ever known. She couldn’t bear it—the idea that it had all been fake.

She jumped to her feet, knocking her chair back with a clatter, and rushed toward the stairs. Kaguya knew exactly where she was heading.

Toward their room to bury herself under the covers on the top bunk.

Azuma stared at Kaguya, who made no attempt to follow, slightly surprised.

“Shouldn’t you go after her?” he asked.

“No, it’s better this way.” Kaguya wasn’t going to chase her. Koyuki had just learned something earth-shattering and was probably at her lowest. “Charon’s members aren’t weaklings. You’re the one who taught me that, Captain Azuma.”

“Of course…”

Behind them, they could hear Rindou and Haru squabbling among themselves. It sounded like Haru was trying to soothe Rindou, who was having difficulty keeping his rage in check. Haru’s voice also sounded like it was on the verge of tears. It seemed even Haru was tempted to cry over what they had just learned.

Haru had gone out in search of information on her own and had found what she was looking for. Kaguya could only imagine how she must have looked when she had sent the photograph of those design specs to Azuma. And then she had trudged all the way back to the barracks only to hear what she must have already known.

She was likely experiencing as much turmoil as the rest of them.

Kaguya, for her part, was taking it all in stride. Maybe the information wasn’t as great of a shock for her in the first place as it was for Charon. But more importantly, she had already faintly suspected something like this.

She had been carrying a sneaking suspicion for some time now that something wasn’t quite right with the Bureau. That feeling had now simply been given form.

But while she might have been calmer than the others, she was far from fine.

“I…I have to…”

After a moment of hesitation, Kaguya headed up the stairs toward their rooms without saying anything. Not to comfort Koyuki, who had already left. No—Kaguya needed a moment to herself as well. Now that she had put all of this out into the open, she felt a clamor building in her chest. Something she had to work her way through…

As Kaguya reached for the door to their room, Koyuki stepped out from inside, her eyes slightly puffy.

“Ah…”

“…”

They stared at each other for a few seconds.

And then, at the same time, they both broke into smiles. The tension finally broke. Koyuki was the first to speak.

“What? Don’t tell me you were worried about me. Or were you running off to cry again yourself?”

“N-no, I was just, um…” Kaguya was too embarrassed to admit that was exactly what she was about to do. “I was just wondering what was for dinner. I left today’s menu in our room.”

“Relax. I’m only teasing you. And I’m not such a baby that I need anyone to make a fuss over me.”

They spoke almost as if they were exchanging friendly banter. Somewhere along the way, the relationship between them had developed to the point where they no longer needed to hold back with one another.

“Hmph…”

However, it probably wasn’t so easy to switch tracks on a dime like that. Koyuki turned her head upward, likely holding back tears.

“Geez. I had kind of suspected something like this, but to be confronted with it out of the blue like this…”

“Wait, you suspected?”

“Of course,” Koyuki said, turning to face Kaguya once more. She put on a brave smile. “There were too many red flags. The Chronoses, the heroes… I knew the Bureau was no normal organization. It’s bizarre, after all, the way they purposely hide themselves from the world… I knew something was wrong. I just didn’t want to think about it too deeply.”

Because if she had let herself think, and had realized the truth, it would have overturned everything she knew and had believed in.

“This organization is a kind of dreamworld of its own. In a way, Kaguya, I think you came here to lead us out of these lies.”

“That’s—”

“I don’t mean anything bad by that. Instead of not knowing, not seeing, not thinking, I would rather see the reality for what it is. Even if that reality is almost entirely painful. What I’m trying to say is I don’t regret learning the truth.”

Koyuki smiled a genuine smile before shifting her face into an expression of concern for Kaguya.

“But what about you, Kaguya? Are you all right? This place was important to you, too, wasn’t it?”

“Well, it would be hard to say that I’m completely fine… My brother, Sakura, the Director. They’re all gone. I don’t want to believe this could have all been some sort of make-believe any more than the rest of you do.” Kaguya wasn’t looking to garner sympathy, though. “However, the truth is the truth.”

And accepting cold, hard truths without letting emotion get in the way was what the Director—what the members of Technical—did best.

“The people of Technical, like Mari and the Director, have a habit of bottling everything up inside. Until it gets to be too much, and we explode.”

But Mari had made the right choice in the end. Even if the Director had not been able to entrust what she was doing to anybody else.

“And what about you?” Koyuki asked, seeming like her normal self once again. “Are you finally starting to rely on the others around you?”

“…Yes.” Kaguya wasn’t putting on a show; she meant it. “Koyuki, I’m not going to take you for granted or make you worry anymore. I’m not going to leave you in this room all on your own again.”

“Good…” Koyuki smiled mischievously, and it didn’t look forced. “And here I thought you were gonna start crying on me.”

“Not a chance. I’ve got appearances to keep up, after all.”

“You mean like when you bawled your eyes out?” Koyuki teased, her own voice still a little weepy.

Kaguya turned beet red. “What? How do you know that?!”

“Azuma told me.”

“What?” Of course—how else would Koyuki have known? But that wasn’t what Kaguya expected to hear. “Is that…is that the sort of thing you usually tell other people about?!” she shouted, her cheeks flushed. “It kind of seems to me like something you should keep to yourself…”

“Well…I guess I kind of dragged it out of him. He did linger in your room for a while, after all. He said something about being forced to serve as a handkerchief, I believe…?”

“What?!” Kaguya said, recoiling in embarrassment. “But he knows I didn’t mean to…” She suddenly turned on her heel as if to escape the conversation. “C-come to think of it, I think I left that menu downstairs in the meeting hall.”

With that, Kaguya raced down the stairs.

Along the way…

Kaguya passed Azuma. She noticed that his eyes were moist.

He must have noticed that she had seen. But he pretended to be oblivious as he continued past her. Neither his bravado nor his true feelings, however, were lost on Kaguya.

“…”

She thought about saying something but chose not to in the end. Azuma wasn’t weak. He didn’t need someone to check on him and hold his hand.

They had just learned a harsh truth, but Azuma would likely come to grips with it in his own way and turn his thoughts to the future once again. He wouldn’t have been cut out to be their captain in the first place if he needed to be coddled instead.

“Now then… Let’s see what’s for dinner.”

In the end, Kaguya said nothing.

She already knew she could trust in him.

It had only been two days since Charon had learned the truth.

Just two days. That was all it had taken for them to get back onto their feet.

From Kaguya’s perspective, that about-face seemed staggeringly fast. They had just learned that their whole lives had been lived as someone’s lab rats. Under the circumstances, it would not have been strange for one or more of them to announce they were leaving the Bureau.

“I mean, it’s not like dwelling on things is going to get me anywhere,” Rindou said. “And if I left now, where would I go? The Bureau’s recruits are all in the same boat, after all.”

“That’s true, I guess. Only people with no relatives wind up in here.”

Neither Koyuki nor Rindou nor, least of all, Azuma were about to sit around feeling sorry for themselves, wasting their energy thinking about a past they had already lost. In Kaguya’s opinion they could afford to be a little more ambivalent about things than they were being, but that probably just came down to their different personalities. And perhaps to their experiences.

“Actually, this might have something to do with why the Bureau only hires children orphaned by the hero attacks.”

“I think so. Children can see the heroes, after all. The Bureau could have run some sort of application process if they wanted one, but they don’t.”

That was always an option—the Extermination Bureau could have made their existence public and fielded willing applicants. The reason they hadn’t must have been because, at the end of the day, the Bureau was just the setting for an experiment. The organization’s personal playground, so to speak.

“It seems as if they needed to keep the Chronoses a secret to some degree.”

“That makes sense. These weapons were originally human. Not only that, they still have awareness and can feel pain. It’s diabolical.”

True. The Extermination Bureau had strayed far from the path of decency.

“What about those design specs, though? I’m impressed you were able to get your hands on something like that. It’s hard to believe stuff like that is just sitting around in the Intelligence and Analysis Branch’s database.”

“It obviously wasn’t in the database. This is something they wanted to keep secret so badly that they were willing to kill for it. They wouldn’t dare keep something like that in the database, not even in the hidden files.”

“So then how did you—?”

“That’s my little secret.”

Noticing the wicked glint in Haru’s eyes, Kaguya suspected there might have been some form of blackmail involved.

“Well, I’m impressed you were able to convince people like that,” Kaguya said. By convince, she meant strong-arm, of course. “But couldn’t something like that come back to bite you later on?”

“I doubt it would amount to much of a bite even if it did. The Extermination Bureau will probably see how things are before too long.”

“…?”

“They can’t just stop sending Charon into the fight, and they must know it’s too late to kill any more of us now. I doubt they’d just kill us without a good reason since it takes a lot of nerve to kill another person.”

Having once attempted to kill someone she was close to, Haru knew what she was talking about.

“So you’re saying that, for all intents and purposes, the Bureau’s hands are tied? You certainly know how to play hardball. I’ll give you that,” Kaguya said, praising her.

A bemused look appeared in Haru’s eyes.

“In any case, shouldn’t Azuma be here by now? What’s taking him so long?”

Koyuki glanced toward the door of the meeting hall.

It was almost lunchtime. Azuma was in charge of today’s meal. While his cooking wasn’t terrible, the general consensus (?) was that it lacked originality, simply a textbook interpretation of flavor.

They did all agree on one thing, though: It was better than Haru’s cooking.

“Does he usually wake up this late?”

It was already eleven thirty. Factoring in the time it would take to prepare the meal, it would be around one by the time they finished eating.

“I guess it can’t be helped. Maybe someone else should make lunch in his place today—”

“I can do it,” Haru said, speaking up out of the blue. “I haven’t really done a proper lunch duty since I got here. The least I can do is—”

“Absolutely not!” the others said in unison.

They had yet to recover from the shock of seeing Haru’s first meal—which had been some sort of purplish-red stew.

“Ah! Speaking of which, Kaguya,” Koyuki said, changing the topic in a panic. “What happened to what we were talking about from before?”

“Talking about from before? What do you mean?”

“You know. The checkups, with the pulse and everything.”

Kaguya’s brain stalled temporarily. That was the last subject she had expected Koyuki to bring up at the current moment.

“What are you talking about? What pulse?” Rindou said, being the only one among them in the dark.

Kaguya ignored his question. “Well, nothing happened, I guess. Besides, I told you those are just aftereffects…”

“Hmph… Come on, the cat’s out of the bag already.” Koyuki seemed thrilled with her new choice of topic. “When are you going to woman up and do something about it already? You’re obviously just as keen on Azuma as he is on you!”

“I’m what…?!” Kaguya’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. Kaguya? Keen? On Azuma? Absolutely not! “Y-you’ve got it all wrong. Azuma was just going through something unusual, but that doesn’t mean that I—”

“I don’t know. You seem pretty interested in him to me, too,” Haru said, butting in once more where she wasn’t needed. “What do you think?” she asked, passing the ball along to Rindou, of all people.

Rindou, who had been out of the loop, hesitated slightly before speaking.

“W-well…she certainly doesn’t seem to hate him. That’s for sure. At least, they seem to be getting on better than before.”

“Of course we are. We’ve been around each other for several months now. But that’s just friendship. Friendship! I obviously care about him…as a teammate. But that absolutely does not mean that there’s anything sexual or romantic between us!”

“Oh? Who said anything about romantic?” Koyuki asked. Kaguya froze, realizing she had just dug her own grave. “It sounds like you’re aware of some feelings after all.”

“That’s not fair. You tricked me…,” Kaguya grumbled. She did not deny it, however. For all intents and purposes, she had just given her answer. “But don’t go nuts or anything. I’m just a tiny bit interested. That’s all.”

Kaguya stood up to hide her embarrassment. Anything to play off how flustered she was feeling at the moment. She began purposely speaking in a loud voice, making a show of how funny she found this whole situation.

“That doesn’t mean I like like Captain Azuma or anything, so—”

Click.

With exquisite—or what Kaguya would call atrocious—timing, the door to the hall swung open to reveal Azuma, who looked drowsy.

“Sorry I’m late. I’ll start making—” Azuma blinked, noticing Kaguya, who had frozen in a bizarre stance. “Kaguya, what are you doing?”

“What? Me? I was just standing up.”

Azuma cocked his head in a strangely endearing manner. “Oh? I had no idea you were such a big fan of standing up.”

“Standing up? What? I mean, I could take it or leave it…,” she babbled. Little did she know what was coming next.

“Hmm? I could have sworn I heard you talking about how much you liked something from outside the door. What was that all about?”

“…?!”

Kaguya’s cheeks grew warm. Her face, however, went white. “Well… You see…”

You could hear a pin drop. Despite the silence, everybody’s attention was riveted on Azuma and what he was going to do next. Was today the day that something finally happened? Kaguya was painfully conscious of the hushed expectation filling the room.

But she didn’t have time to worry about that right now. She needed to come up with an excuse. A good one and quickly. Preferably something of the witty variety.

“I—I was just saying how much I like your cooking, Captain Azuma.”

This was not her finest moment.

“Yes, that’s right. I was just saying how much I love Captain Azuma’s cooking! In fact, I was looking forward to it so much that I couldn’t stop myself from jumping to my feet.”

“Y-you do? Well, I’m glad to hear that, I guess.”

Azuma looked confused, but he sounded vaguely pleased. Apparently, he believed her. Although…it was a little worrying that he was so easy to fool.

“Just don’t go expecting me to start playing favorites with the menu, Kaguya.”

“Absolutely not. I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“But I bet you’re expecting an extra-large portion, right? You’re going to have Major Mirai in tears again at this rate.”

Charon’s food, necessities, and other such needs were provided by the Combat Support Branch. Since Kaguya joined them, the amount of food they were going through had skyrocketed. If they tried to skimp on the portions, however, Kaguya’s performance out in the field suffered instead. Mirai was close to tearing her hair out when it came to ordering their supplies.

“Portions are, well… Never mind. Forget about that for now. Why were you sleeping in so late, Captain Azuma? You usually wake up right after Rindou.”

Rindou was the barrack’s earliest riser.

“Were you up late last night or something? There’s a first time for everything, I guess.”

“Y-yeah…”

Azuma laughed in a somewhat self-deprecating manner as he headed toward the kitchen, turning his back on the rest of them in the hall.

“I started thinking of everyone…from Charon…”

Kaguya didn’t need to be told to know who he meant by “everyone.”

She plopped herself down on the sofa. The past members of Charon, the ones who had died. That was who, probably. Azuma and the other current members of Charon weren’t the only ones who had survived the hero attack six years ago. There had been older members. A whole ragtag pack, at least, of adolescents and children.

And all of their deaths had been for the sake of some experiment being carried out by the Extermination Bureau—or at least by the organization that went by that name.

Kaguya’s mind wandered to thoughts of the Director and Sakura. Haru was probably also remembering past friends and colleagues whom she had witnessed die in front of her eyes.

The slightly somber atmosphere that descended upon the room was interrupted by the sound of the refrigerator door opening. Despite being the one to bring up the subject, Azuma himself seemed fairly nonchalant.

“It looks like summer is finally almost over, doesn’t it? It was a long one this year.”

“For me, it passed in the blink of an eye…”

“That’s not very funny…”

Kaguya knew he was right, but to her, the fact that she had been asleep for a whole month seemed fairly trivial.

“Speaking of which,” Kaguya said, completely changing the subject. “You seem tired, Captain Azuma. Instead of making lunch, why don’t we all go somewhere instead?”

“Somewhere? You mean like out to eat? What brought that on all of a sudden?”

“Why not? It’s good to get out every now and again. We’ll just ask Major Mirai to foot the bill.”

“The poor major…,” Haru said, staring off into the distance. It didn’t seem like she was against the idea, however. “Fine, what should we eat, then? What sounds good to you, Kaguya?”

“I mean…I know it was my suggestion, but honestly, I’m having trouble coming up with any good ideas.”

“Well, make sure it’s something where there’s a limit on how much you can eat. We don’t want a repeat of last time when we went for bottomless soba, and you finished off one hundred and fifty-three bowls. You put the rest of us off our food.”

“That was actually quite low, I’ll have you know. I only stopped because Major Mirai begged me to in tears.”

“Poor Major Mirai,” Haru said once again.

“What do you mean by a place where there’s a limit on how much I can eat?”

“Anywhere without free refills or all-you-can-eat options.”

“How about Italian? All those carbs should be filling.”

The girls began making arrangements among themselves, completely ignoring Azuma and Rindou. One place had good pasta. Another was too expensive, so it wouldn’t be fair to Major Mirai. One also had healthy options. And so on and so forth.

After some chatter, Koyuki finally turned to speak to Azuma and Rindou.

“So it’s decided, then. We’re having pasta today.”

“Don’t we get a say in the matter…?”

“Okay, what did you want?”

Azuma gave it some thought, but after ten seconds, he still hadn’t said a word. It looked like he couldn’t come up with any ideas, either.

“All right, then. Pasta it is—”

“Aren’t you gonna ask me what I want?” Rindou said, complaining, although he was probably only doing so for show.

“I already know you’re just gonna say protein.”

“What kind of a meathead do you take me for? But…yeah, you’re right.”

He had only interrupted them for the sake of banter.

Pasta it was, then.

“Ah…!” As Rindou began to rise to his feet, Azuma made a little exclamation as if he had just remembered something. “Ice cream parfaits.”

Everyone turned to stare. That cute little phrase was not at all what they had expected to come out of his mouth.

“Ice cream…parfaits?”

“Yes… There was this place I saw a little while ago. I kept thinking that I wanted to go, but before I knew it, the time just seemed to slip away.”

“Really? I’m curious to see what kind of place would catch your interest, Captain Azuma…but to be honest, my heart is already set on pasta today.”

“No, I don’t want to make everyone change plans now.”

It sounded like Azuma wasn’t that dead set on parfaits after all. He just wanted to bring it up.

“Well, how about this, then? The next time we go out to eat, we’ll prioritize wherever you want to go,” said Kaguya.

“Oh? Is that a promise?” Azuma asked her.

“Of course it is. Have I ever made a promise I didn’t keep?”

“Not that I can think of off the top of my head. Honestly, it’s hard to picture you breaking a promise.”

“You see?”

Kaguya grinned, a little satisfied with herself. A smile made its way to Azuma’s lips as well. Maybe her grin had rubbed off on him. Either that, or he was just keeping her smile company.

“All right. I trust you won’t break your promise. But don’t forget about it, either!”

“Don’t you sweat it. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s remembering stuff.”

“We’ll see about that,” Azuma teased, taking the lead and exiting the room first.

Koyuki followed, and then Rindou, and then Haru. Purely by coincidence, Kaguya happened to bring up the rear.

As she watched them from behind, a stray thought floated into her head.

Of course I won’t forget.

How could I ever forget a promise that I made to you?

That night.

A report of a hero sighting had come in. Charon was already on the scene.

The hero had appeared in Chiba, specifically in an area of reclaimed land along Tokyo Bay. A slime-shaped hero had apparently shown up at a private high school in a section where many schools were located—it covered almost the entire school building.

Fortunately, it showed up overnight at three in the morning when—save for a lone security guard already half asleep—not a single creature was stirring. The members of Charon infiltrated the school grounds, bringing Kaguya with them. She held her pistol low.

“If you start to feel unwell—”

“I told you I’m fine. What about everyone else? Are you guys all right?” Kaguya cut in as she turned to face the hero. The slime hero was a poisonous-looking purple and seemed to have enveloped nearly the whole structure. They could just barely make out the entrance below, lined with rows of shoe lockers, and the windows of the classrooms.

“SKRRREEEEEEEE!!”

A screech.

Reflexively, Kaguya pressed a hand to one ear. The shock made her knees go weak and left her numb to her core. The other squad members seemed to have been affected in the same manner. Koyuki, unfortunately, had both hands full and was forced to take the full, unmitigated impact of the noise.

“Koyuki! Are you okay?!” Kaguya shouted, but she could not even hear her own voice.

The screech had been so loud and powerful that it had caused a crack to appear in the school building and the asphalt to split. It was essentially a sonic attack.

Of course, the hero itself was unfazed, seeing as it had made the sound. It wouldn’t have made much sense for it to be damaged by its own cries. It extended a “hand” toward the immobilized members of Charon.

Thin tendrils of slime, like the twigs from a tree, split off from the main purple mass. For the first few seconds after splitting, they traveled at normal speed but then suddenly picked up pace as they charged toward the squad.

Azuma, Kaguya, and Haru had only been able to cover one ear due to the weapons they were holding. Koyuki, meanwhile, had both hands full and had taken the full brunt of the attack. The creature’s “arms” closed in on each of them.

The attack had taken no more than the blink of an eye to reach them. However, the tendrils suddenly stopped before making contact.

They weren’t about to waste this chance. They all hastily moved back. After creating distance, Kaguya finally realized why the hero had stopped.

“Ah…! Rindou.”

As the only one of them with two empty hands, Rindou alone had been able to defend against the sonic attack fully. Doing so had given him enough time to approach the creature’s main mass and deliver a powerful blow to it with his fists.

“Rindou!!”

“…!!”

The tendrils were headed toward Rindou now. The individually meager “arms” came together to form a single coil, now as thick as a man’s chest, which swung at Rindou. However, the creature’s movements were less than precise. The wild whipping motion left the hero wide open, and Rindou was easily able to avoid the blow. However, as soon as he dodged…

“Wha—?!”

A second arm of thick slime was waiting for him, like a trap. Rindou failed to notice it until it had already caught him by the leg and had begun to squeeze, tighter and tighter and tighter.

“Argh!”

The pressure threatened to shred his thigh to ribbons. Just as the “hand” was about to tear Rindou’s leg to pieces, a gunshot rang through the air. It was the slime’s arm that was shredded instead.

“Ah!” Rindou seized the opportunity. He retreated out of the slime’s reach, dragging his leg slightly as he went. “Thanks, Koyuki!”

“I just didn’t want to owe you one. That’s all,” Koyuki said with a wry smile as smoke rose up from the anti-materiel-class rifle in her hands.

The tendril of slime that had captured Rindou, the one that Koyuki had just blasted to ribbons, regenerated immediately.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

She fired again—this time at the clock on the school building, located over the main entrance. There was a loud crash, and the now broken clock, along with a chunk of the school building, fell, massively damaging the slime. Just as she was preparing to take another shot…

“Koyuki, wait!”

There was a pause. As Kaguya followed Azuma’s gaze, she thought she caught sight of a furtive shadow in a corner of one of the windows.

“You can’t be serious. There’s someone in there?!”

The slime was creeping in through the cracks in the building and looked like it might envelop the figure inside at any moment. The person ran through the school, desperately fleeing the slimy menace. They heard a voice, barely audible, from within.

“Help me…!”

Haru was quick to respond. She ran straight toward the school on her naturally fleet legs, planning to make her way inside. Azuma called after her as she went.

“Takanashi, do you know the way?!”

“I’ve got it!” Haru said, barely stopping to respond as she rushed inside.

She had spied the girl’s location and had already worked out the quickest route to get there. Step one, at least for someone with her physical abilities, was to enter through a window along the side of the building.

The hero didn’t try to chase her. Likely because there was a more pressing threat facing it at the moment.

Two such threats, in fact.

“Captain Azuma,” said Kaguya, who was one of those two threats. “I heard you aren’t able to locate the eggs anymore. Are you sure you’ve got this?”

“It’s fine. I noticed a spot it was trying to protect during Rindou’s and Koyuki’s attacks earlier.”

Since the egg was essentially a hero’s heart, the creatures naturally tended to defend that spot on their bodies more than elsewhere, even if only unintentionally.

“Kaguya,” Azuma said as he stood next to her without turning his head. “Let’s go.”

“Okay!”

With Azuma in the lead, they rushed into the slime together toward where the egg must be located. It was a strange feeling, like running underwater. And yet it was easy to breathe. If anything, it almost felt pleasant.

“There! The second-story window!”

They had only been running for a few seconds when they spotted it right there in front of them. A spot where the slime was thicker and far less transparent than anywhere else.

It was a desk located next to a window on the school’s second floor. Azuma suddenly grabbed Kaguya, and before she knew it, they were leaping through the air. He was able to cling to the windowsill without much difficulty and bust out the window with a single jab of his elbow. The egg was right there…on top of the desk.

The desk, which was visible even through the slime, was covered with all sorts of messages that had been written directly on it. A vase had also been placed on the desk, symbolizing death. The egg was delicately enshrined within that vase.

The resistance of the slime suddenly increased, and both Azuma and Kaguya found themselves unable to move. They couldn’t reach the egg—the interior of the slime began to spasm. If anything, it felt like they were being pushed away.

“It’s so thick…!”

“It seems like it really doesn’t want us to touch that egg.”

Rather than allow himself to be ejected, however, Azuma placed a hand on the hilt of his katana and shifted his center of gravity ever so slightly. With his hips low and a finger on the sword’s guard, he withdrew the katana with a quick slashing motion—too fast for Kaguya’s eye to see. There was a soft ting, like the sound of a tiny bell, as a small section of the slime was sliced open.

It was like Moses parting the sea. Kaguya somehow managed to thrust herself into that opening and point her gun. But even now the slime continued its attempts to reject them.

“I know…”

Whoever it was in there, they didn’t want to go back. They wanted to stay. To sacrifice themselves to their ideals. They didn’t want to be dragged back to reality.

Kaguya understood exactly how they felt.

There were some things that only she could do—that no one else could take off her shoulders. Things that were necessary if she was going to save the heroes.

But Kaguya wasn’t going to carry it all alone and attempt to remember everything anymore. She could pick it up, let it touch her, and then let it go. Without letting herself become bogged down in it. Without letting it become a curse. She had to. And when it came to the memories that truly needed to be remembered, she would remember them, but she would share them so that they could belong to everything. So that she didn’t wind up hoarding the burden.

“Let’s go back.”

They could rest easy now.

“I’ll take it on for you. I won’t forget. But then—”

There was more. More to it than just remembering.

“—I’ll share it. So you can rest easy knowing that you won’t have to go alone. We’ll all be there.”

The final blow came like a gentle touch, a soft embrace. Like the warm mercy of a saint.

Kaguya will probably attempt to save the hero once we get there…

Azuma swung his sword in a flash, positioning himself so as to protect Kaguya. At the current moment, he was situated next to the window, cutting through the hero’s body as it attempted to envelop her from all sides.

…and she’ll probably bring the memories back with her…

The slime was difficult to cut through, but Azuma managed to do so easily.

…but…I don’t think she’s going to try to keep them all to herself anymore.

He sliced through a tentacle as it reached for Kaguya’s shoulder.

Kaguya entered the hero’s world, and Haru got the schoolgirl outside to safety at almost the exact same moment. The hero—a boy—barely had a second to exhale and register that he was still alive when Kaguya woke up.

“Kaguya!” As Azuma shouted her name, a smile slowly spread across Kaguya’s face. “Are you okay?”

“Captain Azuma… I’m perfectly fine,” she said, her expression tranquil.

Azuma breathed a sigh of relief. “I see. Well, good then. It looks like we’re almost done here.”

He could see the hero’s body beginning to crumble apart. The school building, which had almost been swallowed completely, was free again beneath the quiet night sky.

Azuma jumped from the window first. It was only the second floor, so he was able to land solidly on both feet. Next, he spread his arms out wide and waited for Kaguya. She jumped with zero hesitation, suspended in the air for just the briefest of moments—seconds, really. Less than that. Not even a single second.

“…Huh?”

However, Azuma had forgotten one thing.

They all had.

When Sakura died, the hero’s final attack had come after a delay. Once everyone had already relaxed and let down their guard.

Azuma was waiting to catch Kaguya. Koyuki was eyeing the hero’s body. Rindou’s eyes were turned toward the schoolgirl. And Haru was busy trying to convince him to follow them. They all saw it at once.

Just as the hero was about to collapse and vanish entirely, it extended a single rapid tentacle, as thin as a branch, straight toward Kaguya.

“Ah—”

Who actually made the noise? Like air escaping a tire.

A sick, fleshy sound split the night.

The hero’s tentacle penetrated Kaguya’s back and then exited out of the front, straight through her stomach.

The first thing Kaguya felt was discomfort.

There was no pain. No heat. Just the instinctively unpleasant sensation of something foreign worming its way inside her body. The cold and the pressure of suddenly being yanked to a stop mid-fall were immense.

Yes. She felt cold. Even though it was still summer. As cold as if she had suddenly been immersed in solid ice.

A moment later, Kaguya realized she could barely breathe. And then…

“Kaguya!!”

Someone was shouting her name. The despair in the voice told her that something bad had just happened to her. She turned her attention toward her own body.

“Ah…”

There was a hole through her solar plexus.

Her lungs hadn’t taken direct damage, at least, but the impact had broken her ribs, which had pierced her lungs and left them half destroyed. She coughed up a spurt of blood. Once that happened, she instinctively knew.

It was already too late.

They said that a person would always realize when they are close to death. That they don’t need to be told. There was no scientific reason for this. Animal instinct simply made it known.

Kaguya was now experiencing that firsthand. Her body heat fled through the hole in her chest, and her mind was already so foggy that she was worried she might lose consciousness at any moment. Her vision began to shut down in static patches. She could barely make out the figure of someone running toward her.

But she could no longer discern who.

Her sense of equilibrium suddenly disappeared. She was falling. It seemed to happen so slowly for her—like she was dropping down in slow motion. She barely made out the sight of a silver blade cutting through one of the hero’s tentacles.

“Kaguya?!”

There was despair in the voice. The tearful silver calling her name.

The world rapidly began to recede. She couldn’t see. From the sounds around her, she realized that somebody was rushing toward her now, but even those sounds seemed to fade into the distance. Something hot was streaming from her chest, and from the dim corners of her failing vision, she discerned the sight of her own scarlet hair, becoming steadily soaked in deep red blood.

“Silver…”

It was the last color she saw as the darkness closed in on her. A glittering flash of silver. And the briefest glimpse of icy blue.

Captain Azuma—

Kaguya’s consciousness grew hazy. The silver grew faint, and then a chestnut brown began to fill her field of view as if to blot that silver light from her mind.

Kaguya remembered that color. She knew those eyes.

Ren…

Her brother. She was no longer capable of complicated thought. Wavering on the border between reality and dream, life and death, truth and deception, Kaguya did not realize that the young man who appeared before her was only an illusion. And even if she had, she would not have been capable of understanding what that meant.

And so Kaguya extended her hand toward the dream that appeared to her on the outskirts of death.

Toward the figure of her brother.

Toward the Goddess.

They knew.

No one said it out loud, but everyone knew. Kaguya was beyond help.

The pool of blood beneath her had grown so large it looked ready to swallow her whole. Her wound was too deep, making it ruthlessly clear. Nothing could be done for her now.

But what did it mean that she was dying under these circumstances? They all knew the terrible risk. There was something they had to do. No one said it, but they all knew.

“I’ll do it…” Haru drew her knife. She did not have to explain what she meant by it. “I tried to do it for someone once before, and I failed. This time—”

“Wait.”

Azuma bit his lip, clutching the still-bleeding Kaguya. It took less than a second for him to steel his nerves. He stopped Haru before she could finish what it was she was going to say, reversing the grip on his katana.

He wasn’t facing a hero this time, however. He was facing Kaguya.

“I should be the one to do it.”

This was one thing he couldn’t entrust to anyone else. If they had to kill her, it ought to at least be as painless as possible. A single thrust with no hesitation.

It had to be through the neck. Or through the brow. Something that would rob her of life and consciousness in a single instant.

Kaguya seemed to have gone blind now. She stretched her hand out toward empty space. Azuma had a bad feeling about this. It seemed she was seeing something that wasn’t there.

Quickly—he had to kill her quickly. He moved without delay, aiming to thrust the point of his sword through her neck…

That was when it happened.

A sharp scent suddenly filled the air, billowing toward them on the wind as if to smother the blood-drenched battlefield.

It was the scent of osmanthus.

“…!!”

Azuma was helpless to respond in time. There was suddenly a man there, standing next to the prone Kaguya. He had brown hair and a face that vaguely resembled Kaguya’s. He would have been just the right age to be Kaguya’s older brother.

But Kaguya’s brother was already gone—meaning this must be the Goddess. It took them no time to realize what was happening.

Azuma swung with his sword. Koyuki laid down gunfire. Rindou dove forward in a rush. Haru brandished her knife.

Azuma’s sword was at the Goddess’s neck. Koyuki’s bullets were millimeters from the Goddess’s head. Rindou was already within arm’s reach of the Goddess’s right side, and Haru’s exposed knife was closing in from the left.

In another moment, all four of their attacks would connect at once.

But it was already too late.

All four of them were too late.

“N-no…!”

A vortex of wind rose up. A warm breeze enveloped Kaguya as if wrapping her in a sigh. Azuma tried to reach out for her, but to no avail.

And when the wind died down, the Goddess was gone. In its place appeared a single massive flower with petals of the same scarlet hue as Kaguya’s hair.

“Shit!!”

A giant scarlet rose, as large as a person. Several other flowers were bunched together in a circle around the stems in an artistic display that was familiar to even the average layman. It was just like van Gogh’s Sunflowers, only with roses instead.

The petals closest to the center were a pale violet. Two stems supported the thing’s weight, looming quietly and imparting an aura of sanctity to the flowers. The shadow that carved out the face was exactly where the stamen on a flower would have been and was about the same size as a human face. The most distinctive sign of a hero.

“No…,” Azuma whimpered. “Don’t smile. Not like that.”

He could see it. The smiling face of Kaguya Shinohara.

Her eyes lacked focus. The corners of her mouth were raised in a cold grin, an image of something fundamentally broken inside.

This was Kaguya Shinohara’s hero—ominous and terrible.

The petals were all so unnecessarily large, blooming in maliciously insistent profusion. Although it was a flower, it seemed to stand untethered, with no visible roots supporting it.

It was a flower hero, essentially. A beautiful rose in appearance, the same color as Kaguya’s hair. It did not suit her.

They had already grasped the situation and were ready to do what needed to be done. It was their only choice. It didn’t matter if they could. Or even if they wanted to. The hero had already grown to an unnatural size and was only continuing to spread and increase. Its petals had already doubled in just this brief span of time. If left to continue, it would cover the school’s grounds entirely in just twenty to thirty minutes.

“Kaguya!!”

“Azuma, calm down. It hasn’t started moving.”

Someone yanked Azuma backward by his arm, bringing him back to his senses. It was Koyuki. She had stopped him before he could dive headlong into the center of the creature’s mass.

“We can still kill it,” she said, her face as neutral as her voice. “It hasn’t noticed us yet.”

“Kill it?!”

Azuma had been through countless battles. He understood perfectly well what Koyuki meant—but he was having trouble hearing it right now.

“You mean…”

“Are you trying to make me say it?”

Although angry, her voice remained cool and composed. It was the complete opposite of her usually blunt manner. This was enough for Azuma to regain some degree of composure. She was right. If they were going to kill her, they had to do it now.

If they were going to kill Kaguya…

Azuma drew his katana and held it at the ready, dropping his hips. He had no qualms about cutting down this monster that stood before him now.

Even if, for instance, he happened to catch sight of the face hiding within its shadows.

That’s not the real you. You would never smile like that.

In the back of his mind, he knew that it only looked like Kaguya. It was something different now.

Your real smile was never so crazed.

Azuma could feel Koyuki staring at him with concern. He calmly began to issue orders.

“You’re right. It hasn’t noticed us yet. If we’re going to do this, it has to be now.” He followed up with his favorite go-to. “I’ll create an opening. You take care of the rest.”

As the most skilled of the current group, it was up to Azuma to distract the hero, and that meant heading in first. To kill Kaguya.

Rindou had something to say.

Back when Kaguya suddenly asked Rindou to spar, he hadn’t been sure about her. True, he had been the one to try to push her into it, but he had never expected her to approach him instead.

But he had sensed something in her serious demeanor and decided to see where things went. He soon learned that his instincts were not mistaken. Kaguya truly was trying to change and bring hope.

“You even managed to get in a good hit against me…!”

The sparring, meant as training, had happened suddenly. But in the end, Kaguya managed to succeed. She rushed him one hundred times and was knocked down ninety-nine, but with each and every attack, she gave it her all. And after ninety-nine bouts, just when Rindou was starting to lose steam, she finally managed to connect with a punch.

“It may have just been just once, by random chance, but you managed to beat me…”

And if she could beat him…

“…Kaguya, don’t you fucking lose to that!”

Haru had tried to ask her once.

Why was she trying to save all the heroes? Even those who didn’t want to be saved. Even when there was no benefit in it for Kaguya herself.

But Haru knew the answer even before she was told. That was just the kind of person Kaguya was. She had the kind of strength that could lift a person up even after they had started to give up.

Strength came with its own fragility, but not for Kaguya. Kaguya was the type to conquer her own fragility, righteous enough to sweep away everything that got in the way.

Which is exactly why Haru couldn’t bear it. For things to end in this way.

“Come back to us, Lieutenant Shinohara!”

Koyuki was afraid.

At this rate, she was going to lose Kaguya. No, Kaguya was already lost.

This was what she had been so afraid of. If Kaguya became a hero, no one would be able to help her. Kaguya had saved so many people and had stood by the side of those she couldn’t save up until the end. But there was no one who could see her off in return.

It wasn’t fair.

Koyuki hated unfairness. Especially when it struck someone who was important to her.

She didn’t want to lose anything, not again. And besides, Kaguya had promised.

“Remember you said we would go get parfaits. You told us you never break your promises!!”

It wasn’t just parfaits. There were so many things she still wanted to say to Kaguya. Things she wanted to do together. And now…

“Don’t let it end like this, Kaguya!!”

Azuma’s head was spinning; he was confused and distraught. Part of him was still in denial, clinging to hope. But his more rational self knew it was too late.

She couldn’t be saved. They had failed her. They hadn’t allowed her to die as herself.

The hero standing before them was on a completely different level from any they had ever faced. Strong didn’t even begin to describe the thing. It transcended every hero they had seen before in every conceivable way.

“Come back. Please come back, Kaguya.”

Azuma had his own feelings for Kaguya, different from the others’. Even if she couldn’t return to them…

“If you can’t make it back, don’t worry…”

It may have looked like he was giving up, but this was his own kindness to her.

“…I’ll be sure to kill you.”

And with that, he thrust toward Kaguya with his katana—as hard as he could.

Kaguya could have sworn she felt a thud somewhere.

The meal was mostly finished by this point, the majority of it having disappeared into Kaguya’s stomach. Kaguya’s brother had been right—between the two of them, they really had managed to work their way through the food.

“I could go for more, to be honest…”

“You’re kidding me…”

“I don’t understand how that’s enough food for you! Don’t you get hungry later?”

“Hey, I’m the normal one here. I don’t understand how you manage to eat enough for six people.”

“Don’t ask me.”

She didn’t know, either; she was just born that way.

Her brother stood up, his chair clattering, and headed toward the refrigerator. Kaguya watched him like a hawk, her eyes glued to his sleepy profile and somewhat tense gaze.

“Ren? What are you doing?”

“Dessert,” he answered simply. Kaguya’s eyes widened, and she stood up in delight.

“There’s dessert, too?!”

The news was enough to make Kaguya’s heart leap in her chest. But it wasn’t just the dessert she was excited about. The fact that her brother had gone to such lengths just for her was what made her happiest of all.

He pulled a sky-blue tub of ice cream out of the icebox and served the ice cream into a glass dish, piling the scoops up high. It looked vivid and exciting. It was even sprinkled with eye-catching silver dragées.

“It’s so pretty…,” Kaguya said reflexively. “It almost feels like a shame to eat it.”

Sky blue and silver. Something about the color combination worked so well. But she felt a strange sense of déjà vu, as if she had seen that combination somewhere else before.

“Don’t be stupid,” her brother laughed. “Eat up before it melts.”

Without hesitation, he scooped up a full half of the ice cream with his spoon. Imitating him, Kaguya did the same and was just about to place the spoon into her mouth.

The air suddenly smelled like sakura.

Kaguya stared wide-eyed, caught off guard by the unexpected scent. Was there another dessert waiting for them somewhere? Something pink, like cherry blossoms? Where was that smell coming from all of a sudden?

“Do you smell that—?”

“I don’t think you should eat that, Kaguya.”

“?!”

It was Sakura Arakawa. She was suddenly sitting at the end of the table from out of the blue. When had she gotten here?

“S-Sakura, you surprised me. What are you doing here? Actually…” Kaguya cocked her head at Sakura’s appearance. “Why are you in uniform? Weren’t you supposed to be off today, too…?”

“Kaguya,” Sakura said, ignoring her question. She glanced disdainfully at the empty plates and ice cream on the table. “Are you happy right now?”

“What?” Kaguya furrowed her eyebrows. Why would Sakura ask something like that? “Where did that come from? Where did you come from, for that matter…?”

“Just a minute, Arakawa,” Kaguya’s brother said, speaking up in Kaguya’s place. “How disrespectful can you be, bursting in here without even announcing yourself first?”

“You’re the last person I’m interested in hearing about disrespect from.”

“Sakura, please…!” Kaguya said, rebuking Sakura. Why was she being so hostile all of a sudden? “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to scold you, but Ren is right… You should at least say something before coming in uninvited. Technically, this is trespassing. You don’t belong here.”

“No, Kaguya. The one who doesn’t belong here right now is you.”

Kaguya was visibly confused. This conversation wasn’t making any sense.

First of all, Sakura wasn’t acting anything like herself. She wasn’t the kind of person to do something so rude as to enter a person’s house uninvited and interrupt their meal.

There was the sound of a chair sliding across the floor. Kaguya’s brother had stood up. He stepped toward Sakura and grabbed her by the arm.

“W-wait, Ren…! Please calm down!”

Kaguya leaped to her feet to stop her brother. He did have a bit of a violent side sometimes, after all. Sakura, however, ignored Ren completely and continued to speak to Kaguya alone.

“There is an underground lab at Technical… You know it well, don’t you, Kaguya?” For some reason, Sakura’s smile looked pained. “A place, like an operating room. It was dark. But sometimes the Director would come. She must have thought I was someone she could talk to, seeing as I couldn’t speak. She told me a lot of things.”

A vision of the place floated into Kaguya’s head. Yes, there was an operating room down there. She had been to it several times. But she was pretty sure Sakura had never visited.

“Sakura, how do you know about—?”

“That’s my little secret,” Sakura said, placing a finger to her lips with a chuckle. “In any case, the Director spoke about you a lot. About how hard you were working. Too hard, sometimes.”

The Director and Sakura? Surely, they had never even met.

“Even the Director was worried about you. She had a lot of worries on her mind, which is why it was so sad, one of the saddest things I had ever seen when she died like that in front of me. She was a good person.”

“Wait. What do you mean? Who died?” The way she was speaking, she almost made it sound as if the Director was dead. “Sakura, that’s nothing to joke about. And when did you ever meet the Director? You’re acting very strange! I never would have expected this kind of behavior from you!”

“Are you sure about that?” Sakura was not letting her off the hook. “Kaguya, try to remember. Really remember. Just like you always ask others to do.”

Sakura’s tone was gentle, but the words sounded accusatory to Kaguya’s ear. As if, whatever it was Sakura was saying, Kaguya didn’t want to hear what came next.

She didn’t want to remember. She didn’t know what it was, but she knew she didn’t want to remember it. She felt a vague sense of terror. It felt like if she remembered whatever it was she was supposed to remember, she would no longer be able to stay here. As if all this happiness would just slip away.

“What do you mean, like I ask others to do? What do I ask them to do?”

“Don’t you remember? You find people lost in their own chimerical dreams and make them confront reality.”

Sakura’s words shook Kaguya. She bit her lower lip hard. Sakura was just talking about what they all did, entering the heroes in order to wake them up. Wasn’t she?

“B-but…that’s something we all do. Everyone can do it, even you, Sakura…”

“I wish I had been able to do it…” There was a hint of regret in Sakura’s smile. The sight made Kaguya feel uneasy. “I know how hard this is, but let’s go home, Kaguya.”

“G-go home…? To the barracks?”

“Yes and no.”

There was a flash of glittering light.

The space around Sakura suddenly seemed like a different world, far away from this house. As if Sakura was repelling the space around her. The table, the food, the ice cream, the furniture, all of it.

“I’m not going to insist. I’m in no place to stop you. I’m the last person who would have that right. Not after having turned into a hero myself.”

“A hero…”

This statement filled Kaguya with a sense of dread beyond anything else Sakura had said thus far. Did Sakura just say that she had become a hero? That wasn’t possible. If Sakura had turned into a hero, then who was this person facing Kaguya?

“Well…i-if you’re a hero, who’s talking to me right now? Everyone knows that heroes can’t speak!”

“You know better than anyone how untrue that is, Kaguya. You’ve talked with the heroes many times—so many times—before.”

“Wh-why would you…?”

Why would Sakura say something like that? That was what Kaguya had begun to ask. If it could even be called a question. There were so many emotions behind that word why for Kaguya right now.

Why was Sakura here? And why would she say something so awful?