"Rentaro-oniichan, you don't look so good. Are you worried about something?"
Nursery Rhyme's sudden question made Satomi Rentaro flinch hard.
He had no idea what his face looked like right now. All he could do was force a smile and pretend to be calm.
"Maybe I just didn't sleep well… It's been pretty hot lately."
Lying to people wasn't good, but he had no choice… If this news leaked by accident, the entire Tokyo Area would fall into an unprecedented panic and destroy itself. The consequences would be far crueler than a lie right now.
But then it hit him—Nursery Rhyme had just said she'd recently come back from America.
Satomi Rentaro parted his lips, his throat suddenly dry.
"Nursery Rhyme…"
"Hm?" Having her name called, Nursery Rhyme looked up blankly, meeting the eyes of Satomi Rentaro, who was biting his lip hard and clearly not acting normal.
"You said you just got back from America?"
"Yes. There wasn't much good food over there, and some people…"
Nursery Rhyme spoke as if she hadn't noticed anything wrong with him at all. Then Satomi Rentaro grabbed her shoulder, cutting off her muttering, his eyes locked on her.
"Why did you come back now?!" His teeth trembled. "Wouldn't it have been better to stay in America?! Why did you come back?!"
As if frightened, Nursery Rhyme didn't respond.
It was like that low shout brought a sliver of his sanity back. Realizing how wrong he'd been, Satomi Rentaro hurriedly let go, took a step back, and apologized seriously.
"Sorry, Nursery Rhyme. I didn't scare you, did I?"
"What are you saying, Rentaro-oniichan?"
Her gentle smile and calm tone made Satomi Rentaro relax a little—until he heard what she said next.
"Of course you scared me."
"…According to light novel logic, even if you really were scared, you'd still comfort me and say you weren't, right?" Satomi Rentaro's face drooped.
"Hee-hee! Then I'm sorry about that. We're not a light novel—we're a fairy tale." Nursery Rhyme covered her mouth as she giggled, the sound as bright as wind chimes. "But what scared me wasn't you, Rentaro-oniichan. It's the pressure piling up inside your heart—it's such a heavy, heavy patch of black."
Hearing that, Tina immediately seemed a little more awake. Worry flickered in the way she looked at Satomi Rentaro.
"Onii-chan's heart… has a lot of pressure?"
"Well…" Satomi Rentaro faltered, suddenly at a loss.
Nursery Rhyme didn't give him a chance to keep dodging.
"That's right. If it were an ordinary person, they might've broken down under pressure this heavy. So, Rentaro-oniichan, you're really a lot more amazing than most people."
That was… a compliment, wasn't it? Satomi Rentaro couldn't help wondering.
"Did you come back to Tokyo alone? Your mom and dad… your family?"
"My mom and dad aren't here, but my good friends are always by my side." With her hands clasped behind her back, Nursery Rhyme answered while stepping on her own shadow.
"Then… Nursery Rhyme." Satomi Rentaro's expression gradually tightened as he asked a question. "Can you still leave Tokyo and go to America right now?"
"Hm? Why are you asking that, Rentaro-oniichan?" Nursery Rhyme tilted her head, but still answered. "If I want to go to America, I can go anytime."
There really wasn't anywhere in the world she couldn't go. She could even go to the moon. If Tom Cat and Jerry Mouse could fire themselves to the moon with a slingshot, would you believe it?
"Anytime…"
Satomi Rentaro's eyes went wide. As far as he knew, Tokyo Area officials had learned long ago that Tokyo was about to be destroyed, and they'd already bought out all the plane tickets. Some wealthy people were willing to empty their fortunes for a single chance to leave the Tokyo Area.
And this little girl was telling him she could fly to America whenever she felt like it.
Wasn't that just something a child would say?
In the end, Satomi Rentaro clenched his teeth and decided to tell Nursery Rhyme anyway—so that she and her family could leave the city as soon as possible.
The Tokyo Area was about to be destroyed.
Near Monolith No. 32—one of the structures protecting Japan—a Stage IV Gastrea codenamed "Aldebaran" had appeared.
Aldebaran was a right-hand lieutenant of the Taurus Gastrea that had already been eliminated. It could spit a special liquid from its mouth that corroded Varanium. When Civil Security officers discovered it, it was sprawled atop Monolith No. 32, using that corrosive liquid to eat away at the Monolith.
According to supercomputer calculations, in four more days the Monolith would lose its magnetic field that repelled Gastrea—and then collapse entirely.
When that happened, the roughly two thousand Gastrea under Aldebaran's command would pour through the breach and attack the Tokyo Area. Nearly seventy percent of Tokyo's civilians would die within two days. In four days, all of them would be dead.
Tokyo would be destroyed.
This information hadn't been released to the public yet. The news on television only claimed the Gastrea near the Monolith would soon be driven off. But as larger and larger portions of the Monolith turned white from the Varanium-corroding liquid, sooner or later, someone sharp-eyed was bound to notice something was wrong.
And when that happened, the city would fall into panic. Civilians who looked harmless on the streets would tear off every mask they wore. When death came, there was nothing too irrational they wouldn't do.
That was why the truth was being hidden—to prevent exactly that, to stop the city from being destroyed by its own people before the Gastrea invasion even arrived…
Of course, there was another purpose to hiding the news: letting officials who learned early make preparations—booking flights. The fewer people who knew, the better their chances of getting tickets, and the higher their odds of surviving.
Right now, Satomi Rentaro was taking Tina with him to recruit Civil Security officers willing to defend the Tokyo Area together.
That's right. Satomi Rentaro wanted to convince Nursery Rhyme to leave, but he himself had no intention of going anywhere. He planned to fight as a Civil Security officer until the very last moment.
A new Monolith was already being rushed through construction. From the old Monolith's collapse to the new Monolith being transported in would take three days.
In other words, if they could hold back the Gastrea horde for those three days, Tokyo could still be saved.
Over the past few days, he'd visited more than ten Civil Security Corporations. But the moment they heard they'd be facing over two thousand Gastrea, led by a Stage IV, they immediately threw him out.
So far, not a single company had stated they were willing to join the line defending the Tokyo Area.
Nursery Rhyme instantly understood why she'd been sensing that feeling of approaching destruction in the air.
It wasn't like the Stage Five incident. In the original story, the Stage Five Scorpio Gastrea hadn't even reached the Tokyo Area before Satomi Rentaro killed it with a linear electromagnetic projectile device codenamed "Stairway to Heaven." The people of Tokyo hadn't even had time to react.
As for Aldebaran, Nursery Rhyme's impression of it was still vivid. After all, in the original story, it was right before Aldebaran's invasion that a group of people broke into the Outer Area where the "Cursed Children" lived and used high explosives mixed with Varanium to blow every last child inside to pieces… Of everything in the series, the scene that hit her hardest was the one where Satomi Rentaro was invited by a police officer to confirm the children's bodies.
It was precisely to prevent that from happening that Nursery Rhyme had brought those children to Paradise.
But there was one thing she couldn't understand.
In the original story, the reason the Tokyo Area's citizens held such intense hostility toward "Cursed Children" was largely because the city's emergency shelters could only hold thirty percent of the population—and Seitenshi had still made the firm decision to allow "Cursed Children" into the shelters as well.
Seitenshi's decision was unquestionably kind, but it also created resentment in many people's hearts, bringing disaster down on the "Cursed Children."
The people who could enter the shelters didn't want to stay with "red-eyed monsters," afraid they might suddenly turn into Gastrea and attack them.
The people who couldn't enter shelters felt even more wronged. Why should those "red-eyed monsters" get to take refuge while I have to die outside?
And so the tragedy happened… They all believed that if those "Cursed Children" died, their own chance of being chosen for shelter would increase.
Nursery Rhyme was baffled. She had already taken away the vast majority of the city's "Cursed Children." In theory, no one should be competing with them for shelter spots anymore. So why were reporters on the news still deliberately smearing "Cursed Children," inciting Tokyo to hate the children?
"Mm… I just can't figure it out. The adult world is too complicated."
Satomi Rentaro still had to take Tina to recruit other Civil Security officers to join the battle. Nursery Rhyme had no interest in going with them, so she said goodbye and left.
Having seen the story, Nursery Rhyme knew more than they did. The reason Aldebaran had appeared was because when Monolith No. 32 was being built, someone had skimmed the budget—mixing cheap impurities into the Varanium and producing an impure Monolith.
It was clearly the fault of certain officials, yet the ones who suffered most were the Civil Security officers and children who chose to stay. This kind of garbage always made Nursery Rhyme feel like the people here didn't deserve to be saved at all—that they should suffer the consequences.
"I just can't work up the enthusiasm to save them…"
She tossed the bag that had held the apple pastries into a trash can, muttering to herself.
"Almost all the kids who were suffering have made it into Paradise… So it's about time. I'll call my avatars back and start expanding Paradise."
"The first step… will be Tokyo, since it's the closest."
With the collapse of Monolith No. 32 as the signal, the war began.
The first to meet the Gastrea charge was the Tokyo Area's Self-Defense Force. Those arrogant regular troops looked down on the Civil Security officers as amateurs, and they engaged the Gastrea horde without relying on Civil Security support at all…
Then they lasted less than five hours before they were wiped out.
Before clashing with the Self-Defense Force, the Gastrea horde numbered around two thousand. During the battle, five hundred were destroyed by artillery fire. But nearly two thousand Self-Defense Force soldiers were infected and turned into Gastrea—meaning the Civil Security forces would now be facing roughly three thousand five hundred Gastrea.
The Self-Defense Force had demonstrated, through their actions, what it meant to be "teammates as useless as pigs."
In the original story, after paying an unimaginably brutal price, Satomi Rentaro and the others still managed to hold out until the new Monolith was completed—and they killed two Stage IV leaders of the horde: Aldebaran and Pleiades.
But now, the situation was completely different. There was no way Satomi Rentaro and the others could do what they did in the original story.
Because Nursery Rhyme had taken away huge numbers of Initiators from cities everywhere. Some Promoters, too, had been brutally assassinated by Nursery Rhyme for abusing or even murdering Initiators. With the combat power Satomi Rentaro's side had now, facing more than two thousand Gastrea meant only one outcome: death.
...
Night had already fallen on the battlefield, and the Self-Defense Force's annihilation hadn't even sent out a distress signal. By the time the Civil Security forces learned the Self-Defense Force had been wiped out, the Gastrea horde was less than two kilometers away.
The Civil Security formation's morale was visibly low. Even seasoned veterans were terrified by the situation.
And then…
Fog rolled in, jarringly sudden.
White fog—still clearly visible even in the black of night.
Even more shocking was how fast it spread. In the blink of an eye, it swallowed every last Gastrea.
"Why did it suddenly get foggy?"
"Damn it! I can't see the Gastrea!"
"This fog is way too weird—could it be some Gastrea's ability?"
"Shit! It's coming this way!"
As expected, panic broke out among the Civil Security ranks. Should they abandon the carefully prepared line, or enter the fog and fight? For a moment, they couldn't decide.
"Move! Order a full retreat—we're giving up this position!"
A sharp pain stabbed through Satomi Rentaro's head. Instinctively, he didn't want to be swallowed by that white fog. But he didn't have the authority to give orders in place of the commander, so all he could do was roar at the leader beside him.
But in the few seconds of hesitation—
The white fog surged in like a tide and swallowed them all.
Inside the fog, everything was silent. There was no roar of Gastrea, no battle cries from Civil Security—like everything the fog consumed had vanished from the world.
After that, the white fog didn't stop. It spread at terrifying speed, engulfing the entire Tokyo Area.
Not long afterward, every nation and region in the world received the same news:
A strange white fog had covered the entire Tokyo Area.
Contact with Tokyo had been completely lost.
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T/N: woah