[Eve of Fate.]
"Fate...?"
Su Yuzu murmured the word under her breath, letting it echo in her mind.
At the same moment—
Somewhere else entirely, inside a hotel room, a tall and curvaceous woman stared at the girl before her — a girl whose eyes had gone utterly hollow and vacant — and buried her own face in her hands. Her shoulders shook as she dissolved into wild, convulsing laughter, and from between her fingers spilled the very same word.
——"Fate."
——
The little cat was gone from the dorm room.
Su Yuzu's expression curdled into something ugly.
Home invasion...
Of all the things she had never expected to happen — this.
Su Yuzu called Mihou Sakai almost instantly, dragging her out of her sleep mid-dream, and begged the girl to rush to her dorm room and check what was going on.
Soga Yura watched Su Yuzu's frantic expression.
She could probably guess — something had gone very wrong.
The result, as feared, confirmed it. Zero was no longer in the dorm room.
Mihou Sakai had even gone out of her way to ask Director Saionji to pull up the security footage.
According to the footage — no one had coerced Zero. She had left the dorm room on her own.
Yet from the way Zero moved in the recording, something was clearly, visibly wrong. Her posture was off. Abnormal.
Combined with the string of negative status effects and mind-control debuffs showing on Zero's panel inside Su Yuzu's [Operator Development] system—
At some unknown point in time... Zero had once again fallen into the snare of the Eye of Insight.
[Damn it——]
Su Yuzu bit down hard.
She had only just removed the Ascetic's Fetters from Zero a few days ago. And now this.
Moreover — judging from everything Su Yuzu had observed and noticed while watching over Zero...
Before Zero was ever sent to Keigunen Private Academy — or rather, from the very day she had been created — the program had already been embedded within her. Quietly. Patiently. Waiting for this moment all along.
The [Fate] Plan.
Su Yuzu's mind went to Zero's profile entry.
In the girl's description, it said she was the sole successful test subject of the "Fate" plan. And moreover... the plan appeared to still be in motion.
No——
Something burned in Su Yuzu's eyes.
Not "still in motion." She should say — it was being executed right now.
——
All this time, the Eye of Insight had been pouring everything they had into driving this drama toward its climax.
From the Eye of Insight branch that had been annihilated in the Tokyo metropolitan area. To the Epiphany Manufacture laboratory, painstakingly roped in at untold cost. Every last piece of it——
Propelled by Fate.
And by Fate... it would end.
The woman spread her arms wide and laughed herself to pieces. This — this was the true nature of the world. This was the original face of all things.
This was the Fate driven forward by the Eye of Insight.
This was... the sole correct and inevitable logic.
Fate's only solution.
The lapels of her clothing were already soaked through with thick black blood, viscous as tar — but it didn't matter!!! The Moon-Pointing Goddess raised a fingertip toward the night sky, gesturing at the pure and brilliant full moon hanging above.
The stage——
Had already been built.
To place Su Yuzu upon that final, crowning Throne — the Eye of Insight had spent everything they had.
They had once attacked Su Yuzu directly.
They had assaulted the people around her, again and again — her family, her friends, the ones who mattered to her most. Trying to carve out the most wretched, most despairing past possible for her.
But... they had failed. Every time, the failures seemed to fizzle out into nothing.
And yet——
Dai Ling looked at the girl before her. They had not entirely failed.
Every one of those failures had been a foretold step in the Eye of Insight's grand prophecy. Steps designed to let Su Yuzu grow. To let her guard down. To lead her, inevitably, up onto the Throne.
Since striking at the people around Su Yuzu proved so impossibly difficult — then they would simply create one.
Create someone who mattered infinitely to Su Yuzu — and then place her in front of her.
This was the "Fate" Plan.
——Zero.
In the fate that the Eye of Insight had foretold, Zero was the one who would tear through the walls Su Yuzu had built around her heart. The one destined to breach her defenses.
She was the sole successful test subject of the "Fate" Plan.
And the sole executor of the "Fate" Plan.
Ever since the Aberrant Activation Device had first been discovered, the K423 Laboratory had poured itself into creating the perfect test subject.
She was to possess human will, and the power of an Aberrant — yet not be beholden to the Abyss.
Among countless samples, only that very first one had survived intact, in its complete form.
That was Zero.
As for Zero's many brothers and sisters — some had lost their minds entirely, becoming neither human nor Aberrant, just monsters. Others had simply withered and dried up, devolving into something not unlike Walking Husks.
Even the Epiphany Manufacture laboratory couldn't understand why, out of so many experimental samples, only Zero had succeeded.
Dai Ling laughed and laughed. Of course they couldn't understand it. Not them — not "Raven," not any of them.
The fundamental reason Zero had been able to succeed was that special... human factor — the one that carried her will.
That human factor——
Had come from the Soga clan, ten years ago.
Had come from... Soga Yuzu, ten years ago.
The entirety of Epiphany Manufacture had been made fools of.
A miracle like this was, by its very nature, unreproducible.
Epiphany Manufacture's wish to create "humanity's perfect future" — from the very beginning, it was always destined to fall through.
Because at best, all they could ever make was an endless succession of Zeros. And beings like humans... how could they possibly possess any future.
As for why Feng Ke had been born successfully? Probably because that girl called Soga Ishikawa Kiyomi was herself already something other than ordinary, long before any of this.
When Dai Ling had first obtained her blood sample, she could clearly feel it — a presence lurking within that blood sample, a scent as deep and dark as the Abyss itself.
Unlike Zero, Feng Ke was not an Aberrant who had been injected with a human factor. She was a purely Aberrant existence.
Dai Ling stroked the little cat's face.
Zero herself didn't even know — she had long since become a part of this grand design.
Her fate. Her taming. All of it had been preordained by the Eye of Insight's prophecy. A fixed future.
"Su——"
"Yuzu."
"Ha..."
"Hahahaha——"
The stage was built.
The players were in position.
All that remained... was to carry this great performance to its zenith, before the eyes of the watching world.
Let the world see the true face of the Throne.
The girl called a hero... actually being the Demon King herself all along... just thinking about it was endlessly amusing.
In an instant——
The entire world could become her enemy.
Dai Ling gazed at the little cat's dark golden vertical pupils.
Eternal Night——
It was time to welcome back... no. To welcome home its master.
[Su Yuzu will ascend the Throne of Evil Karma.]
——
Knock knock knock—
A soft rapping at the door, and Soga Yura's hospital room swung open.
It was Ishikawa Asumi.
The woman's expression looked awful as well — haggard, even. A little lost.
She was clutching a report in her hands.
"Yuzu..."
"Asumi-aunt." Su Yuzu pressed her fingers to her own temple and forced herself to stay calm for now.
"The identification results are in?"
"Yes..."
"What did they show?" Su Yuzu asked.
The woman's expression suddenly turned very strange. "That girl... she's like..."
"Like Asumi-aunt's own daughter. Right?"
"Yes." Asumi gave a small nod. "Did Yuzu already guess?"
"I guessed."
Su Yuzu drew in a slow, deep breath.
She felt there must be a worse piece of news coming.
She began composing an email.
"Beep beep beep——" Dressed in pink pajamas, lying spread-eagle on a tatami mat in the shape of a starfish, the "little gremlin" stirred as her pillow was suddenly ambushed by the aggressive chirping of an incoming email notification.
"Who is it..."
She grabbed her phone. The screen lit up, illuminating the girl's small face.
Yamabuki Nanako shot bolt upright.
"Su Yuzu?"
"Compare the genetic similarity between that Aberrant and her?"
"What is going on in this person's head?"
She grumbled out loud — but her mind drifted back to all the apple pie and strawberry cream crepes this girl had brought her, for no occasion in particular.
Yamabuki Nanako climbed out of bed barefoot anyway.
The most important thing was... Yamabuki Nanako had a feeling.
A feeling she had only ever felt once before — right before she left Epiphany Manufacture.
The sky... was about to change.
____
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