Something enormous had happened at Keigunen Private Academy.
Someone had made off with their treasure.
After Aberrant intrusion Events had struck them again and again, they had reinforced the academy's defensive works, and quite deliberately relocated several Assault Department teachers' quarters to spots very close to Su Yuzu.
They had even handed over the dorm room across from Su Yuzu's — vacant all this time — to the new transfer students, Kirishika and Kirikashi.
All because of what those two could do—
Because of who those two were.
The Holy Mother of the Holy Royal Court, and… the "Seat of Evil," who had stepped down from the Throne of the Abyss.
And yet, even so. Their treasure — this era's rule-type ability user, the little miss of the Soga clan, the star of tomorrow of Keigunen Private Academy—
Su Yuzu.
Had still been spirited away right out from under their noses.
It all began with Kirishika and the "Seat of Evil," who had gone hungry the whole night through, waiting and waiting for Su Yuzu to come Feed them.
Kirishika strained up onto her toes to clear the iris authentication at Su Yuzu's dorm, filed her visitor request — and then discovered that Su Yuzu was gone.
On its own, that would hardly have been worth a fuss.
Maybe Su Yuzu had simply forgotten to Feed Kirishika and the "Seat of Evil" and gone straight to class.
But Kirishika knew that was flatly impossible.
There was no way Su Yuzu would forget to Feed her and the "Seat of Evil."
The "Seat of Evil," starving past all endurance, had already dropped to the floor and wrapped both arms around Kirishika's thigh, wearing the exact face of someone clutching a five-spice braised trotter.
Su Yuzu knew what would happen if the "Seat of Evil" were ever allowed to become the "Seat of Hunger."
After Su Yuzu brought her back from the Edge of Aberration, the "Seat of Evil" had settled for the time being at the Sixth Sequence, and even stripped of an Aberrant's robes she still held on to Sixth Sequence power.
What a Sixth Sequence Esper driven mad with hunger might do was something Su Yuzu absolutely, positively never wanted to witness.
So… Kirishika concluded that something must have happened on Su Yuzu's end.
She got straight on the phone with the temporary owner — that girl called Sakai Miho.
Sakai Miho was in class.
Catastrophe Simulation Theory.
Ordinarily, a good girl like Sakai Miho would never take a call in the middle of a lecture.
But the name on the screen happened to belong to someone Yuzu-senpai had specifically warned her about — an existence both very important and very troublesome.
Someone important to Yuzu-senpai.
Which meant Sakai Miho would treat her with all the more care, all the more gravity.
The girl ducked low to answer, hoping not to draw anyone's notice — the teacher's least of all.
But then the voice on the line told her that nobody knew where Su Yuzu had gone.
That she might have vanished the moment she returned to her dorm the night before. Sakai Miho shot upright in her seat. "What!??"
The girl on the phone had the entire class staring at her.
Not that Sakai Miho had any attention left to spare for that.
She asked the teacher to excuse her and bolted for the Assault Department second-year building, for the classroom where Yuzu-senpai was supposed to be sitting through a lecture.
Keigunen Private Academy had always kept a liberal hand with its rules and its culture.
In the old days it had even allowed Assault Department students and Healing-type students to room together.
But then a certain Healing-type Esper — a pocket healer on paper, yet a far better fighter than any Assault Department student — forced her way into the dorm room of the girl who was Keigunen Private Academy's star of tomorrow at the time, and… successfully "took what she wanted by force," carrying the girl off with her.
After that, everything changed.
Of course, the Su Yuzu of today knew better.
Back then, Senior Sakura's "taking what she wanted by force" had almost certainly failed.
If anything, it was a "sorrowful" chapter of the past.
The Catastrophe Simulation Theory teacher approved Little Sakai Miho's request to leave without asking a single question.
Sakai Miho reached the classroom where Su Yuzu should have been at very nearly her top speed.
But she wasn't—
Yuzu-senpai wasn't there.
The second-year teacher had already tried calling Su Yuzu.
No one picked up.
But a message came back soon after, requesting leave.
The leave note was formatted immaculately — nothing at all like the notes from the current crop of playful, do-as-they-please students, tossed off as casually as a wave hello.
Su Yuzu's leave note was so neat and proper that her teacher felt she had been dropped back twenty years into the past.
But now… everyone was beginning to feel it: something abnormal, something not quite right, spreading through the air.
Uneasy, Sakai Miho went straight to Ms. Unohana Chiyo and Director Saionji.
They pulled the security footage from the Assault Department girls' dormitory.
To protect student privacy, the cameras covered only the corridors, the junctions, and the lobby.
But Keigunen Private Academy treated Su Yuzu like a treasure, and so one camera had been mounted specifically to watch the door of Su Yuzu's dorm room.
Ms. Unohana Chiyo worked the playback.
She scrubbed the timestamp straight back to the moment Su Yuzu and the girls came home from the amusement park.
Standing off to one side, Little Sakai Miho watched the practiced way Ms. Unohana Chiyo handled it — and caught the faintest whiff of something odd.
Ms. Chiyo… hadn't come to the amusement park with her and Senpai.
So why?
Why did Ms. Chiyo seem to know the exact moment they had come back?
The first thing to appear in the lobby was Su Yuzu, carrying Sakai Miho in her arms as she came in from outside.
Watching the screen, Little Sakai Miho felt an adorable flush go racing up her face.
Every gaze in the room settled on Sakai Miho.
In that instant Sakai Miho wanted nothing more than to burrow into the cracks between the floor tiles.
Regrettably — and reassuringly — Su Yuzu had not lingered long in Sakai Miho's dorm.
After saying goodnight to Sakai Miho's roommates, Su Yuzu went straight back to her own room.
"Right here—" Saionji Sagara directed.
"Fast forward—" Ms. Unohana Chiyo tapped lightly at the fast-forward key.
The frame fixed on the door of Su Yuzu's room held perfectly still — and then, with a hiss and a crackle, dissolved into a long burst of static snow.
Just as Sakai Miho and the others were certain someone had sabotaged the camera to steal Su Yuzu away under cover of the blackout—
The jumping snow cleared, and the screen returned to normal.
This, by now… would be right around when Kujou Iruka was bullying Su Yuzu.
And then—
Under the nearly breathless stares of everyone present, the door to Su Yuzu's dorm room opened.
The woman who walked out first, dressed in a military-style uniform, was plainly not Su Yuzu.
But… when? When had this happened?
Who was she?
The broad brim of her hat hid her face, and the camera's downward angle caught nothing of it at all.
And with that, a crucial piece of information was lost.
But right then, on the screen, the woman in the big wide-brimmed cap slowly lifted her head.
Deep blue eyes.
Long, pale violet hair.
Lips in a shade of gorgeous, blazing color — and that smile of hers, one that all but dared you to try something.
While everyone else was still lost, Unohana Chiyo and Saionji Sagara looked at the woman on the screen beaming radiantly straight into the lens, and cold sweat began to bead and run down both their backs.
Kujou… Iruka.
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