Beneath the brim of the peaked cap, pale purple bangs curled faintly.
The woman tilted her head up toward the surveillance camera, and the corners of her lips lifted into a smile that bordered on outright provocation.
The instant they saw that smile, cold sweat was already beading down the backs of both Unohana Chiyo and Saionji Sagara.
They exchanged a glance.
Nothing needed to be said.
Some things... simply couldn't be spoken aloud in a room like this.
But both Unohana Chiyo and Saionji Sagara had clearly found their answer in each other's eyes—
Kujou Iruka.
She was back.
No one could say why. From the day she plunged into the Edge of Aberration, Kujou Iruka had gone nearly twenty years without once letting her erosion domain go out — which was exactly why humanity spoke her name in awe and terror as "The Abyss of Eternal Smiles." And yet she had genuinely extinguished that erosion domain and come sneaking into the Tokyo metropolitan area.
She had even gone to the trouble of disguising herself.
Even the Dark golden vertical pupils, the hallmark of the Aberrants, had been covered up.
Putting herself through all of that.
'Just'... to run off with their Yuzu.
But—
It seemed the thing had really happened.
That person, the one wearing that taunting look straight into the surveillance camera, really was Kujou Iruka.
While everyone else in the Security Section's monitoring room was still puzzling over who this girl was — a face they'd never once seen at Yuzu's side — wondering whether she was some romantic debt Yuzu had run up somewhere, or maybe an agent sent by that Holy Relic Family or whatever to carry Yuzu off, Unohana Chiyo and Saionji Sagara had already started trading 'code words.'
"Is it her?"
"It is..."
"She's back?"
"Most likely."
To anyone listening it sounded like riddles, but the grave, deadly earnest set of Ms. Unohana Chiyo's and Director Saionji's faces finally made everyone else in the Security Section understand that something was badly wrong.
"Ms. Chiyo..." Sakai Miho, her whole face clouded with worry, gave Unohana Chiyo's sleeve a small tug. "Is the situation... is it really that dire?"
Unohana Chiyo looked down at the girl with an ache of tenderness.
Of all the girls Su Yuzu had swept up in her orbit, the one Unohana Chiyo pitied most was, in truth, Sakai Miho.
She had always thought the relationship between Su Yuzu and Sakai Miho was a dangerous one.
Little Mihou Sakai placed far too much weight on Su Yuzu.
That in itself wasn't really the issue, since everyone — Unohana Chiyo very much included — placed a great deal of weight on Su Yuzu.
The problem was that Sakai Miho placed far too little weight on herself.
She was forever running herself down.
Convinced she was good for nothing.
Convinced that every advantage she now enjoyed was only borrowed light from the Soga clan.
But the truth was, Sakai Miho's Talent, Sakai Miho's discipline and sheer hard work — had she never crossed paths with Su Yuzu, and therefore never come into contact with the "Eye of Insight," she would without question have become the pride of Keigunen Private Academy.
The girl did have a few strange little habits for venting her stress, but on someone as adorable as Sakai Miho, those weren't flaws. Those were charm points.
Not a problem in the slightest.
Watching Sakai Miho fret like this, Unohana Chiyo didn't dare tell her the truth. Didn't dare tell her exactly how much danger Su Yuzu was in right now.
"That woman... is she dangerous?" Sakai Miho had caught the weight in Ms. Unohana Chiyo's expression, and asked the question cautiously, testing the water.
Dangerous didn't begin to cover it.
All Unohana Chiyo could do was nod.
That woman was one of the most dangerous beings alive in the world today.
Everyone in the Tokyo metropolitan area had assumed Kujou Iruka was merely a Sixth Sequence Aberrant, a being on the cusp of becoming the Abyss made flesh.
But last time, Little Yuzu had said that Kujou Iruka might already have broken through to the Seventh Sequence.
Which made her the equal of the Abyss itself.
Yuzu's warning had left the Tokyo metropolitan area, and the upper echelons of The Empire, at a complete loss for a very long time.
If she wanted to, she need only do what she had done in Chiba the year she fell into the Abyss: cut loose her Catastrophe across the Tokyo metropolitan area with no restraint whatsoever.
In a matter of moments, half the city would be scorched earth.
And the other half would become a paradise of plants and animals sprawling and multiplying in wild abandon.
But clearly, she hadn't.
The good news was that Yuzu seemed to have caught Kujou Iruka's interest.
The bad news was that Yuzu had already been carried off by her.
Sakai Miho read the seriousness and dread on Ms. Chiyo's face, and the heart that had risen into her throat refused to come back down.
That woman was really that dangerous...?
Damn it—
It was all her own fault.
If only she'd been a little more sober last night. A little more shameless. If she'd wound her arms around Senpai's waist and kept her in her dorm room, if she'd said she was frightened and gotten Senpai to sleep beside her.
Even if... even if it had meant Senpai bullying her.
At least an accident like this wouldn't have happened.
What Little Mihou Sakai probably never stopped to consider was what would have happened if things had actually gone that way.
Kujou Iruka, striking poses in Su Yuzu's dorm room, had been holding those poses since the hour Su Yuzu would normally have come home, straight through to the dead of night, when Su Yuzu finally sauntered in late after seeing a girl back to her room.
Would she have simply snapped?
And who in the world could stop a Seventh Sequence Aberrant who had snapped?
Su Yuzu was never going to dodge this one.
By now, the reports gathered from students of Keigunen Private Academy, from the young owner of the crepe shop, and from the Traffic Department had all been relayed in.
Bit by bit, the path Su Yuzu and Kujou Iruka had taken after leaving the dorm unfolded in front of them.
After leaving the dorm, the two of them had headed straight for the commercial street.
And there, they had played the Pocky game.
The photograph was badly blurred, drowned in the mottled static you only ever got from taking pictures inside a Catastrophe Domain.
But the women could still just make out the outline of Su Yuzu and that woman in the military-style uniform biting down on the same crepe.
One thing was plain—
Su Yuzu looked very much like the one on the losing end here.
The teacher from the Security Section running the projector wrinkled her nose before she could stop herself.
For some reason, the room seemed to fill all at once with the sharp reek of well-aged vinegar.
A map was spread out, and a red pen traced the marks of every place Su Yuzu and her companion had been.
According to the information from the Traffic Department, Su Yuzu and that woman had most likely caught the last train.
And on that train — footage countless times sharper than those blurred photos was projected onto the whiteboard once more.
Yuzu, dressed in a maid outfit, looking utterly and thoroughly picked on.
In an empty carriage, barely managing to hold onto a dangling hand strap, curled against the chest of the woman in the peaked cap.
Sakai Miho had already snatched the newspaper off the table without realizing it and torn it to shreds.
All Unohana Chiyo could do was count her blessings. Thank goodness... thank goodness Soga Yura shouldn't have heard any of this yet.
Inside Imperial Capital University—
Soga Yura clutched a card and an envelope, her right hand shaking without pause.
Inside the envelope, besides the card, was a piece of Yuzu's underwear, saturated with that yuzu fragrance Soga Yura knew so intimately.
And on the card—
"To the Acting Head of the Soga clan, for your kind perusal:"
"…"
Past all the ornate, useless pleasantries, Soga Yura's eyes were fixed entirely on the line sitting dead center.
"Your Little Sister is in my hands~"
"If you want her back..."
"Then wait until I've grown bored of playing with her."
"— Respectfully yours, Kujou Iruka."
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