Before she slid the door open, it had never once occurred to Su Yuzu that Kujou Iruka had genuinely "packed her up" and hauled her back to the Aberrants' territory.
The way Su Yuzu saw it, she was a whole living person. For Kujou Iruka to sling her over one shoulder and walk off without a single soul noticing should have been at least somewhat difficult.
As for simply carrying her out and fighting through anyone in the way…
That, admittedly, wouldn't have been much of a challenge for Kujou Iruka.
But even though Su Yuzu had lost consciousness at the time, all but fainted dead away, she hadn't been so far gone that she couldn't sense a commotion.
If a fight had actually broken out, she was fairly sure she would have caught some trace of it.
She wouldn't have slept that soundly after wearing herself out like that.
And besides… before she pulled the wooden door open, Su Yuzu had looked over the room and thought it plain and spare, yes, but also fresh, clean, neatly kept.
It hadn't crossed her mind that a scene like that could exist inside Aberrant territory.
Maybe she was still in the Tokyo metropolitan area.
But looking at those pairs of dark golden vertical pupils in front of her—
Su Yuzu understood, all at once, that she might not be in the Tokyo metropolitan area anymore.
She had been taken away by Kujou Iruka.
Slam—!
Su Yuzu yanked the wooden door shut again.
She backed up two steps before she knew she was doing it.
The plain little room no longer felt the way it had a moment ago. It was no longer a space washed in the warm tones of mild morning sunlight strained through white paper.
Instead… to Su Yuzu's eyes, all that warmth had gone hazy beneath a thin film of gold.
The gold of those Aberrants' eyes.
After she had thrown the door open and slammed it shut again, the Aberrant posted outside her room, standing there as though waiting for something, made no move and gave no reaction at all.
As if her sole duty was to stand there.
Nothing more.
But having opened that door once, Su Yuzu found she couldn't get back to the perfect composure she'd woken up with.
The instant she closed her eyes, she could feel pair after pair of dark golden vertical pupils waiting attendance at her side, watching her in silence.
And yet the pressure of all those Aberrants wasn't the worst of it.
What worried Su Yuzu far more… was Soga Yura.
She had assumed Kujou Iruka only wanted an excuse to bully her a little, to win back some face for Kujou Katora.
She could have simply hidden Kujou Iruka away in her dorm room.
Tried every trick she had to wring out one small concession.
Worst case, she'd have let herself be bullied.
But… Kujou Iruka clearly had other plans.
She had carried Su Yuzu straight home with her.
Su Yuzu had classes today.
The teachers would absolutely notice she hadn't shown up.
She didn't dare imagine what would happen once Keigunen Private Academy discovered she was missing, once Soga Yura discovered she'd been spirited away by Kujou Iruka.
She'd lose her mind, wouldn't she—
Sister… would go completely, utterly insane.
Su Yuzu could already see the war unfolding.
Her hand went for her phone on reflex.
Then she remembered that she had nothing on her but this loose, underarm-baring kimono.
She flipped through her Material Inventory.
Su Yuzu's Material Inventory was crammed with supplies of every description, toys, and all manner of interesting and useful gadgets.
But of all things… it did not contain a second phone.
Su Yuzu made herself a promise—
the moment she escaped back to the Tokyo metropolitan area, she was buying a phone. And a pile of batteries. All of it stuffed into her Material Inventory.
Click, click—
She was still sitting on the tatami, agonizing over why she hadn't thought to carry a spare, when she caught a familiar, crisp sound: slender heels striking the wooden corridor.
Rattle—
The wooden panel of the sliding door was drawn aside.
The girl who had been standing outside her room like a door god bowed respectfully as she opened it.
Though… Su Yuzu still couldn't catch the slightest expression on her face.
The girl's long hair hung straight down, the ends curling in a graceful hook.
But that delicate, pretty face was so lifeless it bordered on frightening, like an exquisite doll that happened to move.
"Good morning~" A pair of deep blue eyes appeared in front of Su Yuzu.
Kujou Iruka took in the sight of Su Yuzu in her underarm-baring kimono, the corner of her mouth curving up. "It seems Miss Yuzu rested well last night."
A plain Japanese-style room.
Austerity taken to its limit.
Aside from the tatami, there wasn't so much as a low table.
But once a cute girl was tucked away inside it, everything changed.
With the girl herself as the only ornament, the room became a breathtaking arrangement.
An empty Japanese room. A girl wearing nothing but an underarm-baring kimono.
It looked exactly like the sort of room built in a game's Home system by a player with nothing in his head but cuddling pretty girls, designed for maximum cuddling convenience.
"Then I really do owe Sister Iruka my thanks."
Su Yuzu watched Kujou Iruka step inside, her smile stopping well short of her eyes. Once Kujou Iruka was through the doorway, the girl in the ink-black kimono followed her in and took up a post behind her.
"Repay a drop of kindness with a gushing spring, they say."
"I'll be sure to…"
"thank Sister Iruka properly."
If only touching Kujou Iruka had triggered a Recruit outright.
If only she hadn't spent the [War Maiden's Contract] back then to save Senior Tsukimisato.
Then Su Yuzu would have shown Kujou Iruka precisely what it meant to weep with gratitude.
"A gushing spring?"
The smile she wore verged on flippant.
"There's really no need…"
"Changing someone's clothes for them is troublesome enough as it is."
Kujou Iruka bent in close all at once. Su Yuzu arched away on instinct and was pinned again in the same breath.
"This woman…"
Kujou Iruka's fragrance came pressing down over her.
Meeting those eyes, shaded now into a deep blue yet no less predatory for it, Su Yuzu decided she had never fought a "battle" this difficult.
Still… as she turned Kujou Iruka's flippant words over, the tips of Su Yuzu's ears went, against all expectation, faintly red.
Impossible!
Absolutely impossible!
There was no way she had been that embar… embarrassing.
Su Yuzu forced her composure back into place and looked at the woman above her. "I just don't know what Sister Iruka brought me all the way here… to do."
"Sister Iruka wouldn't go to that much trouble simply to carry me off."
"Not for something with nothing in it for her."
"How could there be nothing?" Kujou Iruka looked down at the girl she had pinned, and her smile bloomed with sudden delight.
"How could there possibly be nothing in it for me?"
She reached out and kneaded Su Yuzu's cheek.
"Who could ever say no to such an adorable little canary?"
"Besides… Miss Yuzu~ no, Sister Yuzu doesn't need to worry at all."
Kujou Iruka held her gaze, earnest and wicked in equal measure. "I've already had a talk with Sister Yuzu's sister, you know."
"I asked her to lend me her Little Sister to play with for a few days."
She watched the expressions racing across Su Yuzu's face.
Her smile climbed higher.
She had seen how happily Su Yuzu played with Raptor.
She had felt how much that had festered in her chest.
And picturing Soga Yura reduced to watching, wide-eyed and helpless, while she played with her Little Sister—
how very, very satisfying that would be.
"Me, you see—"
"I'm a terribly petty woman."
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