"However, none of that matters. Cutting the Khala doesn't matter either, because it will simply grow back."
Kawakami Tomie paid no heed to the Apology Demon's oppressive aura.
In the memory fragments Amamiya Rin had provided her, the Apology Demon was essentially background scenery. In the grand finale, it had become a journalist—or possessed one, she wasn't sure which—and single-handedly orchestrated humanity's extinction. Yet it had never once been seen to personally exert its power directly upon a human.
Of course, that could be a matter of preference rather than limitation.
But it didn't matter either way.
Kawakami Tomie had never feared death. Now, having voluntarily entered a state of Dhyana, her attachment to life, death, and desire had grown even thinner.
"It's terribly annoying, you know?" she said, her expression shifting into something faintly troubled. "Because neural threads are composed of cells, the Khala has already taken on my form completely—including self-healing, regeneration, and splitting."
"Do you think I haven't tried severing those neural threads? Even if I cut them, they grow back out of my own brain. To utterly destroy what Amamiya calls the so-called Tomie Network, I would first have to destroy myself completely."
The sacred Khala and Kawakami Tomie—the mutual influence between the two ran far deeper than it appeared on the surface.
The Khala's neural threads originally had no defensive capability; in the source material, they could even be severed by a door, and anyone whose thread snapped would die instantly.
But because of Kawakami Tomie's influence, the Khala's neural threads now regenerated even after being cut.
So long as Kawakami Tomie was indestructible, so too was the sacred Khala.
And the sacred Khala ordinarily existed within a Sub-space that could not be interfered with from the outside. Even if Kawakami Tomie's physical body were burned to ash, she could regrow from the nerve endings within that Sub-space.
"Tsk tsk. Mortals are always so entertaining—arrogant, ignorant, small, fragile, presumptuous..." The Apology Demon finally spoke. Its voice was thin and reedy, completely at odds with its hulking frame. "And yet, that is precisely why I am so fond of humanity."
It crossed its legs and floated in the air, arms folded across its chest. The oppressive aura it had been radiating vanished with casual ease—as if, upon realizing it was useless against Kawakami Tomie, it had simply decided not to waste the effort.
"Keep your arrogance. Amuse me with it. Destroying you with my own hands? I'm afraid I couldn't be bothered with something so tedious."
The Apology Demon narrowed its eyes. Its face was a mask of terror, yet the impression it gave Kawakami Tomie was one of cunning slyness.
"Putting on airs." Kawakami Tomie curled the corner of her lips and raised the steel pole, leveling it at the demon without a shred of deference. "You haven't responded directly to me, and you haven't made a move on me or her. Are you trying to hide the fact that you cannot directly affect the material world?"
"Hahahaha! God would love the way you think. As would I."
The Apology Demon's twin slit-pupils tilted inward in an inverted V, its gaze brimming with mockery. Its lips split all the way to beneath its earlobes, sketching a grotesque smile.
When man thinks, God laughs. This demon was a cultured one, mocking Kawakami Tomie with an oblique literary flourish.
"Idiot. If you could manifest in the physical world, I'd shove this steel pole up your ass and ram it out through your mouth."
Kawakami Tomie's eyes tilted upward at their corners, a flash of viciousness cutting through her gaze. Her voice barely rose or fell, yet the words she chose were direct and vicious beyond measure.
"Hehehehe! The Impaler's technique? How crude—and how adorable. However, before I deign to take the stage myself, I expect you and my Apostle to put on a sufficiently spectacular performance."
The Apology Demon's thin, reedy laughter suddenly exploded outward, like a rusted razor blade dragged across glass. It ricocheted back and forth through the vast, empty hospital lobby, drilling into Kawakami Tomie's ears until they rang.
Someone had arrived!
Even with the Apology Demon's mocking laughter filling her ears, Kawakami Tomie had been observing the lobby the entire time. A heavy door-opening sound rang out from close behind her, and the light in the lobby shifted with the subtlest of changes.
Kawakami Tomie whipped her head around.
Sure enough—Aizawa Yuuma had appeared. He pushed open the emergency exit door and stepped out from within. His right arm, wounded from her earlier strike, still dangled and swayed at his side.
Mamiya Yuka had been puzzling over Kawakami Tomie's baffling behavior—from her vantage point, all she could see was Kawakami Tomie suddenly bending down to pin Aizawa Chikumo, then raising her head to stare into the empty air, and finally muttering a string of incomprehensible words.
But the door opening behind them she had heard perfectly clearly, and she had spotted Aizawa Yuuma's arrival even before Kawakami Tomie had.
"I'M SO SORRY! Chikumo has caused you all so much trouble! I'M SO SORRY! Please forgive her! Please!"
At the sight of Aizawa Chikumo motionless on the floor—and the Apology Demon seemingly squaring off against Kawakami Tomie—a look of fanatical fervor broke across Aizawa Yuuma's face. He dropped to his knees with a thud, slammed his forehead heavily against the floor, and began to apologize with a voice seething with unnatural excitement.
"Amamiya-kun!"
Mamiya Yuka cried out and clapped both hands over her own ears, backpedaling rapidly toward the lobby's entrance.
Kawakami Tomie said nothing. She stared at Aizawa Yuuma, and her state of Dhyana shattered completely. Her gaze flooded with murderous ferocity. The hand gripping the steel pole clenched shut with crushing force.
"You piece of filth! You animal! I'm going to kill you!"
Like an enraged leopardess, Kawakami Tomie drew a sharp, deep breath. Her chest swelled as she unleashed a furious roar—and then she exploded into a sprint directly toward Aizawa Yuuma.
Twenty meters. At the speed of Tomie's burst, it took only a handful of seconds. The steel pole in her hand became a dark streak of light cutting beneath the fluorescent lights, thrusting straight and true at Aizawa Yuuma's head.
Faced with Kawakami Tomie's thrust, Aizawa Yuuma scrambled and rolled to evade—but he clearly had no combat experience. He couldn't break free from Tomie's attack range in time.
"AAAH!!!"
The steel pole, driven by terrifying force, struck with pinpoint accuracy into the soft tissue just below his clavicle. Bone cracked. Skin swelled. The violent, searing pain wrung a wail from Aizawa Yuuma as the sheer momentum of the blow sent him crashing backward to the floor, the back of his skull cracking against the hard ground.
"I'M SO SORRY! That hurts! I'M SO SORRY! Please forgive me!! It's all my fault! All of you ended up like this because of me... Forgive me! Please, all of you, forgive me——!!"
Aizawa Yuuma screamed and wailed, and even amidst his anguish, he did not stop shouting his apologies.
But those apologies had already lost their proper effect on Kawakami Tomie. The cranial nerves connected to the Daughter of the Demon had granted her a certain degree of resistance to the demon's evil electromagnetic waves.
Yet this time, Aizawa Yuuma's apology was not aimed at Kawakami Tomie at all.
The ones he was apologizing to were the dead.
Accompanied by his wretched, keening cries, the viscous puddles of liquefied brain matter scattered across the floor began to stir—as if life had been breathed into them.
The liquid rapidly converged. It swelled and rose. From within each nauseating, gelatinous mass, figures began clawing their way out.
Men and women. Old and young. Every last one of them wore the look of the dead—skin an ashen, bloodless gray; eyes hollow and vacant; expressions frozen at the final instant of their death, locked in terror or blank confusion.
These people were the victims Aizawa Yuuma had summoned back from Hell.
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