"That's not fine at all! What kind of good friend borrows money and never pays it back?"
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At the sound of Amamiya Rin's voice, Hinako Shimizu burst into complaint.
She had no idea what went on inside Sakuko's head. Five hundred yen might have counted for something once, but these days it was nothing much at all. Yet every single time she asked Sakuko to pay back that pitiful sum, Sakuko tried to weasel out of it.
But Igarashi Sakuko had something to say about that too — was it really worth chasing Hinako over five hundred yen?
Didn't Hinako know that the pronunciation of five yen sounded just like en, the word for bond or fate? It carried the meaning of forming a connection. By borrowing five hundred yen from her, Sakuko was forging a bond a hundred times stronger!
And yet, people could never truly understand one another.
With Amamiya Rin's interruption, Hinako Shimizu let the bickering with Igarashi Sakuko drop.
"Mr. Ultraseven, what should we do now?"
Hinako Shimizu looked up toward the jingū's exit, seeking Amamiya Rin's opinion.
"Find the fox spirit, and then... kill it!"
Amamiya Rin's answer was unusually resolute. In this ghost-story form as Ultraseven, he had zero tolerance for any otherworldly being that harmed humans.
"But Hisayuki told me..."
Hinako Shimizu hesitated briefly, then repeated what Tsuneki Hisayuki had told her.
"He lied to you, Hinako!"
Igarashi Sakuko declared with total conviction.
"Even if Tsuneki Hisayuki really does like you, it's just as true that he has other motives where you're concerned. The fox spirit means to use you to achieve some goal — that's true too. And Tsuneki Hisayuki is its accomplice."
Igarashi Sakuko had already recalled everything from before she entered the Fog World/Otherworld, and she remembered too the ordeal of being killed by the fox spirit's power and turned into a puppet within the Inner World. She now gritted her teeth with hatred for the Toshiyuki family and their fox-spirit kin, wishing she could transform into Ultraseven herself and wipe every last one of them out.
"Mr. Ultraseven, what do you think?"
Hinako Shimizu didn't simply accept Igarashi Sakuko's one-sided view; instead she turned once more to Amamiya Rin for his opinion.
"Don't worry. My telepathic sense can tell whether the fox spirit is good or evil, true or false. Right now our top priority is finding it."
Amamiya Rin, for his part, remained perfectly unhurried.
Like Hinako Shimizu herself, he had no decisive proof that the fox spirit had done wrong. But that didn't matter — thanks to the Brahma-Sound Illusion Art, no sentient being could lie in his presence.
"Okay!"
Hinako Shimizu's eyes lit up. She couldn't be bothered puzzling over the truth of the matter any further — if Ultraseven had such an ability, nothing could be better.
"...Wait, does Ultraseven's skill set even include something like that?"
A flicker of confusion crossed her mind again — she didn't remember Ultraseven's abilities ever including anything so convenient.
"The power of light isn't so rigid. Who knows — maybe you'll develop techniques all your own."
Amamiya Rin said.
Hinako Shimizu nodded, only half understanding.
Then the silver giant rose to her feet.
Her gaze passed over the shrine's open doorway. Beyond it lay deep twilight, too dark to make out any details, only the faint silhouette of mountain ridges rising and falling beneath the night sky. A trace of incense drifted through the air, mingling with the crisp chill peculiar to the deep mountains, and it stirred an inexplicable sense of solemnity.
"Then let's move out!"
The Giant of Light bent slightly, settling into a launch stance.
"Wait—!"
At that very moment, an urgent, aggrieved shout rose from near her feet.
Hinako Shimizu looked down to find Igarashi Sakuko clinging desperately to her ankle, her whole body dangling from it, legs swinging in midair like a koala refusing to let go of a tree.
"Hey, hey, hey, hey—where do you think you're going?! Are you going to leave me here?!"
Igarashi Sakuko tilted her face up, cheeks puffed out in indignation.
"Uh..."
Hinako Shimizu froze in place.
She had been so intent on hunting down the fox spirit that she'd completely forgotten about Sakuko. Thinking it over now, if Sakuko were left behind in this shrine...
No, she really did need to bring Sakuko along. There would surely be fighting ahead, but keeping Sakuko close was still safer than leaving her alone in this place.
"Sorry about that. Let's go together."
Hinako Shimizu crouched down, and the silver giant's hand reached over carefully, cradling Igarashi Sakuko's waist with the gentlest touch and 'plucking' her free from her ankle.
"Now that's more like it. If I can't transform into Ultraseven myself, the least I can do is fight side by side with him."
Cradled in Hinako Shimizu's palm, Igarashi Sakuko was smaller than the hand itself.
She crossed her arms and puffed out her cheeks, the picture of someone settling for second best.
"Hold onto my finger — we're taking off!"
Before the words had even finished, Hinako Shimizu's legs surged with power, and her massive body launched into the air!
The shrine's roof flashed past in an instant, night wind howling by her sides, and Hinako Shimizu burst through the top of the shrine, soaring high into the sky before settling steadily beneath the night's dark canopy.
Looking down from that height, she saw beyond the shrine a stretch of desolate mountains shrouded in darkness.
The unbroken ridgeline rose and fell in the night like the spine of a sleeping beast. A scattering of lights dotted the mountainside, faint but stubborn, as if obstinately proving something within that deep darkness.
And atop the peak stood a shrine of enormous scale.
Built into the mountainside, it stretched from the foot of the slope nearly to the summit. Stone lanterns lined both sides of the approach in tier upon tier, all now lit with a dim yellow glow, like two winding dragons of fire coiled along the ridge.
At the very top, the main hall stood grand and imposing, its roof tiles glinting with a dull golden light beneath the lantern glow. Wind chimes hanging from the eaves swayed gently in the night breeze, yet made no sound at all.
Hinako Shimizu hovered briefly in the air, her golden eyes sweeping across the entire shrine.
Solemn. Reverent. Uncanny.
Three utterly distinct sensations intertwined around this shrine, stirring an instinctive unease.
"Is that the place?"
Hinako Shimizu murmured to herself.
Through the Giant of Light's vision, she could see all manner of grotesque monsters wandering the shrine grounds among the mountains, each one stranger and more dangerous than the last.
Of course, that danger applied only to ordinary humans. To Hinako Shimizu, transformed into the Giant of Light and hovering high above, those monsters looked hopelessly small.
Compared to such trifles, the fox spirit was what truly mattered.
If there was one place the fox spirit was most likely to be, it was without question that main hall at the very top.
Her mind made up, Hinako Shimizu hesitated no longer.
Cradling Igarashi Sakuko in her left palm, she locked her golden eyes on the strange shapes drifting through the mountains, raised her right arm slightly, and gathered fine, razor-sharp particles of light at her fingertips.
"Shuriken Beam!"
A short, sharp shout echoed beneath the night sky, and in the next instant, streams of blue-white shuriken-shaped light bolts shot from her fingertips, pouring down like a sky full of glittering starlight onto the monsters scattered along the mountainside, the approach road, and beside the stone lanterns!
Small as they were, the light bolts carried tremendous force.
A rolling series of explosions tore through the desolate mountain shrine, flames leaping skyward. The twisted, hideous creatures wandering below were shredded to pieces the instant the light touched them, blasted into scattering black mist, not even given time to let out a single scream.
The forest, once eerie and restless, fell instantly silent, leaving only burning debris drifting down through the night air.
In mere seconds, every obstructing monster along the way had been wiped out, clean and total.
"Amazing! So cool!"
Igarashi Sakuko lay sprawled in Ultraseven's palm, shouting with excitement, her eyes shining with thrill and envy.
Jealousy was there too, of course. Wiping out every monster in a single stroke — that was supposed to be her role. As Hinako's savior, she was the one meant to have burst into this world, destroyed every monster before Hinako's eyes, and rescued her in triumph.
That was how it was supposed to go! Transforming into an Ultraman in front of her friend and defeating the enemy — she was supposed to be the protagonist of that story!
The thought of it made Igarashi Sakuko grind her teeth.
"I swear it, Hinako — someday, I'll become light too!"
Igarashi Sakuko lifted her head to look at Ultraseven's face and declared it with a resolve stronger than she'd ever shown before.
It wasn't scarcity that bothered her but inequality — if no one else had become Ultraseven's human host, she wouldn't have clung so stubbornly to the idea. She was a girl, after all, without the same fierce obsession with Ultramen that boys had.
But the chance to become Ultraseven's human host had been snatched away by her own best friend — how could she ever let that go!
Hinako Shimizu smiled faintly and wasted no more time. She kicked off with both legs, her silver body streaking through the darkness like a bolt of light as she dove toward the mountain peak!
Wind roared past. The lights ahead swelled rapidly in her vision, the stone lanterns lining the approach transforming from blurred points of light into sharp outlines before streaking away behind her.
Igarashi Sakuko curled up in Hinako Shimizu's palm, fists clenched tight, stubbornly keeping her eyes open and fixed on the main hall growing ever closer.
Without slowing down, Hinako Shimizu raised her right leg. The silver giant's body twisted at the waist in midair, and with the momentum of the dive behind it, a fierce sidekick slammed down onto the roof of the main hall!
"BOOM—!!!"
The shrine, standing for who knew how many years, let out an agonized groan as the thick cypress-bark roof was kicked clean through at its center, tearing open a massive hole over ten meters across. Tiles, splinters, and shattered beams burst outward in every direction like an explosion, casting countless chaotic shadows in the candlelight.
Riding the force of that kick, Hinako Shimizu spun her body, and her massive frame, trailing a howling wind pressure, crashed down through the hole and slammed into the main hall's interior!
THUD—!!!
Her silver feet crushed the white tatami mats and drove deep into the stone floor beneath!
Cracks spread outward from the point of impact like a spider's web, and the offering tables nearly jumped from the shock. Candlelight throughout the hall flickered wildly, flaring and dimming, stretching everyone's shadows into twisted shapes.
To anything evil, it was an entrance shocking enough to shatter the nerves — the silver Giant of Light stood towering in the hall, its body radiating a holy silver light in stark contrast to the thick miasma of the room, like a god descended to earth, its presence sweeping into every corner.
Hinako Shimizu tilted her head slightly downward, her golden hexagonal eyes sweeping over every corner of the hall. That gaze carried no emotion at all — it simply reflected everything back with perfect calm.
But that very calm was the greatest pressure of all.
The main hall's floor, once laid with smooth white tatami, now lay crushed to pieces.
On the tall altar at the center hung a fox-shaped spirit tablet, tilted askew from the impact, swaying faintly and creaking with a soft groan.
On either side of the altar stood two neat rows of utterly still figures.
On the left stood a row of men in white montsuki haori and hakama, their garments embroidered with elegant family crests, pale yellow sashes tied at their waists. The intricate patterns at cuff and collar spoke, in every detail, of noble standing.
On the right stood a row of women dressed in matching kurotomesode (black tomesode).
The hems of their robes bore elegant embroidered patterns, obi cords woven from gold and silver thread tied at their waists, and their hair was piled up high, pinned with hairpins of coral or jade.
Directly before the altar stood a man dressed as a Shinto priest.
He wore a black eboshi cap and robes of black and white in the Shinto style, a cypress fan in one hand and, in the other, a kagura suzu wound thick with talismans. Unlike the others, a visible aura of malevolence coiled around him.
That malevolence seeped from him like fog, writhing about him like tendrils, provoking instinctive revulsion at a single glance.
Every one of them wore an ivory fox mask.
The fox faces on the masks bore an ambiguous half-smile, the corners of the mouths curled faintly upward, and through the hollowed eye sockets, pair after pair of eyes stared fixedly at the silver giant that had suddenly descended into the hall.
No one moved.
No one spoke.
No one even seemed to breathe.
Their composure was terrifying.
But the terror leaking from behind those eye sockets, the faintly trembling fingers, the skin pulled taut to its very limit — all of it laid bare the emotions the fox masks tried to hide—
What... what is that thing...
Could that be...
An Ultraman?
Don't... don't joke about something like that!
Countless eyes stared fixedly at the silver-and-red giant, minds gone utterly blank in that instant.
The Tsuneki family.
This noble family, generations old, that prided itself on nobility, on exceptionalism, on standing above ordinary people.
Every scalp in the room prickled now, a bone-deep chill shooting up every spine.
They all shared the same premonition at once.
It's over!
We're going to die!
We're really going to die!
"Ultra... seven?"
Standing before the fox-masked priest, Tsuneki Hisayuki looked up at the Giant of Light that had appeared in the hall, his pupils contracting sharply, his fingers trembling faintly.
"...Hinako?!"
Others might not see it, but how could he not sense it? Inside the giant that had appeared in the shape of Ultraseven was, unmistakably, the very person he loved so deeply.
The silver giant bent forward slightly, cradling Sakuko a little more securely in its palm, the light radiating from its body driving back the malevolence that filled the hall.
Hinako Shimizu's voice echoed through the main hall, carried by the Giant of Light.
"Hisayuki, I'm here. Now tell me the truth — what is all of this, really?"
____
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