"We're in a dominion," Tsukiyo answered. The flintlocks were lowered, hanging limp at her sides. She knew better than to waste ammunition on a reality that wasn't bound by standard physics. "That man is a god-kin." She pointed a steady finger toward the dealer.
The man sat with maddening composure. His hands moved with practiced grace, a wine bottle manifesting from thin air between his palms. He picked up a clean cloth and began to polish the glass, his eyes never leaving them.
"Don't be mistaken, young woman," the man said, his voice a gravelly murmur. "I am merely a descendant. My name is Roger."
Tsukiyo remained still, her posture rigid as she processed his statement. She held her silence for a long moment before delivering her verdict. "You're lying."
She leveled a steady finger at him. "You are a God-kin. My spec refuses to tell me otherwise."
Roger's grin didn't falter; it simply settled, widening by an imperceptible fraction. "And how are you so sure of that?"
"My spec has never been wrong," Tsukiyo declared, her tone leaving no room for negotiation.
Ken watched the exchange, a knot of unease tightening in his chest. He felt an irrational pull toward the man's words—a sense that Roger was telling the truth—yet he knew Tsukiyo's data was, by definition, infallible. The conflict between his gut feeling and her absolute precision was dizzying.
"Tsukiyo, I'm not saying you're wrong," Ken ventured, his voice cautious. "But what if he really is just a distant descendant?"
Tsukiyo fell silent, the gears of her mind visibly turning. She looked at Ken, her gaze sweeping over his expression, searching for the source of his doubt. She saw the seriousness etched into his face—a genuine, wordless warning that cut through her rigid logic.
"Your theory is rather intriguing," she conceded, her eyes narrowing as she re-evaluated the room. "If he is merely a descendant, then this man—and his claim—is simply an entrance to the Dominion itself."
Tsukiyo retreated into the fortress of her own mind. Ken has no baseline data on God-kin, she thought. How do I communicate that I distrust his hypothesis without damaging the efficiency of our cooperation? She kept the thought locked behind a stoic expression.
"Shoot me," the man said, his grin radiating a lethal confidence. Inwardly, he was walking the razor's edge of his own mortality. "I dare you."
Tsukiyo was visibly unsettled. "If this is truly just an entrance, then this man is mortal and will perish," she muttered, voicing her logic aloud. "But if he is a true God-kin... I will be the one to die."
Her fingers trembled against the cold metal of her flintlock, though her face remained a mask of practiced calm. She turned slowly to look at Ken, her voice dropping to a near-whisper. "I am sorry, Ken. I... I cannot prioritize your intuition over the data."
The tension stretched for five agonizing minutes, the silence thick enough to choke on. Then, the man produced a pair of ornate keys. In the sudden, thickening fog, a shimmering keyhole manifested in mid-air.
The casino erupted into a violent tremor. Reality groaned as the expansive room folded in on itself, shrinking rapidly until the glamour of the gambling hall bled away, replaced by the dimly lit, heavy atmosphere of a bar club.
"The conditions for entry have been met. You didn't take the risk," the man said. The dealer's sharp suit was gone, replaced by the apron of a bartender. "Once again, my name is Roger."
Tsukiyo stiffened. The sudden shift in reality spiked her anxiety, though she kept it buried beneath her skin. A sharp, stinging guilt bloomed in her chest—she had prioritized her machine-processed data over the person standing beside her.
The heavy silence was shattered by Ken's voice. "Tsukiyo, did you notice? Celina disappeared."
The realization hit Tsukiyo like a physical blow. Roger's eyes widened, then he dissolved into a fit of hysterical, high-pitched laughter that echoed through the bar for a full seven seconds.
He took a sharp, gasping breath, wiping a tear of genuine amusement from his eye. "I can't believe he caught such a detail! Ha!" His gaze fixed on Ken with a newfound, hungry intensity. "First, you theorized I was merely a descendant. Second, you observed a variable vanishing from the field. IMPA specs are fed total falsehoods during the entrance sequence, but you..."
Roger leaned over the mahogany counter, his grin turning sharp and fanatical. "You are pure observation. And your companion here?" He gestured to Tsukiyo. "She is entirely reliant on a corrupted machine. How absolutely intriguing."
Tsukiyo's eyes widened in profound disbelief. She had been caught completely off-guard. Ken's intuition hadn't just been a theory—it was a reality she had been too blind to see.
How did he find me in the rain that night? The question haunted the back of her mind. My spec teaches me how to remain invisible, to leave no trace... and yet, he navigated straight to me.
Ken stood in the center of the chaos, feeling the weight of the Dominion's pressure crushing down on him. He chose silence, his senses alert, watching as the bartender's fascination shifted from a playful game into something far more dangerous.
Roger's grin became ecstatic, almost fanatical. "Oh... I see. You're watching the board, aren't you? How peculiar."
"Observing? Why do you use such a term?" Ken asked, his voice steady despite the oppressive weight of the Dominion.
The question only deepened Roger's fascination. He leaned forward, his gaze locked onto Ken with predatory focus. "How... exquisite. It is innate, unconscious, and yet... to be so precise? This is no mere intuition, boy. You are dissecting the architecture of my soul."
Roger swept a hand through the air, gesturing to the dim, velvet-lined room with a flourish. "Tell me, then—if the casino was but a hollow mask, what do you surmise of this place? Pray, enlighten me: what do these walls whisper to your sensibilities?"
Ken's gaze drifted across the room, tracking the shadows as if he were reading a blueprint invisible to everyone else. "Gamblers like to drink. Someone of great importance to you was a bartender."
Roger's eyes widened, a shimmer of genuine, electrified excitement surging through him. "Oh... you are devastatingly correct," he whispered, a faint smile ghosting his lips as he poured a glass of dark, crimson wine with the grace of a master.
"It is not poisoned," Ken added, his tone flat.
Tsukiyo's ear wiggled slightly. He talked like me.
Ken's eyes darted with lightning speed—first to the dartboard, then to a complex mechanical puzzle on the shelf, a pool table in the corner, and finally a sprawling maze etched into the floorboards.
"This is a trial of cognition. Something akin to a maze runner or a puzzle-solving gauntlet," Ken continued, his voice devoid of doubt. "There are no signs of Celi. When she is cloaked, there is always a displacement of air or a shifting shadow, but this space is illuminated in its entirety—every corner, every floorboard, every wall. She has been shunted elsewhere, to a different map. If your virtual reality is a closed system with a finite capacity, the shrinkage from the casino to this bar was a necessary conservation of energy."
Silence reclaimed the room. Both Tsukiyo and Roger were frozen, their eyes fixed solely on him. The playfulness had vanished from Roger's expression, replaced by a cautious, calculating gravity. He was no longer just amused; he was wary, confronted by a variable he hadn't accounted for.
"Oh?" Roger breathed, his voice barely audible. "How startlingly accurate. You have dissected my reality with the precision of a surgeon."
Ken rubbed the back of his head, his hand lingering there as he shifted his weight. "Oh... it's nothing, really," he muttered, offering an awkward shrug. He tried to divert the sudden, heavy focus with a practiced, self-deprecating smile. "It's just simple deduction and some stuff I've picked up along the way."
Roger cut him off, his voice sharp enough to snap the air in the room.
"Do not insult me with such banalities," Roger commanded. His casual, elegant demeanor had evaporated, replaced by something visceral and cold. "There is nothing 'simple' about your process. Your intuition, your deduction, the sheer speed of your theorizing... it belongs to the absolute upper echelon of existence."
Roger's voice began to tremble—not with amusement this time, but with a sudden, dawning dread. He took a heavy, jagged step toward them, his voice dropping an octave, becoming something guttural and ancient.
"Kento Sakayanagi..." Roger whispered, testing the name as if it were a curse. He recoiled, his eyes scanning Ken not as a guest, but as an impossible anomaly. "'Who?' No... that is the wrong question."
Roger leaned into Ken's space, his eyes wide and bloodshot, his composure completely shattered. "What... what are you?"
"I am human," Ken replied, his tone weary of the interrogation.
"I refuse to believe it," Roger snapped, his poise finally fracturing. "That is a falsehood."
Tsukiyo watched them both, her expression a fragile cocktail of awe and, for the first time, a daunting, cold confusion. This is unprecedented, she thought, her internal systems struggling to catalog the scene. Since when has Ken possessed such decisiveness?
She traced the data points of their history. Has he been feigning this inadequacy all this time? No, that would be inconsistent with his previous behavioral patterns; he has never displayed a single iota of calculated self-awareness. Unless... She paused, the realization hitting her like a systemic shock. Unless he is truly unaware of the scale of his own mind.
Ken turned his calm, unbothered gaze toward the bartender. "Well. Aren't you human, too?"
Roger recoiled, his voice rising in an indignant screech. "Huh?! Certainly not! I am a descendant of the God-kin!"
Ken tilted his head slightly, unimpressed by the outburst. "But what if your lineage interbred with humans somewhere along the way?"
The bar went deathly silent. Roger sagged, the fire in his eyes dimming into a hollow, defeated glare. "That... is technically correct," he muttered, his voice sounding brittle and small.
Tsukiyo felt her logic-center go into a tailspin. He just dismantled a God-kin's arrogance with a single, foundational observation, she calculated, her pulse quickening. That isn't just talent. That is a measurement beyond any scale I possess.