From the future...?
Alice Kuonji gave the red-haired boy a long, searching look, puzzled.
But this was hardly the time to dwell on that. She turned instead toward the certain someone hiding in the bushes and peeking over.
"Aoko? Didn't I tell you to stay home tonight?"
Aoko Aozaki was still turning over Shirou's words in her head. When she heard Alice question her, she shot back on instinct.
"I don't remember ever becoming your familiar. Since when do I need your permission to go out for a walk at night?"
Alice: "..."
She really had no right to interfere with Aoko's freedom.
It was true that Alice Kuonji was Aoko Aozaki's Magecraft teacher, but their relationship was not one of master and disciple. They were simply housemates pursuing the same goal.
Meanwhile, Shirou had gone completely numb.
According to his plan, he was supposed to reveal his true identity to Alice Kuonji tonight.
Part of the reason was that Alice Kuonji was extremely guarded, so he figured it was better to be upfront with her than keep hiding things.
The other part was that Shirou wanted to win the young witch's trust by creating a secret shared only between the two of them.
As for "Aoko from the past"...
He had never intended to tell her he came from the future.
Naturally, that was to avoid causing too much change to history and creating a Singularity. "Aoko from the future" agreed with that as well.
The only thing Shirou had not told "Aoko from the future" was that he planned to share his identity with "Alice from the past"... Somehow, he had a feeling Aoko-nee-san would get angry if he told her.
That had been the plan, anyway.
But Aoko had shown up at the amusement park tonight, and she had heard Shirou confess who he was.
There was no doubt about it. This was the butterfly effect caused by Shirou's time leap.
Now, not only had he failed to establish a shared secret with Alice, Aoko had learned his identity too.
Tonight was taking an even more chaotic turn.
Aoko brushed the dust off herself and stepped out of the bushes she had been hiding in.
"Don't come any closer."
Realizing she was about to walk toward Shirou, Alice quickly raised her voice to stop her.
Aoko might have already completely trusted Shirou, but Alice certainly had not. The boy was just too suspicious... and what was that nonsense about being from the future?
Aoko looked entirely unconcerned.
"It's fine, isn't it? He's not a bad person. More importantly..."
The girl's sharp, dignified gaze turned even colder.
"You wouldn't let me go out tonight because you wanted to meet him, is that it?
You were planning to deal with him without telling me, weren't you?"
Alice said nothing.
Why won't she deny it? That's not what happened at all.
Shirou could not listen any longer. He was the one who had waited here for Alice on purpose.
"It's not like that. Alice-san, she..."
"That is exactly what it is," Alice said flatly.
Shirou was about to object, but then he saw how cold Alice's eyes had become.
The sound of a cat bell rose from beneath the ground as the Fairy Tale Witch went on in a low voice.
"Ever since this child appeared, Aoko, you've been acting strange. You're not like yourself at all."
Though it sounded like a complaint, she was only stating what she saw as fact.
"The Aoko who could stay clear-headed no matter what is gone. Your judgment has worsened, and... you're more excitable than usual."
Aoko frowned slightly and glanced at Shirou without thinking.
"That's just your imagination... I'm perfectly clear-headed right now. The one who can't calm down is you, Alice, isn't it?
Why are you so hostile toward him? Can't you at least hear what he has to say first?"
Alice replied, "I just have a bad feeling. It's not that I refuse to hear his explanation."
"'Explanation,' huh."
Aoko smiled faintly.
"So you've already decided he's the bad guy.
How exactly did you even come to that conclusion...?
Look, wasn't he the one who got rid of the intruders lurking in the amusement park?
If your bad feeling was that you'd come here tonight for nothing, then I'd say it was pretty accurate.
Whatever... the intruders you came to deal with tonight are already gone, and it's getting late. Let's go back, Alice."
The two girls' eyes met.
Alice asked, "Going back now is fine. But there's one problem. How many people are going back?"
Aoko answered, "Three, obviously. We have to bring him back with us so we can hear his explanation."
The air around the girl in black grew heavy.
"I won't allow outsiders into my house."
Outsiders...?
Shirou felt a sharp twist in his chest.
"Amamiya-kun... you came again today?"
"Even if it's a holiday, shouldn't you think about spending time with your friends? Come in."
Guh... i-is this my life flashing before my eyes!?
"Welcome. I've already prepared some snacks."
"Is this chocolate from that new shop? You brought it specially for me? Thank you, Amamiya-kun."
"If you're bored... well, you can bring your game console in too. I'll play with you."
"Even if you don't have a reason... if you want to come, Amamiya-kun can come by anytime."
"..."
He knew full well that "Alice from the past" did not know him, but hearing a word like that, outsider, come from her mouth hurt far more than he expected.
Being a time traveler really wasn't easy... Shirou shook his head and forced the flashback away.
Aoko declared firmly, "He's my guest, not an outsider."
Alice frowned.
This time it was not out of anger. She was just at a loss for words.
"...Aoko, I really didn't want to ask this, but are you serious?"
Absolute silence fell between the two housemates who had lived together for nearly two years.
Aoko Aozaki answered with silence of her own. She had no intention of backing down.
And naturally, neither did Alice Kuonji.
At the end of the day, maybe the two of them were simply never going to understand each other.
"Sorry, I know you two are in the middle of an argument, but can I say something?"
Shirou, who had stayed silent until now, suddenly spoke up.
Alice shot him a wary look. In complete contrast, Aoko gave him a warm smile, bright as sunlight.
"Of course. Go ahead. Oh, right, I'm Aoko Aozaki. You can just call me Aoko..."
Shirou nodded to Aoko, then turned toward one of the amusement park's attractions nearby, a massive abandoned hall of mirrors.
"Even though you just said the intruders in this amusement park have all been cleared out, that's actually not true.
There's still one left, the strongest one. It's hiding inside that magic mirror over there, and I didn't get the chance to deal with it...
It must have heard the commotion here. It's on its way over now."
"!?"
Alice's eyes widened.
There was still an enemy hiding somewhere in the amusement park? Impossible.
She had just searched the entire place with everything she had, even using "Diddle Diddle"...
She was about to refute him, but in the very next second, she lost her voice.
As if to prove the boy right, a dark figure came crawling out from the entrance to the Magic Mirror attraction.
"...A doll?"
It was a humanoid monstrosity with two arms and two legs.
Even from a distance, one could tell "she" was exquisitely made, and an eerie atmosphere clung to her whole body.
Alice reacted at once and raised her right hand toward the doll.
Her slender fingers made a motion like she was tugging on reins, and then a fork appeared out of empty air.
The silver fork skewered the enemy from top to bottom, and yet...
The doll did not stop functioning. "She" shot her wrist forward.
The ever-extending arm did not go for Alice, the one who had attacked her, but for the enemy she had been preset to hate, Aoko Aozaki.
"..."
It was the second clearly targeted assassination attempt Aoko had faced in three days.
This time, Aoko did not react at all.
There were too many unknowns. Her thoughts had simply ground to a halt.
The option of dodging never even occurred to her.
Because human beings possess reason and knowledge, they are slow to react to something they are seeing for the first time.
All Aoko could do was watch helplessly as that long arm, that weapon, crossed more than ten meters and shot straight at her head.
"——————Trace On."
At the boy's whisper, an emerald radiance lit up the night ruled by the witch.
"...What?"
For an instant, Aoko doubted her own eyes.
What she saw was unbelievable.
Perhaps he had used some kind of martial art. In a flash, the red-haired boy moved in front of her and placed himself between her and the doll's arm.
He swung down his right arm and shattered the doll's outstretched wrist.
Dazzling light wrapped around him.
It was only the back of a child who barely came up to her shoulder, so why did he look so unbelievably dependable?
He held twin blades as weapons. Had he created them on the spot with Projection Magecraft? What kind of Projection was that supposed to be?
...No, more importantly.
Could it be...
Had this child saved her again?
Aoko stared blankly at Shirou's back, confirming that shocking reality again and again.
The first time could be called a coincidence, but the second time...
He had just said he came from the future, hadn't he? Which meant...
"Hah."
After confirming that Alice had destroyed the doll's main body, Shirou turned to look at Aoko.
For some reason, Aoko-nee-san had an especially vacant expression on her face. He really wanted to take a picture and show it to her later.
"...Are you okay?"
"Ah... yes."
"I didn't get the chance to introduce myself earlier, so let me do that now. My name is Shirou Amamiya... you can just call me Shirou."
"...Y-yeah."
Finally realizing how awful her expression must have looked, Aoko lowered her head in embarrassment.
"Thank you for saving me, Shirou."
Her thanks came out haltingly.
Not far from the boy and girl wrapped in that strangely delicate atmosphere, Alice merely watched in silence.
...
I messed this up!!!!!!
Shirou had originally planned to raise Aoko and Alice's favorability evenly.
But in the end, Aoko's side had gone way too high, while on Alice's side, forget favorability, she practically held a grudge against him now!
That said, because of what had just happened...
Alice felt guilty for failing to notice that another enemy had been lurking nearby.
In the end, she made a concession and agreed to let Aoko bring Shirou back home.
Now the three of them were walking back to the mansion.
Alice was all alone up front, while Shirou and Aoko walked side by side behind her. More than that...
Aoko was holding Shirou's hand.
The seventeen-year-old high school girl took his hand with perfect naturalness, then smiled and said,
"Let's go home, Shirou~"
Okay, Aoko-nee-san... yeah right!
Why? It's not like I'm some lost little kid! You're only five years older than me!
"Sorry, Shirou... Alice is just like that, but don't worry... she doesn't mean any harm."
"Yeah, I know. And it's not like I can't understand how Alice-san feels. I really am suspicious."
Whose fault is that supposed to be...
Shirou was speechless inside. He never should have listened to Aoko and run away after saving her back then... and now everything had come full circle.
Aoko's favorability had risen way too high for no reason, while Alice's was way too low...
And most importantly, Aoko now knew he was from the future too.
At that moment, the girl in black, showing them only her cold back, spoke.
"Enough with the pleasantries. Explain the situation... Depending on what you say, I'll decide whether you'll be spending tonight as the demon's neighbor in the basement."
"Alice!" Aoko protested with a frown.
"Alright, I'll explain."
At this point, there was no point hiding it any longer.
"I jumped here from some point in the future... a fairly distant future. You can think of it as something like time travel."
Shirou deliberately kept the timeframe vague, and Aoko immediately asked,
"Time travel... how do you even do something like that? It sounds like a sci-fi movie."
"It's related to the Fifth Magic... You should be able to work that out with a little thought," Alice said sourly.
"Oh, right... I forgot. Shirou seems to have some strange connection to me."
The chestnut-haired girl gave Shirou a meaningful look, then for some reason smiled shyly.
Shirou: "???"
"Keep explaining," Alice urged in an unfriendly tone.
"The reason I time-jumped here is because something abnormal has appeared in this place, in this era... If I call it a Singularity, you should understand, right?
It's something that has broken away from the normal timeline. The kind of thing that, if left alone, will distort the surrounding history.
I came to this place in 1989 to correct that Singularity."
Once she heard that, Aoko immediately declared, "I see~ Got it. I'll help you with everything I've got, Shirou."
Alice said coldly, "He hasn't even asked anything of you yet, and you've already agreed? Show a little restraint. You really are a cheap woman."
"What did you just say! Want to keep fighting?"
Shirou snuck a glance at Alice and let out a helpless sigh.
Yeah... and he wondered who it was that had put that suggestion on him, the one about absolute obedience.
"Do you have any leads yet on how the Singularity formed, Shirou?" Aoko asked.
"No. But I do know what's been happening around you lately, and what's about to happen next.
I think the formation of the Singularity is tied to that."
Shirou said,
"Aoko, your sister... Touko Aozaki has returned.
Her target is the city of Misaki, and the Aozaki family's inheritance, Magic."