"Gai."
Inori Yuzuriha pushed open the door without so much as a knock.
Gai Tsutsugami looked utterly defeated. He had always appeared older than his years, but now — hollow-eyed, face slack with misery, that gold hair hanging loose — he gave off the distinct energy of a middle-aged woman who'd just been laid off.
Yet just as Inori had predicted, the moment he saw her, his expression shifted. He actually rose to his feet, staring at her in open astonishment.
"Inori… what are you doing here? Why now?"
"I came to help you, of course." Inori arranged her face into a smile that was visibly strained. "To rescue Shu Ouma — and Kenji Kido, right?"
"Did Diavolo change his mind?"
Gai asked, the bewilderment in his eyes still unresolved.
"Mm."
Inori's answer came out hesitant. She let her fingers drift up to brush a strand of hair from her face, her gaze dropping just slightly, her hands coming together in front of her — fingers working against each other in small, absent fidgets. She hadn't planned any of it. She'd simply told herself she was playing a girl trying to hide a wound, and the gestures followed on their own.
"Inori…"
Watching her obvious attempt to hide it, Gai felt a sharp twist in his chest.
His fist clenched without thinking. Something nameless and hot began to burn behind his ribs.
He looked at her — the forced smile, the faint sorrow pooling in those deep-red eyes — and for a disorienting moment he lost himself entirely. A waking dream. The girl standing before him blurred and merged with another image: Mana Ouma, years ago, beneath a church.
— I really am useless. If I can't even protect this girl, what right do I have to reach for Mana?
"Inori — Diavolo has no idea you're here, does he?"
"…Yes."
Inori's expression stalled for a beat. Then she gave a slow nod, acknowledging the lie she'd just told.
— In truth, she had been lying the entire time. Gai had no reason left to believe a single word from her mouth.
"…Why?"
Gai held her gaze steadily.
She hadn't put on makeup today, which made her face look paler than usual — bloodless. Her eyes were downcast, her expression worn thin, the picture of someone deeply troubled and at a loss.
"Because I think what Diavolo is doing is wrong."
"He's put Shu in danger — and he won't let me have much contact with everyone in Funeral Parlor. I… I'm really sad about that."
Inori bit her lip as she spoke, voice low, a little rough, catching slightly — as though she might cry at any moment. It was the kind of fragility that made you want to reach out.
She was a little worried she was overselling it. But she stole a glance at Gai — that expression of humiliated, furious helplessness, of a man burning with shame and anger he had nowhere to put — and something deeply satisfying bloomed in her chest.
"What did he do to you?"
Gai's eyes sharpened. He stepped forward and tried to grab her hand.
"Nothing."
The girl was faster than he expected. She simply shifted to one side, and he grasped empty air.
"It's fine, Gai…"
"I'm okay. I can handle it. It's nothing."
Inori pressed her lips together, arms folding across her chest, eyes turning away — unable, it seemed, to meet his gaze.
She willed a faint blush to rise in her cheeks — the silken kind, pale and translucent — so that she'd look real, look like a girl trying to hide her scars after being wronged.
"Inori, leave that man. Come to my side."
"No!"
Inori let the cry come out sharp with alarm.
"Why?"
"That would set off something very serious — don't do it, Gai." She answered with a convincing flicker of fear, as though something terrible had just surfaced in her memory. "Besides, Diavolo is only in a bad mood. Most of the time he treats me very well."
"But what he did to you — !"
Gai couldn't get the words out.
Inori hadn't said anything directly, and Diavolo himself had never spelled out the nature of the punishment. But some things weren't hard to guess. The girl standing in front of him was strikingly lovely — petals of pink hair, a face as delicately formed as a porcelain doll's — and a man who held absolute power over something like that, somehow managing to restrain himself… He didn't even believe it himself.
"Let's not talk about that right now. I came because I want to help you, Gai. I overheard your conversation — you're planning to rescue Shu, and then stop those dangerous satellites, aren't you?"
Even Inori found she couldn't bear to keep watching that look on Gai's face. She opened her mouth quickly and steered the subject away.
"Ah — yes." Gai's expression eased slightly. "He doesn't intend to let me act. But I won't listen to him."
"Then I'll help you, Gai."
Inori stepped closer and said it firmly.
"Thank you… Having you with me makes this so much easier. Inori, let me walk you through the operation plan."
Gai sank back into his chair, pulled up a projection with a few keystrokes, and began laying out his plan step by step on the display — every detail, explained to Inori with careful precision.
GHQ Special Virus Countermeasures Bureau, Isolation Facility No. 4.
Even in a military zone that no sane person would dare to disturb, security rotations still had to be maintained.
At seven o'clock sharp, the lookout posted on the high watchtower stepped into the elevator with a yawn, traded brief pleasantries with the incoming shift, and headed off.
He was bone-tired — watch duty was not the kind of thing ordinary people could endure — and he rolled his shoulders as he walked, turning down an unlit side passage to reach the barracks.
— Hm? Is that a bird?
A shadow swept over him. The man stopped, squinting up at it.
Then something hit him — brutal, precise — at the back of his neck. He pitched forward and didn't get up.
"Hey, Gai — I'm inside. You can move."
Inori stepped out from behind a shipping container, opening a line to her teammates outside while King Crimson set to work stripping the uniform off the fallen guard.
"Good work, Inori."
"Wait for my signal before you move. Once the attack outside starts, Tsugumi will pinpoint Kenji Kido's location based on their response vectors. Find somewhere to hold and stand by."
"Got it~"
The line went dead. Inori tucked the white helmet under her arm, and a strange smile crossed her face.
Shu Ouma had been sitting in this place for three full days.
He'd gone numb to it — the fear and tension of the first hours bleeding into despair, and then into something that had no name at all, a kind of hollow acceptance. Because ever since he'd agreed to help GHQ locate Gai Tsutsugami, Segai hadn't made things particularly hard for him. Which left Shu with nothing to do but stare at pale walls and drift through his own thoughts, until he felt like he was growing mold.
His only company was the signal pen Segai had given him, which he turned over and over in his hands without really looking at it. He didn't know exactly what it was for — something about sending a signal that would allow them to find Gai. A tracker of some kind, probably.
Then someone opened the cell door, and the dull vacancy behind Shu's eyes came alive again. A man stepped in and told him a defense attorney had been arranged on his behalf.
"Hey, Shu. Good to see you."
He was shown into a separate, partitioned room — and was greeted immediately by a cheerful, easy voice. The man waiting for him was dressed in a crisp suit, blond hair neatly done, a light dusting of stubble across a handsome jaw, eyeglasses completing the picture.
Shu knew that face. He just couldn't place it for a moment.
"I've been retained by your mother to represent you. My name is Mason."
— Gai?
Shu blinked.
The moment the man spoke, it came back to him — that voice, that unmistakable face. There had only been one conversation between them, brief, but a person with those features and that gold hair wasn't easy to forget.
"Gai…"
Shu breathed the name, barely a sound.
"Let's get started. I'm going to need you to answer some questions truthfully if you want any chance at bail."
Gai-as-Mason cut him off smoothly, already digging through the briefcase on the table, pulling out documents. The soldier who had escorted Shu in, satisfied that this was routine legal business, stepped back outside.
"Can we talk now?"
Gai glanced at Shu with a look that carried a clear meaning.
Shu didn't catch it. He was only growing more anxious, more unsettled — and his hand moved on its own, drifting toward the pen in his pocket.