"I am you."
"Hmph." Inori let out a short breath. "Don't worry. As long as you don't make trouble, I have no plans to kill him. Not for now."
The most important reason to keep Shu Ouma around was his Void — that Void which could absorb every trace of the Apocalypse Virus in the world. That Crown of Tenderness which belonged to him alone was the one and only method for purging the Apocalypse Virus from existence entirely; and the most direct method, at that. Inori had every intention of using Shu Ouma as a means to an end — she'd been running circles around the boy since the beginning — but she would guarantee his safety regardless. Even without Mana's presence, she would have done the same.
"You call me a brother-obsessed freak. But honestly, you're the most terrifying woman I've ever encountered."
Mana's voice carried something gentle and searching. "You carry such a beautiful name — Inori. How did someone called Inori end up becoming… this?"
"There is good and evil in human nature from birth." Inori's reply was untroubled. "And you're making me sound like some kind of irredeemable criminal. I'm simply moving forward in the way that makes sense to me. The summit is right there — why shouldn't someone like me be the one standing on top of it?"
(③)
To any observer, Inori was talking to herself.
She had to admit, though — her conversation with Mana Ouma had been far less exhausting than expected. Almost interesting, in its own way. Because by the later episodes of the anime, Mana had been something close to a boss-level obstacle — consumed entirely by the desire to destroy Inori and seize her body, the portrait of a tragic villain.
But the Mana here… wasn't quite like that.
She wasn't malicious. She simply, desperately, wanted to speak to her brother.
Even when Inori had deliberately tried to provoke her just now, Mana had only smiled and let it pass. She was, without question, Mana Ouma — the pure older sister, the one who had always wanted to protect Shu, who had loved him simply and completely all her life.
"Mana."
Inori spoke her name.
"What is it?"
"…Have you lost some of your memories? Or something else?"
"Why do you ask?"
A thread of uncertainty wove through Mana's voice. And with it, a fear that had nowhere to root itself — a sudden dread that bled across the connection between them and arrived in Inori's chest too.
Inori fell into thought. It seemed Mana didn't remember what she had done — not the manipulation of Shu Ouma, not the promise of marriage, not the sabotaged pistol she had pressed into young Gai's hands, not any of it. Those were her accomplishments. If this were truly a person capable of those acts — someone who had ultimately unleashed the virus across all of Japan — Inori couldn't fathom how she could hold this calm, even-tempered conversation.
"Do you remember what you were doing ten years ago?"
Mana went quiet.
Then, after a pause: "Little Inori, you seem to know a great many things."
"I do. It's one of King Crimson's abilities."
Inori delivered the lie without changing expression.
King Crimson absorbed another accusation without complaint. The truth — that she had transmigrated into this world from another — was too strange to explain, and Inori had no interest in explaining it, so King Crimson took the blame.
"That… wasn't me."
"The virus — it was never really a virus." Mana's voice trembled. These were the deepest, most unwanted memories, but she steadied herself and pressed forward, laying them out for Inori piece by piece. "It was a person. A living will. A form of psychic contamination. I couldn't suppress it on my own — its invasion of me was far worse than anything you've done."
"What are you talking about?" Inori's brow furrowed. "This is my body. If anyone's the invader here, it's you."
— Fine, so I steal clothes and food, and yes, I have silenced anyone unfortunate enough to see this face, and yes, I have toyed with those two boys in the palm of my hand — but I know I am a good person. Possessing someone else's body is something I would never do.
"Sorry, poor choice of words. But you understand what I mean." Mana laughed quietly.
"At that time… Shu saw the 'spots' I was hiding. It was awful. I think I lost all reason to keep going — I couldn't fight that contaminating will any longer."
"And so it triggered the Lost Christmas?"
"…"
She didn't answer. The answer was already written in her silence.
"I completely understand your anger, just now."
"Suddenly being imprisoned — watching your body move under someone else's control, powerless to stop it." Mana's laughter came out small and bruised, compressing years of grief into a handful of quiet words. "But you couldn't possibly understand what I felt. There was nothing I could do… nothing but watch, inch by inch, as she ate away at everything that belonged to me, and did those things to Shu. Those were mine. Those things were mine."
Her voice grew ragged.
Mana Ouma was yandere — no question. But that part of her had never reached the point of the later anime, where she had abandoned every rational constraint without hesitation. She loved her brother, and only her brother; she had never once thought of hurting anyone else for it. Which left only one possible explanation.
(③)
What lived inside this body was Mana Ouma — the original, untouched Mana. The purest version of herself.
The one who had triggered the Lost Christmas was the Apocalypse Virus — the great will of the crystallized world — which had stolen Mana's memories and sculpted her into Eve. It had entered her the moment she first touched the Origin Stone, stealing Mana's memories and reshaping her into Eve.
"If you're here inside me, then where is she?"
Inori's brow drew tight. Her expression turned more serious than it had all night.
"I don't know."
"I had a breakdown in the church. I thought I would simply sleep forever. When I woke again, I was already inside you."
This was a matter of world survival. There were apparently two Manas — or rather, not quite two, but something stranger: both her own soul and Mana's were housed in the body of "Inori Yuzuriha." So what remained on Shuichiro Keido's end? The will of Eve could not have simply ceased to exist.
Things were becoming more complicated. The situation was developing in directions unknown and dire.
But Inori Yuzuriha felt no alarm.
Whatever strategy the enemy had prepared — all of it, every last piece of it, would be MUDA before King Crimson in its complete form. That was simply the truth. That was the confidence that lived in the bones of an emperor.
"In the end, your little brother is hopeless." Inori, taking in the weight of Mana's grief, found something like sympathy stirring beneath the surface. "Calling his sick sister a monster — if that were me, I'd have given him three pages of ORA on the spot."
"Shu… he was just frightened."
"He was only a child. But even he noticed — his sister had started to become strange, to do strange things. Christmas Day. The church. Triton getting shot." A soft, sad pause. "He was only so frightened that the words came out."
"The lens of a loving older sister~"
Inori smiled at that — just slightly — and said nothing more.
"I have my own responsibility too. I knew the one Shu was calling a monster wasn't me, but Eve. But I was… I was just too weak."
At this, Inori was certain.
What lived here was Mana Ouma — simply, purely, only Mana Ouma.
A king with two souls sharing one body: a dark side bearing the obsidian will, and a luminous side bearing a golden spirit. And what the complete King Crimson required was not the corrupted origin of something like Eve — it was a pure soul like Mana.
(③)
In that instant, Inori felt something click open inside her.
"Hey. Mana."
"What?"
"…Forget about Shu. Stay with me."
Inori closed her eyes, and tried for the first time to reach inward — to communicate with Mana on a level beyond words.
She found a void. Absolute silence and absolute darkness, the kind that could crush a human mind under its weight — similar to the brief suspended moment when King Crimson's Time Erasure activated, but not quite the same. And there, within that place, Inori finally saw her.
A girl crouching alone on the ground, arms wrapped around her own knees, eyes closed, asleep. She wore a white dress printed with flowers. She was so still she might have been a statue.
Her hair was different from Inori's — where Inori's faded from pink to white in a soft gradient, this girl's was a purer, quieter pink. A clean forehead. Her hair was gathered into two braids resting over her chest, each tied with a red clip — altogether the image of the girl next door.
"Aren't I already with you?"
Mana must have sensed Inori's arrival in her space. She raised her head, opened her eyes, and asked softly, like a kitten.
Inori felt it — that unblemished purity washed over her, and she was briefly, genuinely moved. That such a girl could exist in this world.
— As expected. She's my original.
"What I mean is… give your body and heart to me."
Inori crossed the space between them and crouched beside her, then pulled Mana into her arms with a decisive, almost imperious firmness.
"Become a part of me, Mana."
> Author's Note: I've looked into the source material, and from everything I found, this is exactly the kind of good older sister Mana was — someone who, in the end, even forgave Shu for calling her a monster. The yandere persona and the personality that tormented little Inori throughout the story were never truly Mana — they were the Eve created by the Apocalypse Virus. So let her be set free.