"I'm already exhausted — tonight has been too much. But ask whatever you want, Hare. I'll answer as best I can."
For anyone else this tired, Inori wouldn't have bothered. But this was Hare Menjou — the girl who had given her everything, back when she first arrived in this world with nothing: no food, no one, creeping around just to survive. Without Hare showing up when she did, there was no telling where Inori would be now. So she couldn't treat Hare the way she treated everyone else — couldn't simply ignore her, or lie to her with something cruel and clean.
Inori knew exactly what kind of person she'd become. But there had always been a clear line in her mind between black and white, and that line was the thing that set her apart from Diavolo at his worst.
"Why…" Hare hugged her own arms tight to her chest, standing rather than sitting, her face a knot of worry and confusion. "Why did you join Funeral Parlor? And when did this all happen?"
"Because the Apocalypse Virus has to be stopped. The director of GHQ's Antibodies — Shuichiro Keido — is behind everything. I joined Funeral Parlor to kill him."
"As for when — around the time I started performing online, I suppose."
Inori answered without hesitation.
"But Inori — you had a chance at a normal life! You only just barely managed to get out of that world!"
Hare wasn't refusing to accept it — the idea that the girl living under the same roof had been lying to her about "outings" and "clearing her head," when really she'd been out doing resistance work all along. She was just worried. Inori was such a gentle, warm person. Why couldn't she escape fighting? Why was the current of war always pulling her back?
"There are things you wouldn't understand, Hare. You haven't seen what I've seen. You can't know what it's like."
"I know the world is dark! I understand that much, I do… but why does it have to be you? Why is it always you who has to carry it?" Her voice broke. "I… I just don't get it."
She hadn't planned to cry in front of Inori. But once the words started coming, the tide behind them was impossible to hold back.
"My situation is… a little unusual, you could say."
Inori didn't know how to comfort her. For a moment she was back two years ago — the first night she'd shown up at Hare's door, spun a fabricated backstory, watched Hare believe every word of it and weep against her shoulder.
"Actually, what I told you back then was a lie. Hare — I'm not exactly human."
Time to clear that threshold.
They were well past the point of mutual revelation now. Hare knew about Funeral Parlor and had already accepted it. Hiding the rest no longer made sense.
"What? You — no, that's impossible. Are you going to tell me you're a robot?"
"Don't be ridiculous." Inori gave a small, quiet laugh and stepped forward, reaching up to run a hand through Hare's hair. "I'm an artificial human. I was manufactured to serve as the host body for the next iteration of the Apocalypse Virus."
"..."
It was a sentence too strange to process — yet it struck Hare like a thunderclap. She went rigid, her crying cut off at the source, frozen in place, doing nothing but staring at Inori because there was nothing else she could do or say.
"I'm sorry for lying to you. But back then — if I'd told you something like this — you probably would have thought I was insane."
Inori stepped closer. No embrace. No unnecessary movement. She simply pressed her forehead lightly against Hare's.
The two girls stood there, sharing the warmth between them, feeling the rhythm of the other's presence.
"I was made to be their instrument — a vessel to carry catastrophe into the world. Even if I ran to the ends of the earth, I could never outrun that. If I don't fight… there is no other road. No one can save me but myself."
"You might not be able to accept this. It might sound too cruel, too much like something out of a nightmare or a play. But it's real, Hare — all of it happened to me."
Inori kept her eyes gently closed, her voice low and easy, the way a mother narrates a story to a child who can't fall asleep. Giving voice to all of this to someone, letting it pour out — even for her, there was a kind of release in it.
"And yet — I have absolutely no intention of submitting to fate. Actually, I've never once felt despair about it. What I feel is more like… interest. You know how when you keep biting down hard, eventually you catch your tongue by accident? That's what this is like — the way fate keeps pressing in on me, one wrong breath away from crushing me to pieces—" Her voice shifted, climbing from calm to animated to something else entirely, something that had a tremor in it, half laughter and half hunger. "—Ah, God, that kind of situation~ I can't get enough of it~"
Her voice had shifted in rapid succession — from calm to excited, tipping into sickly, breathless gasping — until even her breathing had gone ragged.
"Inori…?"
She wasn't pretending. She wasn't putting on a brave face.
Hare could tell. These were her real thoughts — not a single word of it hidden. She could tell because Inori's body was growing excited as if in heat: blood rising in those crimson eyes, color flushing across the sharp angles of her face, a fine tremor running through her from head to toe.
"Are you okay? Are you sick?"
Hare gripped her shoulders and gave her two quick shakes.
"I'm perfectly fine. I just wanted you to see — this is who I actually am."
Inori's face was redder now, and it wasn't from the fervor this time. It was embarrassment. She'd rather lost control of herself just then. She hadn't gone completely off the rails, had she? Hare probably thought she was bizarre.
"So please — don't worry about me. Don't pity me for what I look like. I have no regrets about this fate. I'm living in it, and I'm enjoying it. And—despite this setback tonight—I'm close. I'm so close."
"The next step is to reclaim that meteorite. Once that's done, the source of the virus ends — and I'm free."
Hare had been crying because she was heartbroken for Inori, for a fate that seemed unbearable. But what Inori wanted, more than anything, was for Hare to understand: she didn't resent this fate. She reveled in it. She was addicted to it. That truth landed deeper — far deeper — than any simple declaration of strength ever could.
"I understand, Inori."
The tension and grief on Hare's face dissolved, replaced by a helpless kind of peace.
She had always known that Inori Yuzuriha was the kind of person who constantly redrew the boundaries of what she thought was possible. But she hadn't imagined it went this deep. Still — it was exactly that wild, unbreakable pride that made Hare certain: Inori would be the one left standing at the end.
"I'll cheer you on until the very last moment. And if there's anything I can do — anything at all — just say the word."
"Oh, there is~"
Inori's smile curved. That smile. The mischievous one.
Hare's heart lurched. She knew immediately she'd said the wrong thing — but it was too late to take it back.
In one motion, Inori seized her wrist and yanked — not gently, with a thoroughly unreasonable amount of force — and sent her tumbling back onto the bed.
"Wh—! Inori, what are you—?!"
"You said anything, and you can't take it back." Inori pinned her down in a posture that left no room for debate, then collapsed on top of her — and Hare's generously soft chest, which she'd always been quietly proud of among girls her age, pressed full against her.
"Inori! Let go of me — please, stop this, I'm serious—!"
Hare was laughing despite herself, pushing back in a way that was half panic and half play.
Not nervous would have been a lie. Inori's track record of zero interest in men and a very consistent interest in bothering her was not exactly a short one. Was she actually—? Well, she wasn't a normal human, so if she swung that way, it wasn't unimaginable— No, what am I even thinking about right now?
"Hey, you — Miss Bread with the very impressive chest~"
Inori registered Hare's protests at exactly the right moment and went still. She just sat there, perched above her, looking down at the small, flushed, adorable face from above — and smiled like a rogue.
"I just lost a battle. I'm emotionally devastated." Her grin turned glacial, like a lecherous middle-aged man forcing himself on a helpless woman. "I'm going to need you to comfort me with your body."
"Inori, don't — don't joke like this!"
Hare threw her arm across her face. It did nothing to hide the peach-bloom color flooding across her cheeks.
"Who told you to come in and disturb my sleep, hm~? Tonight you're my pillow. No negotiations."