"She's inside."
After a winding route through the streets near the Ouma residence, King Crimson guided Haruka Ouma to a stop in front of a dessert café.
The place was spacious — all white interior design, Gothic English lettering in the signage, the kind of atmosphere that made you feel you'd wandered into Western Europe. It was dinner hour, and the tables were full of young people enjoying their desserts, along with a scattering of working adults hunched over their devices, racing deadlines.
The girl sitting inside was impossible not to notice. Every eye in the room drifted to her and stayed there.
She had fine features, light cosmetics, both hands wrapped around a violet-colored drink. She wore a high-waisted black dress with three-quarter sleeves — the bodice worked in tiny sequins that caught the light, the sleeves themselves made of sheer black gauze — the hem falling at just the right point on her thighs, paired with black sandals that laced up her ankles in thin straps. Everything about the outfit drew the eye down her balanced, graceful legs.
Her long hair was a soft, hazy pink that seemed to belong to a dream — or a painting, or a digital illustration. Like a young noblewoman who had wandered in from somewhere more elegant than this.
People passing by couldn't help but turn for a second look, murmuring to their companions — right up until a woman in a white lab coat appeared and sat across from her without a word.
Inori Yuzuriha caught the uncertain flicker in Haruka Ouma's eyes: the raw, disoriented feeling of a reunion after too many years, when the words you'd prepared your whole life still couldn't find their way out.
— Over to you. My turn's done. Passing the wheel.
Inori handed control to Mana Ouma. The transition was subtle enough that Haruka didn't register it. She was still trying to work out what to say — I'm your mother felt too abrupt after all this time, and this girl went by the name Inori Yuzuriha and didn't have Mana's memories. Or so the figure calling itself Diavolo had told her on the way here.
"Aunt Haruka~"
Mana reached across the table and took Haruka's hand. Her fingers were cool, but the warmth they carried was exactly right — enough to calm a mother who'd been wound too tight for too long. And then, with that touch, came the name.
"Mana — is it really you?"
"It's me~"
Mana's smile looked like it was trying very hard not to cry.
"I'm back, Aunt Haruka."
...
...
Inori had no interest in watching over a scene like this — no habit of eavesdropping, and no appetite for the kind of deeply sincere, emotionally intact mother-daughter reunion playing out in front of her. But no matter how thoroughly she tried to redirect her attention to King Crimson, she couldn't help catching it: the words, the glances, the way Mana's joy expanded and spilled over the edges — warm and uncontainable, flooding into the shared space of their consciousness.
What the two of them were exchanging was more or less what you'd expect — comparing notes on those lost years, trading apologies. But in all honesty, Haruka Ouma had poured everything she had into these two children who weren't even hers by blood. Stealing the Void Genome had been tantamount to defecting from GHQ, and in this country, defecting from GHQ was a road with almost no survivable exits. The only reason she'd come through unscathed was Keido's own misconduct buying her a reprieve.
That kind of golden spirit was worth respecting, no matter what world you found it in.
"Mana… how did your memories come back? He told me you're going by Inori Yuzuriha now?"
"Inori Yuzuriha is the owner of this body, Aunt Haruka. I'm someone who should have died ten years ago." Mana held her own arms and smiled — firm, steady, choosing not to soften it. "So even if all I have is a soul borrowing someone else's body — I'm already more than grateful."
"Have they forced you — or Inori — to do terrible things?"
Haruka's heart ached. Her daughter had suffered so much, and now she was apparently someone else's instrument again. She wanted to walk out of this café right now, find the one calling itself Diavolo, and kill him.
"Every terrible thing has been entirely Inori's doing. I mostly just chat with her~"
—
— ...??
Inori registered this commentary in real time, and immediately lodged a series of very large, very emphatic question marks in the shared interior space.
She had always framed it as herself being the dark side and Mana being the light. But at this precise moment, it was becoming abundantly clear that Mana's pastel-pink inner landscape was, in fact, also black at the split — they were two people throwing stones from identical glass houses.
Mana felt Inori bristling and responded with the most purely innocent smile she could produce — exactly the smile of a twelve-year-old child who had done nothing wrong.
"It sounds like you two get along."
Even Haruka laughed. She could tell the malice was entirely playful.
"I suppose you could say she's unusual. But at the end of the day, she's kind."
"I really don't want you living like this anymore. Mana — wouldn't you come back? Come home with me and Shu? You and the Inori inside you — I'm sure Shu wouldn't mind having two beautiful older sisters."
Mana forced a smile at that. She wanted it too — more than Haruka knew — but Haruka didn't understand: Shu might not mind. Inori would.
And they weren't anywhere near a point in the story where any of this could be said lightly.
"Aunt Haruka — we're in the middle of something. Something important."
"About your uncle — about Shuichiro Keido. What he's been doing. There's no way you don't know, right?"
"…My brother?"
The look on Haruka's face — disoriented, unsteady — made it clear she'd either been kept entirely in the dark, or had spent years pushing a suspicion down and refusing to name it.
"He was the one who shaped me into Eve. And our father—" Mana's voice stayed quiet, steady, pitched below the restaurant's easy noise, "—Father was murdered by him."
"…I thought so. I had a feeling."
The pain in Haruka's expression was something older than this conversation.
On one side, the man she'd married. On the other, her own older brother. The two men who should have been the people closest to her in the world — once the most inseparable of friends — undone by something as small and absolute as envy.
He had envied Kurosu Ouma's brilliance. Had envied his children, that they'd been chosen to serve as Adam and Eve. Had envied that Kurosu's bloodline would stand at the origin of a new world. That was all there was to it. Over that, Keido had killed his friend and loosed the Apocalypse upon the earth.
"Aunt Haruka — what Inori and I are trying to do is make the Apocalypse Virus disappear from the world permanently."
"So there's still a great deal left for us to do together. This isn't my body — but Inori is very kind. She listened to my story. She accepted me. She gave me moments like this, where I can speak with you. This catastrophe is our shared fate, and I have to answer that — I have to meet what she's given me."
— Ohhh~ that was beautifully said. Keep going. More. Louder.
Those words had gone down very smoothly. Inori was particularly fond of Mana's brand of honesty — it was exactly what she liked about her. Just say the true thing, big and plainly.
"I see…"
Haruka didn't know the full shape of Funeral Parlor yet, but her impression of it had shifted considerably.
"I'm still a researcher with the Antibodies — if there's anything I can do to help, please just tell me."
"No, Aunt Haruka — you can't go back there. At this point even staying home isn't safe. To be cautious, I want you and Shu to move back to the old house on Oshima for now."
This wasn't Inori's idea. It was Mana being selfish.
The missing Void Genome would eventually be traced back to Haruka — the timing was only a matter of when. Mana didn't want her mother walking into danger, and that was perfectly understandable.
"You're just as sweet as you always were, Mana. You haven't changed at all since you were little."
Fresh tears found their way into Haruka Ouma's eyes despite herself.
Even back then, Mana had been too grown-up for her age. Although she was the older sibling, she had more than once stepped in for the overworked Haruka to look after Shu — had learned to cook, to do the laundry, all the ordinary household things, long before she needed to.
"Don't worry. I'm not going to become a burden to my own daughter."
"Your Aunt Haruka is quite capable, you know~"