"Even if it means killing? Even if it costs you your life?"
"Yes."
The voice on the other end of the line wasn't loud. But it was steady—each word landing with the weight of something decided.
Inori hadn't expected it to come so cleanly. Just last night she had been turning over the problem of how to get Shu Ouma to willingly put the King's Power to use—to absorb the Apocalypse Virus from every infected person in the world. And here he was, delivering the answer himself.
——Shu has grown up.
Mana said it with warmth, and meant it. The little boy who used to trail behind her calling "big sis, big sis" at every turn had become someone who could stand on his own—who had found something worth standing for. He no longer needed her protection. He had moved, by the force of his own conviction, from a piece that could only be used to something Inori might actually trust to have at her side.
——I underestimated him.
Inori replied with a faint note of something like concession, and tilted her head back to look at the sky—a thick scatter of stars pressed against the dark.
Thinking about it clearly: his change wasn't so surprising. Shu had always had the capacity. His personality had simply weighted him toward gentleness and hesitation, and in this era, gentleness without backbone was indistinguishable from weakness. What Shu had before wasn't even gentleness, really—it was closer to pure timidity.
Now his memories had come back. And with those memories, perhaps something else had surfaced too—a courage that had always been there, buried under childhood, waiting. She hoped what he'd said was true. But for someone like Shu, she also knew: without genuine resolve behind it, he wouldn't have had the nerve to say any of it to her face.
"Though I find your methods distasteful, and your selfishness frankly exhausting—if stopping the Second Lost Christmas means I become the expendable piece standing in front of you, then that is what I'll do. I know how small my strength is. I know you don't care. But this is my own choice, Miss Inori."
He had enough self-awareness to know exactly where he stood—which was precisely why strong as Inori was, she still needed companions. That was the reason she had gone to all the trouble of keeping Funeral Parlor's people in the dark.
"That's not quite right, Shu. Your strength is necessary."
Inori let herself smile, and gave him the answer he hadn't expected.
This, ultimately, changed nothing about the outcome. But willing cooperation was still infinitely preferable to coercion.
"The Void? Is this about my Void?"
Shu caught the implication quickly.
"I still don't know what my Void even is—but if it's useful to you, take it. Use whatever you need."
...
...
At the same moment, in a research facility somewhere beneath GHQ's compound, a man with half his face destroyed was waking up.
He couldn't orient himself yet. The left half of his face had not fully recovered sensation; the corresponding side of his body felt numbed, almost paralyzed. All he could do was lie on the medical bed and stare at the ceiling while fragments of the moments before he lost consciousness surfaced slowly in his mind.
The charge Mana had left with him.
Inori's punch had genuinely come close to caving in his skull. That he was still alive at all was difficult to believe. If not for Mana's entrustment in that final moment—the hope that he would become Adam, would become the demon king who destroyed the world, would let the Apocalypse descend once more—for only through that could a way to completely destroy it be found—he might have simply accepted the end.
Gai Tsutsugami still needed time to process all of it. But a more immediate question was pressing in: where was he, and why was he lying in what appeared to be a medical ward, with reconstruction work done to his face?
"Finally awake?"
A figure stepped out of the dark.
His face was still in shadow, but the voice—the cadence, the weight of it—gave him away immediately.
"Keido. Tch——"
Gai tensed without meaning to, and the movement pulled at his wounds. The pain was severe enough to drag a grunt out of even him.
"Your body still needs recovery. Don't try to sit up yet."
"Why did you save me?"
"Does saving one's own son require a reason?"
Keido crossed to the wall and flipped the switch. Light flooded the room—harsh and sudden—and a man with half-grayed hair and a full, dense moustache came into full view. For Gai, freshly roused and light-sensitive, it was overwhelming enough that he had to shield his eyes. And beneath that brightness, his mind drifted back—back through the years, to the beginning.
He had been born without knowing his real parents. As far back as he could remember, he had lived inside GHQ's virus research facilities alongside other children in the same situation. One by one, those children had crystallized in their containment units—turned to stone. Very few survived.
Later, he understood what those experiments had been: Keido's project to cultivate an Adam for Eve's awakening. He too had been flooded with the Apocalypse Virus alongside its vaccine, and he too had not broken down. That, in Keido's eyes, had made him worth keeping. He had been adopted—in name if not in meaning—until an accident at the research base sent the young Gai jumping into the sea. He had washed ashore on Oshima, where he met the Ouma siblings, and from there the thread of his life had woven into everything that followed.
Adopted son in name only. He had always known he was simply one of Keido's contingency options, one among countless others prepared for Eve. Disposable by definition.
By the time his eyes had adjusted enough to make the room out properly, a heavy-browed young man had appeared in it as well.
"Gai Tsutsugami—we need you to become the new Adam."
"...I don't suppose I have a choice."
Gai let out a low, bitter exhale and dropped his gaze.
That moment with Mana hadn't been a hallucination—he could feel it now, certain. She was still inside Inori's body, still there. A woman whose punches could knock satellites out of orbit didn't miss a killing blow by accident. Mana had been fighting, with everything she had, to stop her.
Including this time, that made twice Mana had saved his life. Something thick and wordless rose in Gai's chest—something that threatened, briefly, to become tears. He pressed it down. He could not show this in front of enemies. However small the margin, he would not surrender a single scrap of ground.
He would endure. For whatever thread of hope remained.
Just as Inori had predicted: once he woke, Gai Tsutsugami would spend what was left of this ruined body in Mana's name—and would not stop until there was nothing left to spend.
"What's the plan?"
He asked, wanting at least the outline of what was coming.
"That woman is genuinely intractable. Shuichiro—look at what you've made."
Even Yuu's composure flickered at the memory of being backstabbed. A faint unease moved across his face.
"You're speaking to the person who couldn't have anticipated it. If even Da'ath's own representative couldn't handle her, how would you expect me to have seen it coming?" Keido said, his expression reassembling into something precise and humorless. "And at this point, we still don't know what her Void can actually do."
"That can't be helped." Yuu gave a soft, resigned sound. "All I can piece together is a rough outline—something that briefly arrests time for a few seconds. But in my assessment, that already exceeds the scope of a Void. And that metallic figure that moves at her side—it's something none of us have a framework for."
"Oh?" Keido's interest sharpened. "You've lived forever. In the previous three Apocalypses—nothing comparable?"
"Voids that affect time do exist. But I have never encountered a humanoid Void like that—nor does 'time arrest' quite cover what it does. Because during the interval when everyone's awareness blanked out, everything that happened still genuinely happened. It isn't quite memory loss. It's more as though everyone experienced selective amnesia for a segment of reality—and she alone could respond within it."
"This may have already moved beyond the category of Void. It may not be native to this world at all."
Yuu paused, and then something shifted behind his eyes.
"I understand now. She may not be from this world."
"What are you talking about?"
Keido shook his head. His thinking was too shallow, too narrow—he simply couldn't grasp what Yuu was gesturing at.
"Regardless of what surprises may arise—we must ensure humanity achieves its evolution."
"Do you actually have a way to stop Inori?"
Gai raised his head and directed the question at Keido.
He hadn't seen King Crimson in action himself. He couldn't begin to internalize the cold dread, the suffocating weight of what it felt like to stand in its presence.
"We aren't going to stop her, Gai. Because——"
"Inori will become the new Eve."