"Your Void is really something, Inori."
Shu Ouma was in the passenger seat, turning slightly to look back at Inori Yuzuriha in the rear, where she was focused on issuing battle assignments with intense concentration.
After leaving Funeral Parlor's base, the two of them hadn't followed the main force. They'd taken a single car and headed for the battlefield alone. Neither of them had a driver's license—Shu had no idea how to operate a vehicle, and while Inori could drive, she needed both hands free to coordinate the operation. So naturally, the task of driving had fallen to an unconventional pair of hands: King Crimson.
Shu shot a nervous glance at the red metallic figure beside him. Honestly, it really is ugly, he thought. It's Inori's Void and it still looks like that. Maybe all the looks went to her instead.
Since the sight of a steering wheel and accelerator moving on their own with no one in the driver's seat was genuinely unsettling, Inori had materialized King Crimson. Shu knew who she was, anyway. No need to hide anything from him.
"That thing that contacted me in prison—that was this, wasn't it?"
"Yes."
Inori was deep in concentration, deploying tactics through her phone's virtual interface, and had no time for small talk. A single syllable was all she spared him.
A silence settled over the car. Shu turned to look out the window. The city that had been peaceful not long ago was in complete disarray now—crystallized bodies fracturing into nothing, one after another. Even through the glass he could hear the screams of people dying.
Shu had been in enough fights by now that death in front of him had lost some of its shock. But this kind of death—turned to crystal and shattered, leaving not even a body behind—still left something cold and heavy in his chest.
"Inori… did you really know they were going to do this? All along?"
Inori had just finished deploying the last of her assignments. She closed out the virtual keyboard on her phone and let herself exhale, settling back against the seat—and caught Shu's question just in time.
"What, are you here to put me on trial too?"
"No, that's not—"
Shu's voice went quiet. It wasn't really an answer to what he'd asked; it was deflection, and he knew it. He wanted to question her, but he was afraid of making her angry. So that was all he said.
"Shu." Inori sighed. Her long pink lashes lowered, and her voice took on a measured, patient weight. "You can't only think about what's in front of you."
"If I had moved first, made a preemptive strike, there's a good chance we wouldn't have been able to stop their next move. When the Apocalypse was triggered, some casualties would have been unavoidable either way—some people were always going to be lost. But that's still better than the entire world being encased in crystal. This is war. People die. That's what war means."
"I understand."
Shu said it like he didn't.
"Don't blame yourself for the tragedies happening around you. We are not the ones who started this war, or spread this virus. Even the strongest person can't save everyone—don't forget what you said that day. Know who you're fighting for. As for the people who don't matter: save whoever you can, and if you can't save them, there's nothing to be done. Their deaths aren't on us. They're on the enemy."
Inori felt, somewhere in the back of her mind, that she had somehow turned into Shu's mother. She'd never lectured anyone at this length in her entire life. She'd actively disliked him, once. Somewhere along the way, she supposed, Mana and Haruka and Yahiro had softened her without her noticing.
He was still weak, this boy. But the way he'd thrown himself into absorbing Jun's virus without a moment's resistance—there was something in that she couldn't find fault with.
"Thank you, Inori. I understand now."
"I still don't really know what my Void can do in a fight. But whatever you need—just say the word and I'll do it. Ah—not like before, I don't mean it that way. I just mean that for the sake of beating the enemy and avenging my sister, I'll follow your lead completely."
"Hmph."
The sound Inori made was dismissive. But a smile had started to form on her face anyway.
Shu clenched his fist and gave himself a silent push. He was still terrified of her—that hadn't changed. But in this moment, for the first time in his life, the respect he felt for a woman came from somewhere completely sincere. She was strong. Ruthless when she had to be. Cold-blooded, even. And yet—exactly as she'd said—the fault for all of it lay not with her, but with the enemies who had left her no other choice.
Mana. When this is over, I'll go back to Oshima with Haruka. We'll visit you and Father.
I don't know where Inori will go after all this. We might never see each other again. But whatever happens—I want to write it all down. This whole unforgettable adventure, and the story of Inori Yuzuriha.
Just then, a bright ringtone chimed from Inori's phone. With Diavolo "dead," the world was no longer graced with the sound of his beautiful humming ringtone. Gone for now.
Hare Menjou had once asked Inori about that strange ringtone—what it was, where it came from. Inori had waved her off and said she'd found it somewhere online. The truth was she'd composed it herself. Even Mana didn't know; Mana had still been asleep at the time. It was Inori's most closely guarded secret.
"Hare?"
"Inori! Where are you right now?"
"Where I should be." Inori's voice warmed slightly, then turned firm. "You and Kanon made it to the shelter, right? Don't go anywhere."
"Yes… the school went into lockdown under quarantine protocol. We're in the underground isolation facility. My phone's going to lose signal soon."
Hare's voice had an odd quality to it—something muted, not quite steady.
Probably scared. The virus spreading outside would rattle anyone.
"Stay put. This disaster will be over soon."
Knowing they were safe brought Inori real relief. Whatever else happened, whatever convergence the world's timeline demanded—as long as Hare never got drawn into the fighting, she was safe. Absolutely safe. Hare's bandage Void carried the same power as Crazy Diamond—the ability to repair anything, anyone. In combat she would be an extraordinary asset.
But Inori had never drawn Hare's Void. Not once.
Even if it was a powerful ability—if there was any chance, even the smallest chance, that using it might put Hare in harm's way, Inori wouldn't do it.
She let out a slow breath and looked out the window.
Her gaze swept across the people collapsed on the ground, then drifted upward as the crystal shards breaking off their bodies floated toward the sky. The clear day had long been smothered by dense, heavy cloud cover. From above the Ivory Christmas Tree, a column of light poured down and drenched the whole sky in a deep, apocalyptic violet. She looked at the tower, and the sky above it, and something nagged at her with a sense of familiarity.
Right. It looked exactly like the music video for her own song, The Everlasting Guilty Crown.
She was wearing a wide coat over her Funeral Parlor uniform. No makeup—her face was bare and clean. But on a whim, she reached into her pocket and uncapped a deep plum-red lip tint, drawing it across her mouth.
She studied herself in the mirror.
The face looking back at her was extraordinary. The dark red lips gave her something harder, something colder—a final-boss aura. This face bore no resemblance to the frail, helpless girl she'd been when she first woke up in this body. She felt, finally, that she had shed the last traces of Inori's original self. The person in the mirror was her own: a completely independent identity.
There was only one thing left. The last battle.
She had been waiting two years for this day. It was time to bring this story to a close.
Then her phone lit up on her lap—a new message. She glanced at the sender.
Yahiro Samukawa?
Strange. They'd just said their goodbyes. Had Jun relapsed?
Souta took Hare, the student council president, and the others to Ward 24. Their destination is Bridge No. 6 on the eastern side of GHQ headquarters.