Taisho-era Japan was a world in bloom. Western industry had been pouring across its borders, bringing enormous cultural shocks to a deeply traditional society. And yet—some things from the old world held fast. When darkness fell, a creeping shadow still spread over some corner of the country, and catastrophe still found its way there.
A night when demons walked free. A girl with pink hair and elaborate clothes stirred from sleep.
"Wake up, little Inori."
Someone was murmuring softly in her ear.
"It's time to go."
...
...
The same nightmare again.
A blizzard that seemed to have swallowed all of human civilization whole.
In the dream, Inori looked out across a vast snowfield, and from its depths—abrupt and incongruous—a range of mountains rose. The peaks were widely spaced, like beetles crawling out of flour-white earth. The plain was pure white. The mountains were black. Bare, stripped, utterly monochrome.
Just like after absorbing Eve—she had come back here again. The mountains. The snowfield. A woman wandering alone through the endless white, who would eventually die alone.
She had the same pink hair.
—LITTLE INORI! WAKE UP!
Someone calling to her—a voice from deep inside, that could only belong to Mana Ouma.
After her body had taken enough rest, Inori opened her eyes.
A crescent moon, pale as bone, hung in the sky above—obscured by clouds that had drifted in from nowhere.
Thick mist draped a barren mountain at night. The blurred outline of the terrain looked like a beast with its jaws thrown wide.
—What is that smell?
A sharp, cloying stench was dragging her awake—something she couldn't name exactly. Not the heavy iron-rot of decaying flesh. The closest comparison she could find was the dense, greasy reek of industrial lubricant, the kind that clung to factory machinery.
What met her eyes was a world cast in deep crimson.
—Strange. Wasn't I supposed to be... on the plane to Italy? What happened?
"Where am I?"
The girl pressed a hand to her aching head and sat upright, struggling to reconstruct what had come before.
—I remember taking out the Saint's Corpse on the plane. But with just a single touch—a touch—the thing launched a devastating psychic attack.
It had been the highest grade of mental contamination she'd ever experienced. Her entire world had fractured instantly into shards without shape or rule. Never mind her Stand—she hadn't been able to breathe. By rights it should never have been this severe; if the Saint's Corpse had this kind of power, why hadn't it triggered anything when Yoshikage Kira had it?
A gust of sharp wind rattled the leaves overhead. Cold. The clouds covering the crescent moon thinned and dispersed, and pale moonlight came down through the canopy in broken, leaf-carved fragments, scattering across the darkness in front of her.
She could see herself clearly now.
"...Huh?"
Inori's brow furrowed.
What on earth is this?
It was not the pale-green athletic shirt she'd received from Yasuho Hirose. What she was wearing was something else entirely—a strange garment, deep crimson as autumn maple leaves, highlighted at precise intervals with black and gold, like brushstrokes placed to complete a composition. It could have been ancient court dress, impossibly ornate—and it clung to every inch of her body, tight and alive, pressed against her skin without leaving a single gap, tracing her figure with perfect, insistent exactitude.
The Goldfish Outfit. The most iconic look from Guilty Crown—from the protagonist Inori herself.
And she could feel it breathing. This thing wrapped around her was an object-type Stand that thought.
Its name: King Crimson ACT2: Nameless Monster.
"How did this happen... Did King Crimson activate Yet to Come again?"
(③)
At the end of the Guilty Crown world, Inori had been caught in a trap by Keido's faction—on the verge of having Eve seize her body—when she awakened Yet to Come. It sent a version of herself from some point in the future—a self that had already transcended the limits of human biology—back in time to that past moment, where she fully absorbed Eve and the Apocalypse Virus that had infected the entire world.
And that form, the self who had surpassed humanity... this was it.
But why the sudden evolution now? Was it the Saint's Corpse?
Had the Corpse caused King Crimson to evolve into Nameless Monster?
This quickly, though? This made no sense.
"Yet to Come—cancel!"
Nothing happened.
"King Crimson—erase this world's time!"
The only answers were the hollow whistle of wind through the trees and the cries of something unknown in the dark.
Inori stared at her own hands in disbelief. In the center of each glove's palm, something like a tightly sealed eye. The Goldfish Outfit moved in perfect coordination with every motion she made—fluid, almost pleasant, like a full-body exoskeleton that fed supplementary energy into every movement.
But she didn't want this. She wanted King Crimson back. She wanted this outfit off.
"Off—it won't come off?"
She couldn't find a starting point. She tried peeling at the collar and back, hunting for a clasp or hidden zipper—nothing. She tried pulling at the chest piece, but even a light touch stung enough to make her hiss. Any real force would tear the skin clean off her—the Goldfish Outfit had become one with her body.
She struggled for a long time. It didn't move.
Inori gave up.
She knew already: Nameless Monster was a Stand that only looked like clothing. No amount of physical force was ever going to remove it.
But the logic still didn't sit right with her. King Crimson was her Stand. No matter how far it evolved, her will should have full authority over it. So why was Nameless Monster outside her command? Why couldn't she even dismiss it?
—Little Inori... do you not remember?
Inori snapped to attention. Mana hadn't been knocked out by whatever had hit Inori—she should have seen everything clearly.
—Tell me, Mana-chan. What exactly happened on that plane?
—Your body absorbed the Saint's Corpse fragment. Then it went completely haywire—and so did King Crimson. It dissolved at terrifying speed and reformed as this outfit, and forced itself onto you. After that... you lost your mind entirely. You started destroying everything in the cabin.
Mana was hesitant. All of it had been too sudden—one moment saying goodbye to Morioh and boarding a flight to Rome; then this, without warning.
But she knew she had to tell Inori the truth. Whatever had happened to them, they had to face it together.
—You lost your mind... and you killed the pilot and the flight attendants. Then the plane hit the water. You sank to the ocean floor with it.
—After that, I couldn't reach you at all. Everything went dark. I had no way to communicate. By the time you were aware again—we were already here. In this forest. I have no idea why.
"Is this an island?"
Inori set aside the question of the outfit for now and carefully studied her surroundings. A lifeless mountain forest. A crescent moon overhead. A smell in the air she still couldn't place.
—No.
Mana answered plainly.
—We went down over the ocean. By any normal measure... we should have drowned.
"...That's not possible, is it."
Inori saw it suddenly—the only explanation that fit.
She'd crossed into another world again. This was no longer the script of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.