After Shido gave a brief, concise explanation that an organization called [Ratatoskr] wanted to meet me.
With Shido’s warning to be careful, a strange sensation of floating washed over my body. I was startled for a moment and my eyes went wide, but Shido, who was rising into the sky with me, calmed Tohka down when she reacted in a similar way, adding that it wasn’t anything strange and there was no need to worry.
At those words, I felt a little relieved and let myself be carried by the floating sensation. It was a slightly different feeling from flying with telekinesis. It was more like being abducted by a UFO that had suddenly appeared. As I marveled at the sensation of my whole body losing its weight, before I knew it I was standing not in the middle of the park that had been wrecked beyond recognition, but in a space made of mechanical-looking walls and floors that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a sci-fi movie.
All around me were people wearing uniform, almost military-looking clothes with a coordinated design. I was startled by the sudden appearance of so many people, but when I spotted one familiar face in the middle of them, I managed to calm my racing heart again.
She wore something like a khaki suit, and in the left breast pocket she had a stitched teddy bear. A woman with especially striking dark circles under her eyes. She was Ms. Murasame Reine, known at Raizen High School as the physics teacher and homeroom teacher of Class 2-4.
As if she had prepared clothes in advance for Tohka, who had been stripped naked, she had something for her to wear and had brought several women in uniform along with her. She used the garment she was holding to cover Tohka’s body, then thanked Shido for his hard work. At that, the uniformed people waiting nearby suddenly cheered and began applauding in unison.
“You really sealed her Spirit powers! Amazing!” and “Is her chest wound okay?” kinds of exclamations and worried voices poured toward Shido from all around. Startled by the sudden wave of praise, Shido blinked and went, “Eh,” but as all of it was directed at praising him, he soon lowered his head with an embarrassed expression.
“...And you are—Kang Haneul, right?”
Then, a moment later, at Reine’s voice as she asked while mentioning my name, the cheer-filled room fell silent as if by magic. Unlike Shido, who had been showered with admiration, I received their stiff gazes, which seemed a little frightened. Maybe they were scared after seeing me fight Tohka so fiercely. Taking that as my guess, I nodded to Reine and said yes.
“...You must be very busy too, so thank you for making time like this. This place is the airship [Fraxinus]. As a member of [Ratatoskr], I welcome you. I hope you’ll make yourself comfortable here.”
She said it in a sleepy voice, but even if she told me to relax and stay comfortable, the atmosphere around me and the things I’d have to face next made it hard to imagine I’d be able to do that. I nodded politely and said I was in her care, and Reine nodded back.
“...Then, this is sudden for a first meeting, but could you come with me? There’s someone who wants to talk to you.”
“Sure.”
Without showing any particular suspicion, I nodded right away. After all, the only person who could possibly want to meet me here—on this airship called Fraxinus—was Itsuka Kotori, Shido’s younger sister, who was in charge of this place.
And now that I had caught the attention of AST, I needed [Ratatoskr]’s help more desperately than anyone. Since they were an organization that protected Spirits, if I, someone outside the bounds of normal human standards, asked for help, they would probably do something for me. At the very least, compared to a group whose purpose was to kill Spirits, [Ratatoskr] was a hundred, a thousand times better than either Japan’s AST or Korea’s AST.
So there was no need to unnecessarily bare my teeth and clash with them. I didn’t know what [Ratatoskr] was like, but for now, I was the one who stood to lose more if I didn’t have their help.
Turning around, Reine said I should follow her, opened a bulkhead, and left the room. Shido and Tohka seemed to have something else to do, because they were following behind a tall black-haired woman with long hair and bangs covering one eye, the kind I’d seen in anime. As I watched Shido grow farther away and leave me with a “See you later,” I trailed after Reine, who was guiding me.
“............Ah.”
“What is it?”
After walking down the corridor for a few minutes, Reine suddenly made a strange sound, stopped, and rummaged in her arms. Just as I wondered about her sudden behavior, she pulled out something like a pill bottle, opened the lid, and shook the contents straight into her mouth. Like Shin-chan downing Chocobi in one go, capsule-shaped pills poured out in a rush and all went into her mouth.
“Eh...?”
“...It was time to take my medicine. Let’s go.”
“............Huh?”
I made a dumbfounded face as she tucked the empty bottle back into her clothes and started walking again. Unless I’d seen wrong just now, that bottle definitely looked like it said sleeping pills.
“............No way. It was probably just candy or snacks shaped like medicine.”
It made no sense for an ordinary person, not a Spirit, to eat that many sleeping pills and be perfectly fine. Besides, if those were really sleeping pills, she wouldn’t have those dark circles under her eyes. Muttering that she was trying to confuse people, I kept following behind Reine, who was walking ahead with a broad, smiling face.
We took an elevator inside the facility and walked down the corridor for a few more minutes. At first it had been interesting, but by the time I was starting to get bored of the endlessly repeating hallway scenery, she said we’d arrived and pointed to the door right in front of us.
“...The person waiting for you is in here. Just a moment, I’ll open it.”
She held a card up to a scanner-like device mounted beside the door, and the closed door began to open left and right with a heavy sound. The room beyond it had the atmosphere of a meeting room. Because there was a large round table in the middle, the impression of a conference room was even stronger. As I stepped inside, I tilted my head for a moment. I had expected the bridge of the airship I’d seen in the anime to be on the other side of the door—some place where an AI presented options and people chose among them—but what appeared instead was a solemn room with a completely different feel from what I’d imagined.
Maybe I’d come to the wrong room? That thought crossed my mind, but seeing the one person occupying a seat at the round table with eight chairs made it seem like that wasn’t the case.
A crimson coat draped over her shoulders, and hair even brighter and deeper red than the coat itself. A girl who looked about a head shorter than me, with that hair split into left and right sections and tied with black ribbons.
“Nice to meet you. Is this the second time we’ve seen each other?”
Itsuka Kotori, Shido’s younger sister, greeted me like that from her seat. Since she said “the second time,” it seemed she remembered the time she’d met me with Younghee at Raizen High School.
“Would calling you Haneul be too rude? What should I call you?”
“Just call me Kang Haneul. That’s my name, after all.”
I didn’t particularly want to be addressed with excessive politeness, and as for what to call me, there wasn’t really anything besides my name. So I told her to just call me casually. Though given my current state, the thought “Call me Sans” flashed through my head for a split second, but if I were really called that, I felt like I’d cringe so hard I’d die of embarrassment.
“What’s wrong?”
“...Nothing.”
For a moment I imagined being called Sans, and as expected, the damage was absurdly severe, so my expression soured. Kotori tilted her head at my suddenly changed face, but I brushed it off with a quick “It’s nothing” and sat in the chair opposite hers.
As soon as I sat down, Reine, perhaps having prepared it in advance, brought over a tray with tea and refreshments and set it in front of me. I hadn’t expected to be treated to something like this, so I widened my eyes in surprise. Reine, who had brought the tray, tilted her head and sent me a questioning look.
“...You don’t like green tea?”
“No, I like it.”
At that question, I answered and drank the green tea. It was at a perfect temperature, neither too hot nor too cold, so it was easy to drink. After taking a sip and setting the cup back on the tray, I lightly moistened my throat and then looked straight at Kotori, who was sitting across from me.
“First of all, thank you for making time for us despite how sudden this must have been. You heard about [Ratatoskr] from Shido before coming here, right?”
“I heard there was an organization with that name that wanted to meet me. Anyway, this is that [Ratatoskr] place, right?”
I already knew quite a bit about the organization called [Ratatoskr] from the anime. But I didn’t act like I knew that and deliberately played dumb. If I said nothing and then seemed to know all about [Ratatoskr]’s purpose from the start, they’d definitely find me incredibly suspicious.
“That’s right. This is [Ratatoskr]. More precisely, it’s the airship called [Fraxinus], which belongs to our [Ratatoskr].”
There was a proud note in Kotori’s voice as she said that. Maybe she cherished this airship called Fraxinus. Come to think of it, if I had a flying warship like this, a collection of pure romance, I’d probably treasure it like crazy too.
“What [Ratatoskr] does, to put it simply, is peacefully resolve [Spacequake] incidents occurring all over the world.”
“Hmm, I see.”
“You’re not very surprised, so it seems you already had some idea about the cause of [Spacequake]. That’s right. When I said we resolve them peacefully, I meant we solve [Spacequake]s by ‘talking’ to the [Spirit]s who cause them. Ah, just in case, have you ever heard the word ‘Spirit’ before?”
“...Huh? What?”
At the question of whether I knew about Spirits, I was startled and my eyes went wide. Kotori muttered, “So you didn’t know...,” and began her explanation. She went on about special disaster-designated life forms and the causes of [Spacequake]s and a bunch of other things, but I’d nearly had a heart attack from the shock, so I couldn’t really take it in.
When she said [Ratatoskr] “peacefully resolves [Spacequake] incidents,” I’d responded flatly with “Hmm, I see,” without any real reaction. But thinking back on it later, I realized immediately that it had been the wrong response.
I knew the cause of [Spacequake]s because I’d seen the anime. Ordinary people, however, had that fact classified as a state secret, so no matter what, they could never know the true cause of [Spacequake]s.
I could have looked it up on a wiki right then and there. If you searched for the [Spacequake] article and read the section on causes, all you’d find were weird theories like barometric pressure changes or plasma theories. There was nowhere that said a beautiful girl called a [Spirit] appeared in the real world and caused the aftermath.
The moment I didn’t react in shock to the phrase “resolving [Spacequake]s,” which ordinary people could never even imagine, I had effectively admitted that I knew the cause of [Spacequake]s.
I’d better be careful about what I say and how I react too. Fortunately, perhaps because Kotori saw me as someone outside normal human standards, she didn’t seem to find it that strange that I knew the cause of [Spacequake]s.
“Anyway, to deal with those Spirits, each country has established specialized anti-Spirit units. In Japan, they’re called AST. In Britain, SSS. And in your country, Korea, there’s an anti-Spirit unit called SSPT.”
“...You mean they deal with Spirits by killing the Spirits that cause [Spacequake]s, right?”
“That’s right. But despite being founded for that purpose, not a single unit has ever actually achieved the record of killing a Spirit.”
Sure enough, even in the anime I didn’t think I’d ever seen AST kill a Spirit. Of course, if they did kill Spirits the story wouldn’t progress, so it was only natural that such a scene never appeared, but actually encountering that fact in reality felt strangely surreal.
Still, the name of Korea’s anti-Spirit unit being SSPT was a little surprising. I’d definitely thought they’d just slap a K in front of AST and call it KAST.
“Anyway, when brute-force annihilation didn’t work, that’s when our [Ratatoskr] came into being. We’re an organization formed with the goal of resolving [Spacequake]s peacefully by talking, without killing Spirits. Of course, we keep our true nature secret from every country. An organization that embraces Spirits instead of killing them is exactly the kind of thing that makes the higher-ups look at us like crazy bastards.”
“...Mm. That does make sense.”
From a nation’s point of view, a Spirit who causes [Spacequake]s capable of casually blowing away an entire city is definitely an existence that must be eliminated at any cost. But if there were a group that protected such a terrifying being, the state would never look kindly on them.
Besides, that peaceful method was to make a Spirit fall for you by dating them, so from the perspective of the higher-ups who didn’t know the details, it was perfect for making them think, “What kind of insane bullshit is this?!” and dismiss it as a joke. In fact, when I first saw that method in the anime, I’d laughed so hard I nearly held my stomach.
“But in the end, that crazy group managed to do what no country, not even the United States, could do: resolve [Spacequake]s. Tohka... I mean, you saw what happened to the girl you fought just now, right?”
She kissed Shido and then suddenly her clothes came off and she was naked. I nodded without saying that out loud.
“Anyway, resolving [Spacequake]s this way, and further protecting Spirits so they can live lives no different from humans—that’s the purpose of our [Ratatoskr] organization. Is there anything else you want to ask?”
“....................”
At Kotori’s question asking whether I had any more questions, I fell into a brief dilemma over what I could ask without seeming strange. Honestly, I already knew from watching the anime how [Ratatoskr] resolved [Spacequake]s. Kotori’s explanation wasn’t lacking anything either, so it seemed like there wasn’t much left to ask.
But as I mulled over what Kotori had explained, I realized there was one important piece of information missing.
Her explanation had completely skipped over Shido.
Since I had just seen Shido collapse in a pool of blood and then come back to life, and I’d seen Tohka turn naked when she kissed Shido, there was absolutely nothing strange about me being curious about that.
After quickly deciding on my question, I asked about Shido right away, and Kotori answered without any hesitation, explaining his situation to me.
And sure enough, every single part of her explanation was something I already knew. That Shido had the power to seal a Spirit’s Spirit powers and the ability to regenerate, and that the peaceful method she’d just mentioned was for Shido to make a Spirit fall for him and then kiss her. Doing that would seal her Spirit powers and turn the Spirit into someone no different from an ordinary human.
But when Kotori said with a serious face that he made Spirits fall for him and then kissed them, I almost spat out the green tea I was drinking from laughing.
Anyway, now I really had no more questions. When I shook my head at her question of whether there was anything else I wanted to ask, Kotori said, “Then...” and looked at me with eyes that seemed to be probing me.
“Would it be all right if I ask you a question this time?”
“Ask away.”
With a shrug, I said that, and Kotori immediately opened her mouth to ask me something. As expected, the question was about my identity. Was I a Spirit? If not, then what was I? What was the nature of that power, and how had I obtained it?
My first answer to that was, “I’m not a Spirit.” But it seemed the other side had already guessed that much, because they simply brushed it off with a casual “I see” after I said I wasn’t a Spirit.
Had they investigated my past without my knowing? Anyway, after I answered that, the questioning moved on to the second point.
“Then what are you? I’ve never seen anyone who isn’t a Spirit or a Wizard yet can wield such tremendous power. If you’re not a Spirit... then what are you?”
“....................!”
Just before I answered that, words I’d never expected to say tried to burst out on their own, only to be barely swallowed back down the back of my throat.
“i’m sans. sans the skeleton.” flashed through my mind and then vanished again. Literally, it meant “I’m Sans. Sans the skeleton.” in English. Why had I, who couldn’t speak English at all, suddenly tried to blurt out something so absurd? Startled by a voice box that was acting on its own without my will, I regained control again and let out a sigh.
Then, after gathering my thoughts again, I answered the question.
“...I’m human.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“I’m serious. Hard to believe, I know, but I was originally just an ordinary human. This power... I mean, the bones you saw me summon, or the giant dragon bones that shoot lasers—no, the kind of thing like that Gaster Blas... anyway, those things somehow appeared on me when I woke up.”
That wasn’t a lie. If anything, it was the plain truth. I still had no idea why I’d turned into Sans when I woke up. I wanted to ask how I’d gotten this power more than anyone else did.
Of course, I deliberately didn’t say that I’d turned into a game character named Sans. Because in this world, not only did the game [Undertale] not exist, but neither did the person who made it, Toby Fox.
So I deliberately left out things like the changed world, the anime called [Date A Live], or the fact that I’d turned into a game character. If I said even one thing wrong, it wouldn’t just complicate the situation—it would be a disaster.
Anyway, after leaving out those three topics and talking about everything else, Kotori, seated at the round table, propped her chin on one hand and looked at me with a thoughtful expression.
“...When did that power suddenly appear?”
“Last month. It hasn’t been that long.”
At that, Kotori exchanged a few words with Reine, who was sitting beside her. The distance across the table was too great, and the two of them were speaking in low voices, so I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
About two minutes later, after finishing her conversation with Reine, Kotori suddenly put on a serious expression and glared at me. I flinched a little under that look.
“You already heard what [Ratatoskr] does, right?”
“An organization that talks to Spirits to resolve [Spacequake]s peacefully, walking a completely different path from AST, which advocates the extermination of Spirits... right?”
And to sum it up in one line, it was an organization that made Shido’s harem for him.
—That silly thought popped into my head again, so I hurriedly shoved it into a corner.
For some reason, ever since I’d become like this, thoughts like that—things I normally would never think—kept popping up.
This was an important moment. I shouldn’t be thinking weird things like that. The instant I pulled myself together and focused on Kotori’s words again,
“If you don’t mind, would you consider joining our [Ratatoskr]?”
“What?”
Hearing something I hadn’t expected at all, my eyes turned into dots.
“What do you think? I don’t think it’s bad for either side. Since your face has already been seen by Japan’s AST, information about you has probably already leaked to Korea’s SSPT as well. Until now you’ve hidden your power, so you haven’t had to worry about being chased by anti-Spirit units, but now that it’s been discovered you possess tremendous power despite not being a Spirit, you won’t be able to live as normally as before.”
After saying that, Kotori seemed to have finished the candy in her mouth, because she tossed away the stick she’d been holding and took out a new candy, putting it into her mouth again.
“Ah, if that sounded like I was threatening you, I’m sorry. But I didn’t mean it in any bad way. Our [Ratatoskr] may be a ‘secret organization,’ but we do have several means of exerting considerable influence on society. Korea, in particular, is a country strongly affected by [Ratatoskr], so we can at least use our hands to keep SSPT from targeting you.”
“...What do you want from me?”
“Everything. More precisely, a complete recruitment of you as an existence. I’ll be honest. We want to recruit you into [Ratatoskr]. An existence that isn’t a Spirit but can fight on equal footing with the battle-type Spirit [Princess] probably doesn’t exist anywhere else besides you. For us, whose purpose is to protect Spirits, having someone like you turn into an enemy would be incredibly troublesome.”
“I don’t really have any intention of becoming your enemy.”
“Still, it’s better to be certain. You never know—you might get recruited by AST or SSPT someday.”
“...That’s true.”
If a nation learned of an existence that wasn’t a Spirit but could fight Spirits on equal footing, there was no way they’d just leave that existence alone. A more aggressive country would send in the military to eliminate them, while a less aggressive one would make them one of their own and use them as a useful countermeasure against Spirits.
But I didn’t want that. Fighting was scary, and from the start I absolutely couldn’t do something like killing Spirits. Becoming a combat creature that fought only on the orders of a nation was an absolute no.
Rather, it seemed a hundred, a thousand times better to use this power not to kill Spirits, but to help [Ratatoskr], which saved them. After all, I’d come here precisely because I wanted [Ratatoskr]’s help to avoid the kind of situation I’d just described. I never expected them to be the ones to offer me a place in [Ratatoskr] first.
I had no intention of letting this chance slip away.
“I’ll join [Ratatoskr].”
As soon as I made up my mind and answered, Kotori’s lips curved into a smile for the first time.
“Then does that mean I just need to help with this thing called Spirit conquest too?”
“...Huh? What are you talking about?”
And with that added remark, Kotori, who had just lifted the corners of her mouth, tilted her head.
“Huh? Weren’t you telling me to join [Ratatoskr] so I could also help with Spirit conquest as a bonus?”
“No... Well, it would be nice if you helped, but just bringing you over as an ally, since you’re clearly going to be troublesome if you become an enemy, is already enough for us.”
“...Really?”
Kotori turned out to want far less than I’d expected. So she really was only trying to bring me over as an ally. If it were me, I would’ve asked for all sorts of help in exchange for protecting my personal safety.
Wasn’t this a little too one-sided? They were stopping an entire nation’s military from moving, and yet I wasn’t really doing anything for them.
“Of course, if [Ratatoskr] ends up operating in Korea, I’d like your cooperation. Personally, having you help with the conquest would be reassuring, but you’re going to have to return to Korea soon anyway, right? You can’t exactly go back and forth over a distance of 942 kilometers. Unless you settle in Japan, it’s practically impossible for you to help with Spirit conquest—”
“What if I settled here?”
“...Are you serious?”
When I brought up settling here, Kotori sent me a look that clearly meant, “Has this guy lost his mind?” Deciding to immigrate was definitely not something light enough to settle so easily. But immigration was something I’d already thought over carefully during the night.
Like Kotori said—“Now that it’s been discovered you possess tremendous power, you won’t be able to live as normally as before”—if I kept living a normal school life in Korea, the friends around me would end up getting dragged into trouble by some organization targeting me and getting hurt.
Kotori said she could at least stop Korea’s anti-Spirit unit from targeting me, but as far as I remembered, [Date A Live] also had a villainous organization called DEM. And DEM was a global conglomerate with enormous influence worldwide.
Even on wiki pages, if you searched DEM, it didn’t describe them as “the evil organization from [Date A Live]”; it described them as Britain’s largest multinational corporation, one that could slap Google in the face and get away with it.
Would [Ratatoskr] really be able to stop such a huge evil organization if it attacked me? Some people might wonder how a mere company could cause that kind of chaos in another country, but evil organizations in anime don’t care about the opinions of nations and just run wild.
It seemed far safer to settle down properly in Tengu City, where Fraxinus was watching over things. At the very least, if DEM attacked, [Ratatoskr] would also begin acting in response. Then even an evil organization that ignored the state’s authority would have no choice but to keep its head down to some extent.
And above all, this world was now reality for me too. The disaster called [Spacequake], which I had only ever seen in anime, was now a real threat to me as well. So for my own safety, and for the sake of my friends who might one day get caught up in a [Spacequake], resolving [Spacequake]s was an extremely important matter.
If I could add my power to what [Ratatoskr] did, then the conquest of Spirits—the cause of [Spacequake]s—could be carried out more safely and more reliably. For example, I could personally stop an attack from DEM that tried to interfere with Spirit conquest.
More firepower was always reassuring, the more the better.
“Immigration is on a completely different level from just moving. It means changing the country you live in entirely. Are you still okay with that?”
I was fine with it. Since I was an orphan with no family, changing the country I lived in wasn’t that big a problem. Leaving my friends behind was still hard to swallow, but it was far better than staying together and getting dragged into a disaster. And if I missed them, it wasn’t like they were far away—I could just take a plane to the neighboring country.
I had no intention of reversing the decision I’d already made. Seeing that, Kotori muttered, “If that’s your decision...” and suddenly snapped her fingers.
“...Here.”
“Ah, yes.”
Then Reine, who had been sitting beside Kotori, suddenly stood up and brought over a stack of documents she must have prepared in advance, placing them in front of me. I skimmed the Japanese written on them once. The papers contained things like confidentiality clauses and consent for settlement.
“Reine here will explain the details of immigration. Well, ‘details’ is a bit much, since all you really need to do is come to Japan. Ratatoskr will handle all the complicated procedures like obtaining citizenship, so you don’t need to worry about that.”
“Isn’t that a little too much help?”
“Don’t think of it as a burden. This is just a small token of sincerity. Now then... since you said you’d settle in Japan, we should talk about things like your work, your compensation, and various other matters, right?”
As Kotori rubbed her palms together and said that, Reine, who had brought the document stack, handed me a pen, saying I’d need it for signing. At a glance, the documents were so numerous and varied that they looked like they could stack up into a small tower.
Just as a premonition that this would take a very long time made a bead of cold sweat trickle down my forehead,
a ringtone suddenly sounded from my pocket.
“...Huh?”
Feeling the vibration climbing up my thigh, I blinked and put my hand in my pocket. What was ringing was my smartphone. Who was calling at this time? With a troubled expression, I looked back and forth between my phone and Kotori, and Kotori cheerfully said, “Go ahead and answer it first,” making a gesture with her hand as if to pick up the call.
“Then, excuse me for a moment.”
After saying that, I opened the lid of the phone case covering the screen. And then I saw the caller’s name displayed on it. The moment I saw it, I swallowed hard.
“...I’m screwed.”
“Huh?”
Kotori tilted her head, unable to understand my muttered Korean. But regardless, I had no choice but to stare at the phone with a horrified expression and trembling eyes. The caller name shown on the screen was “Younghee.”
The instant I saw that name, the short conversation Younghee and I had at the hotel flashed through my mind.
“It’s because it’s a really important item! Anyway, I’ll come back right away with just that, so Younghee, you go to the shelter first.”
“...Okay. You have to come back as fast as possible.”
“...How much time has passed?”
I realized instinctively. If I went back to the hotel, my friends would give me a serious scolding. And Younghee, whom I had so confidently promised I’d return to quickly, would scold me even harder until I was in tears. Younghee was terrifying when she was angry. As her friend, I knew that fact all too well.
“Why have you been acting weird since earlier? You look like a teenage son who got caught hiding a dirty magazine.”
“This is way more serious than that?! No, that’s serious enough too, but...! Anyway, I’m doomed! Totally doomed!”
As a cold flash of realization swept through my head, I grabbed my hair and shouted that. Kotori and Reine only looked at me with puzzled expressions.
○○○
The airship called Fraxinus had no windows. So I couldn’t see how dark the sky outside had become, but judging from the time shown on my phone’s clock, the sky outside was surely already pitch black.
The [Spacequake] alert issued for Tengu City still hadn’t been lifted. The Self-Defense Force’s recovery unit was still having a miserable time repairing the mountain split by Tohka’s attack.
While the citizens evacuated to shelters, the Self-Defense Force restored the disaster site, and the people of [Ratatoskr] all spent time in their own places, I was just blankly spacing out in the rest area inside Fraxinus.
The entrance to the space was labeled as a lounge, but that didn’t mean it was especially spacious. It was a simple area with two potted plants, two benches, and a few vending machines set into a recessed corner. Kotori had said there was another lounge somewhere else that was better equipped and more spacious, but I decided to just spend my time here, where there weren’t many people.
That was because Kotori and Reine treated me normally enough, but the other people working here—the ones called “agents”—kept jumping every time they saw me and sneaking nervous glances my way. Maybe it was because, unlike Tohka, whose Spirit powers had been sealed, I could still use my power just fine, so they were scared. Honestly, though, every time I got those frightened looks, it made me feel sad, so I decided to just spend my time here where there was no one around.
The clock in the lounge showed 8:30. It had already been more than an hour since Tohka split the mountain.
“...I’m really glad [Ratatoskr] is helping me.”
At the short conversation I’d had with Younghee at the hotel that flashed through my mind, I let out a sigh of relief and muttered to myself. It had been a long time since I’d said I’d definitely return to the hotel after the [Spacequake] alert sounded. Normally, I would have been scolded so badly by my friends that I’d be in tears, just like when I first came to Japan, but fortunately this time [Ratatoskr] had made me a proper alibi, so I’d managed to avoid getting yelled at by my friends.
When I saw Younghee’s name on my phone, I was really scared at first. But thanks to Reine snatching the phone away and making up a lie right then and there, I was able to get through it without being scolded by Younghee. Anyway, I’m really glad [Ratatoskr] helped me. Muttering that to myself again, I looked down at the files laid out on the bench.
“...Spirits, huh.”
This was the file Kotori had just given me, saying I should definitely read it. And on the very first page, the word [Confidential] was printed in large letters, complete with an exclamation mark. As the word confidential itself suggested, this file contained information so enormous that an ordinary civilian would never be able to access it.
It was [Ratatoskr]’s own investigation and classification of the Spirits who had appeared in the world after the Great Disaster of Eurasia. When I asked whether it was really okay for me to read something so important, Kotori had told me that anyone belonging to [Ratatoskr] needed to know it without exception, and had even urged me to memorize the contents if possible.
“...There are this many of them?”
Every time I looked at the contents of the file, I honestly couldn’t stop being surprised. It had been five years since I last watched the anime, so my memory was hazy, but I still had a certain confidence that I knew the basics. Yet the contents of the file showed just how arrogant those thoughts had been.
More than I’d imagined—no, more than what I’d seen in the anime—the number of Spirits [Ratatoskr] had investigated was enormous.
A Spirit with the identifier [Shuten-douji], with horns on her head. A Spirit with the identifier [Siren], singing against a seaside backdrop. A Spirit with the identifier [Wendigo], with something like deer antlers, its shape blurred by fierce blizzards. And beyond those, dozens of other Spirits I’d never seen in the anime were recorded in the file with blurry photos, each one set against some different natural disaster.
“But most of them only appeared once or twice. And the times they appeared were almost all ten or twenty years ago... [Dark Oni]? There’s even a Spirit with that identifier? First appeared in Korea... and devastated South Gyeongsang?”
Of course, the file also contained Spirits I knew, not just ones I’d never seen before. Yoshino, with the identifier [Hermit]. Kaguya and Yuzuru, with the identifier [Berserk]. And Miku, with the identifier [Diva], whose last appearance had been about half a year ago.
Come to think of it, was her name Natsumi? I vaguely remembered there being someone who got mocked for not having a voice actor because the anime hadn’t continued past season 2, but I’d never actually seen season 3, so I didn’t really know who Natsumi was here.
But why were all the Spirits I’d seen in the anime only appearing within the last year? It’s not like the others were all dead or anything.
“Um... excuse me...”
“...Hm?”
Just as I was propping my chin on my hand and scanning the file again with a face full of questions, I suddenly heard a familiar boy’s voice from beside me. Turning my head to the right, I could see Shido standing at the entrance to the lounge. Startled, I hurriedly put down the file I’d been reading and stood up, and Shido looked flustered and said, “You can stay seated if you want...”
“Oh, uh... Shido?”
“Huh? Ah... yeah. My name is Shido, but...”
“...Well. Um...”
The moment I saw Shido, I couldn’t get the words out. An awkward atmosphere filled the lounge and spread silence through the room. For a while, Shido and I just looked at each other awkwardly. As time passed without me being able to easily say what was on my mind, Shido spoke first and pointed to the bench I’d been sitting on.
“Would it be okay if I sat next to you for a moment?”
“Ah... yeah. Sure.”
After nodding and saying that, Shido sat down.
“Are you feeling better? When you were stopping Tohka, you looked like you were having a really hard time.”
“Tohka was so strong that I really did have a rough time.”
Honestly, if Shido hadn’t shown up then, I definitely would have been killed by Tohka. Tohka’s strength wasn’t at a level where I could get cocky just because I’d gained some abilities and picked up a buff skill or two. Sure, while the buff was active I’d thought, “Huh? Maybe I can win?” but as it started wearing off, I immediately understood, “Winning is absolutely impossible, impossible, impossible, impossible!”
Unless the buff duration was infinite, beating Tohka was practically impossible. And considering I was still inexperienced with using my abilities in the first place, coming back from a fight with Tohka with all my limbs intact was honestly close to a miracle.
“And as you can see, my body is fine, but... still...”
“Hm?”
The moment I was about to answer Shido’s question about whether I was okay by saying I was, a scene suddenly flashed through my mind of Shido lying collapsed in the middle of a pool of blood.
His face had been drained of color and gone deathly pale. His dull eyes had lost their light. And his shirt had been soaked through with blood too. As I remembered that, my feelings suddenly became complicated again, and my eyes drifted unnecessarily toward Shido’s chest.
Startled by my gaze suddenly fixed on his chest, Shido covered it and said in a flustered voice, “W-What are you looking at...?”
“No, it’s just... I mean, the thing about you getting shot in the chest. Is that okay now?”
I hurriedly said “It’s not like that” to Shido, who seemed to be misunderstanding something strange, and asked in a very small voice. Honestly, right now I was deeply regretting having let Shido get shot.
I’d sworn not to interfere in the situation because of the butterfly effect and all sorts of reasons, but after seeing Shido lying in a pool of blood, I realized just how badly wrong that line of thinking had been.
In the end, I was already the one who had heavily interfered with the original story by fighting Tohka in the first place, even though I’d said, “I have no choice but to let Shido get shot for the sake of the original.” At that point, all those reasons like “the sealing of Spirit powers must not fail” or “I mustn’t recklessly interfere and ruin things” had long since turned into flimsy excuses.
As I looked at Shido and asked cautiously, with self-loathing seeping into my bones, Shido gave a good-natured smile and said, “I’m fine. Thanks for worrying about me.”
“Honestly, I was shocked too. I was sure I’d died, but to be alive and well like this... Kotori says it’s some kind of ‘regeneration’ ability, but it doesn’t really feel real.”
“I... I’m sorry. If I’d come a little faster, I could’ve stopped you from getting shot.”
If I could turn back time, I would never choose that. As regret surged through me, I said that, and Shido gave an awkward laugh and said it was fine instead.
“It’s okay. The process was a little rough, but in the end I’m alive and well, aren’t I? If anything, I’m glad you came in time to stop Tohka. Thanks to that, Origami also got saved after almost being killed by Tohka, and we were able to stop Tohka from destroying even more around her.”
“..............................”
Hearing him say that only made me feel smaller. To be the protagonist of a harem story, you really had to be that kind and selfless. And yet I, despite having power stronger than that protagonist, was only doing petty, small-minded things.
I kept feeling embarrassed by how casually Shido treated the fact that he’d been shot.
“By the way, Haneul, you must have had a rough time too. You only applied as an exchange student, and then you got caught up in something this huge. Still, you’re going back home soon, right?”
“...No. I’m planning to settle in Japan.”
“What?”
Apparently Kotori hadn’t told Shido that I was immigrating to Japan, because he widened his eyes in surprise at my words. It was definitely a surprising thing to hear from his perspective too. An exchange student from another country, and not even an ordinary human, suddenly saying he was going to settle in Japan.
Shido didn’t bother saying “Why?” But he was clearly puzzled by my sudden decision to settle here. His face was full of questions. Looking straight at that expression, I added my reason.
“Well... there are a lot of reasons, but the biggest one is that I want to help you.”
“...Still, Korea is your home country. Is there really any need to abandon your homeland and settle in Japan for just that reason?”
Shido said that with a genuinely worried expression. But I’d already made up my mind about settling here, so my answer was extremely simple.
“Yeah.”
As I said that, I nodded.
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