When the light faded, what remained was the changed appearance of Ren.
The bandage that had been covering her eye had been pulled up to one side, revealing her right eye.
"...! This is..."
"Ren's eye..."
Ren's eye, now exposed to the world, was a beautiful violet, just like her hair.
"Well then, I'll excuse myself here. Let's meet again, Shido."
Maybe because everyone's eyes were on her, Ren said that and quickly disappeared somewhere.
Watching her retreating figure, the princess, Rinne, and Mayuri all wore somewhat displeased expressions.
"What's wrong, Rinne, Kurumi?"
"No, nothing."
Rinne dodged Itsuka-kun's question.
"...It might just be my imagination, but Ren's atmosphere feels similar to an old acquaintance of mine."
The princess spoke of part of her past.
"What kind of person was she?"
"Of everyone I've met in my life, she was the worst woman I should never have gotten involved with."
What kind of bad blood was there for the princess to say something like that?
Even as she spoke, the hatred in her voice made it clear just what kind of feelings she held toward that old connection.
"Well, I just happened to think that. Rest assured, I won't be able to see through her spiritual power."
Hearing that she couldn't see through spiritual power, and that if Ren's spiritual power were sealed she would take it away, Itsuka-kun groaned that he couldn't feel reassured at all.
Leaving Itsuka-kun and the princess behind, I approached Mayuri.
"Mayuri, are you all right?"
"Huh? Y-yeah. I'm fine."
"[Mayuri, are you sure you're okay? You've been acting weird since earlier.]"
"[Marina's right. Mayuri, is something wrong?]"
Even the two people inside the phone were voicing concern, which showed just how strange Mayuri's condition was.
Not only had she reacted to Ren in a way that was hard to believe from someone seeing her for the first time, but even now, with Ren gone, she was staring blankly at the spot where she had stood.
"It's just..."
While Mayuri hesitated to speak,
"Kihihihit! Well then, my business here is done, so I'll be going now. Wishing you all peace."
the princess vanished as mysteriously as ever.
The moment the princess left, Rinne and Mayuri both put on serious expressions and said to us,
"You guys."
"We need to talk."
"Talk about what?"
"For now, this isn't the place for it, so let's go to the spirit mansion."
Rinne said we should head to the spirit mansion if we wanted to talk about what was on her mind.
Normally I would have asked if that was really necessary, but looking at Rinne and Mayuri's expressions, it seemed like something truly serious, so no one objected and we all nodded.
*******
We arrived at the spirit mansion.
As soon as we got there, we gathered in the living room and waited for the two of them to speak.
......
......
But for some reason, neither of them could bring themselves to say it.
"...What are you trying to say?"
With Rinne and Mayuri keeping their mouths shut, the commander finally spoke up in frustration and asked them.
At his words, the two of them thought for a moment before beginning.
"...First, you know that we were each born with a role assigned to us, right?"
At Rinne's question, we all nodded.
"Rinne was the safety and happiness of Itsuka-kun, and Mayuri was the trial of the one who sealed many spirits, right?"
"That's right. And there is an existence that gave birth to us."
"...Huh?"
"What!?"
It was something we'd never heard before.
Not only that there was some being that had made the two of them, but that spirits could even be made in the first place.
Of course, spirits are living beings, so they must have parents, but since they had never said anything about it, I'd naturally forgotten about it.
And now, they were bringing it up all of a sudden.
"An existence that gave birth to you...? Like the bastard who made me?"
Marina, being a virus created by one developer to attack Fraxinus, was probably the person who could empathize most with Rinne and Mayuri's words.
"Yeah. But I don't know exactly who it is. It's like that part was just cut out. I only vaguely sensed that such an existence was there, so I never said anything."
"[An existence that can create spirits...? Well, Marina is an artificial spirit, but since she's a created being, it wouldn't be strange if there were another existence like that.]"
"And honestly, I wasn't sure, so I kept quiet, but I felt a sense of kinship from Ren."
"A sense of kinship, you say..."
Kinship.
The moment I heard that word, one thought flashed through my mind.
At least under the assumption that the one who made Rinne and Mayuri was the same being, if they felt a sense of kinship, then....
"So there was a reason I felt something."
Mayuri and Rinne were currently connected to me through souls.
On top of that, Mayuri had even had her spiritual power sealed by me.
The identity of whatever I'd been feeling was probably that sense of kinship created by the two people connected to me.
If that was the case, then Ren....
"Ren is a spirit just like the two of you..."
"So that means she has a role assigned to her?"
"Kotori's right."
What had only been a hypothesis, something I'd merely guessed at, was now confirmed as fact by the existence of Rinne and Mayuri.
"Wait! Then if Ren's spiritual power is sealed, or if she fulfills her role..."
"She'll probably disappear unless Hieta gives her a body."
"So she's an existence made up only of spiritual power...?"
Rinne, Mayuri, and Rio, who had been formed from Rinne's residual spiritual power.
All of them were beings originally made only of spiritual power, and if that power were sealed, they would vanish.
The reason they could maintain physical bodies like this now was only because they were tightly blocking the spiritual power trying to escape with souls.
Since Ren was just like them, if she were sealed or made to fulfill her role, the spiritual power forming her body would surely scatter into the air.
"In the end, it means I and the holy maiden will have to step in after all."
As the Fire Keeper said, if Itsuka-kun completed the route, we would have to intervene if Ren was to survive.
"That's not the problem. The real problem is what kind of existence made Rinne, Mayuri, and Ren."
"[That's true. Since Hii can make bodies, that's fine. But if they could create Rinne, who could turn back time, Mayuri, who showed incredible destructive power, and even Ren, who has the ability to grant wishes, then they must be absurdly strong. Though I don't know whether she really can grant wishes.]"
"So even spirits like that have to be taken on..."
Itsuka-kun, who would be the one to tackle the route first, let out a long sigh, but I couldn't afford to relax either.
If he failed, then I'd be next.
"Well, Ratatoskr will investigate that somehow. Shido, focus on Ren's route. To begin with, it's questionable whether she's even a spirit."
"Got it."
Right. The matter of who created spirits could wait until later.
For now, we needed to focus on Ren's route, so we decided to leave the investigation to Ratatoskr.
"Good. Then let's move past that for now. I have one question, though. Did the wish really come true? It didn't really feel like anything."
"Neither did I."
"I was just called by the holy maiden, so I didn't really feel anything either."
"Huh..."
I already knew because Itsuka-kun had contacted me first, but the others hadn't realized that the wish had been granted.
Thinking back, ever since Tohka and Tobiichi, they had all acted as if they hadn't recognized that Itsuka-kun or I had called them.
Maybe the reason Mayuri and the Fire Keeper were saying that was because I had directly texted them to summon them, so they hadn't felt anything.
"For now, the wish itself was definitely granted. The wish I made was, 'I want to introduce Ren to the other spirits.'"
"After Itsuka-kun made that wish, he called me, and after that, when I looked at the reactions of the other spirits, it seemed like the idea had been planted that Itsuka-kun or I had called them."
"I see... So I also had the impression that Shido called me, and that was created by Ren's power."
"We didn't feel it because Hii called us directly."
"Probably, yes."
As I nodded while organizing the situation, I heard Marina and Maria muttering from the phone.
"[So the power to grant wishes is real...]"
"[It's certainly an intriguing power. But whether it can really grant anything is still unclear. The wish Shido made was an easy one to grant.]"
"Maria's right. If he'd wished for something more unusual, something that normally wouldn't happen, it would have been clearer."
"That's true..."
"I'm not blaming you. In any case, figuring out Ren's ability wasn't the goal. It was just a means to route her, wasn't it?"
"Hmm... but Ren's bandage came off, didn't it? Why would that happen?"
As we were organizing the situation, the Fire Keeper's question drew everyone's eyes to her.
Come to think of it, I'd forgotten because Rinne and Mayuri looked so serious, but when Itsuka-kun answered that the wish had come true, Ren's appearance had changed.
Only one side had come undone, but it was definitely a change in appearance.
We needed to know why that happened.
It might become a clue for the route, too.
"That's a good question. There must definitely be some meaning to it. I don't know if it was simply because the first wish was granted and she was released, or if it was because she opened her heart to us even a little."
"So it's like some kind of affection-linked system...?"
"That would be easy to understand, if so. But we still don't have enough information to say for sure."
"Well, whatever the case, Ren said she'd grant at least three wishes, and we still have two left, so she'll show up again."
She had appeared early today, after all, so there was no guarantee she wouldn't appear early tomorrow as well.
So what we needed to do was decide on the second wish.
But that raised another problem.
"Ren wants a wish that Shido thinks up and makes, not one we all discuss together."
The wish Ren wanted was not something we came up with together, but something Itsuka-kun thought of and wished for on his own.
If we halfheartedly helped him or had him wish for something we'd already decided on, we didn't know what kind of reaction we'd get, so for now we had to leave it entirely to Itsuka-kun.
"If Ren dislikes interference from outside, then using a communicator this time is dangerous too. The risk if she finds out is too high."
"Then the conclusion is settled."
With those words, everyone's eyes turned to Itsuka-kun.
"Huh? Me?"
Without anyone's help, Itsuka-kun would have to think everything through on his own and carry the route forward.
So we decided to leave everything to him and step back for a while.
If it got dangerous, we'd help right away.
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