After all the classes ended, the end of the wish Itsuka-kun had prayed for drew near.
Since it was the wish that he wanted Ren to come to school, it probably only applied to today.
If that was the case, then there was only one wish left.
At the very least, it had turned into a time attack where he had to clear Ren in that one shot.
Ren would definitely come again tomorrow and ask Itsuka-kun for his wish.
"...Hm, I wonder if he can pull it off."
"Pull what off?"
"I mean Itsuka-kun clearing Ren."
As I was thinking about it on the way back to the spirit mansion, I couldn’t help wondering whether it was even possible.
He had cleared several spirits so far, but every single one of those cases had only worked because the right circumstances had been created.
Well, it wasn’t like his efforts had been meaningless, but Ren wasn’t exactly showing any signs of liking Itsuka-kun right now.
"Come to think of it, they said it wouldn’t work if he made her like him through a wish."
"If he fails..."
Ren, having fulfilled her role, might disappear like Rio did.
Rio had already fulfilled the role she was born with, everyone’s happiness, and was about to vanish on the spot until I forcibly held her back.
There was no reason Ren couldn’t end up the same way.
"Still, since it’s Shido, I’m sure he’ll do fine."
"That’s true."
Even so, we believed in him.
That was the proper thing to do for Itsuka-kun, and respect for everything he had shown us so far.
If it was Itsuka-kun, then I had no doubt he could clear Ren this time.
The next morning, Shido had come to the shrine again to meet Ren.
"Hey, Shido. Have you decided on your last wish?"
And, as expected, the one greeting Shido there was Ren.
"Yeah, I’ve decided."
Shido had already decided what he wanted to wish for as his final wish, so he answered without the slightest hesitation.
Seeing that, Ren said, sounding genuinely surprised, "Oh? That’s unexpected. I figured you’d still be hesitating like always."
"Heh. I’m not indecisive all the time."
"Right. Then there’s no need for pointless conversation."
Ren put on a serious expression and said to Shido, "Now, tell me your wish, Shido. I’ll grant any absurdity, any irrationality."
"Yeah――"
Ren was a spirit who granted wishes.
Her purpose was still unclear.
But over the past few days, though it hadn’t been very long, Shido had talked with Ren a lot.
Whether those were ordinary conversations or talks about wishes, it didn’t matter.
If the feeling Shido got from those exchanges wasn’t just his imagination, then Ren must have found them quite enjoyable too.
"――Hey, Ren. Couldn’t we be friends?"
That was what Shido said.
"...Hm? Can I take that as your last wish...?"
Ren was flustered by a wish she had never imagined.
"You really do make strange wishes, right up to the end."
Trying to hide her confusion, Ren laughed awkwardly.
But contrary to what she thought, Shido hadn’t made becoming friends his final wish.
"No. That isn’t a wish. It’s just my simple proposal."
Shido had only made a proposal, not a wish.
"If I made that wish, you’d grant it, wouldn’t you?"
Since Ren was a spirit who granted wishes, Shido’s wish would certainly be fulfilled.
Even so, that couldn’t be right.
"I can’t force that on you, not if it goes against Ren’s will."
That was Shido’s thought and judgment.
No matter how much he wanted what was best for Ren, it wasn’t something that should be forced if it went against her will.
The last wish Shido was making now was this.
"So, my wish is..."
He wanted Ren to face her true feelings.
"‘Don’t lie to your own heart.’"
"...Ghk."
Ren truly couldn’t understand Shido.
If he wanted to achieve his goal, he should have wished for her to fall for him, or something along those lines.
Even if not that, he could have wished for wealth or fame.
"...That’s your wish? Your final one? Are you serious?"
So she asked that, but there wasn’t the slightest wavering in Shido’s eyes.
"Yeah. Dead serious."
Shido had never once made a wish without meaning it.
So this wish was sincere too.
"Ren. I can’t believe the face you showed me, or the words you said to me, were lies."
Though it had been a short time, the expressions and words he had seen from Ren during that time had not been fake.
Shido believed that without a doubt.
And so, right now, in this moment.
To make his own thoughts clear, and to learn Ren’s true feelings.
"So please, answer honestly. Answer without lies. That’s my wish."
Shido was sincere.
Realizing that Shido meant every word, Ren smiled helplessly and said, "This is... truly, I’ve never heard a wish this vicious before. You’re a bad man."
"Haha...."
"...Still, I am Ren. A slave to wishes. A spirit with the angel [Samael]. If that is your wish, there’s no way I could refuse."
Once a wish was accepted, it had to be fulfilled.
That was Samael’s power, which was why one had to be careful when making a wish.
A wish, once made, could not be taken back.
So Ren asked Shido again.
"I’ll ask you one last time. Are you really sure about that wish?"
Shido nodded at Ren’s question.
"Yeah. That is my wish."
"Good. Then I, Ren, will grant that wish."
The moment Ren granted Shido’s wish, a purple mist-like haze rippled briefly around them, then vanished.
Seeing the mist appear out of nowhere, Shido instinctively knew that his wish had just been granted.
"So... the wish has been granted?"
"...Yes. Your wish has been granted. So now I will tell you my true feelings, without lies."
The wish Shido had made was for her to speak her true feelings.
Having granted that, Ren decided to tell Shido her own truth.
"I’ll tell you about the feelings I’ve kept hidden in my chest all this time, the feelings I have toward you."
"...Yeah."
"Itsuka Shido. I――"
Ren’s hidden truth, the feelings she had concealed and never spoken aloud until now.
That was.
"――have always, all this time, wanted to kill you."
It was murderous intent directed at Shido.
"What...?"
"Fufu, fuahaha, ahahahaha!!! That really was beyond my expectations. To think you’d make such a ridiculous wish at the very end."
As Ren revealed her true feelings and burst into relieved laughter, Shido’s eyes trembled without end.
"Ah, but if you’d made that wish even earlier, my plan might have been exposed. What rotten luck, honestly..."
"Ren, why――ghk...!?"
The moment Shido tried to speak to Ren, his body suddenly began to feel heavy.
More precisely, that was how Shido perceived it.
He realized something was being drawn out from inside him.
"Hahaha, you shouldn’t push yourself. The spiritual power you have right now is being stolen by [Samael], after all."
"What did you say...!?"
"Samael is the angel of poison. In exchange for granting wishes, it steals the spiritual power of the one who made them."
Ren explained all of Samael’s abilities to the bewildered Shido.
Samael’s power was to steal spiritual power in exchange for granting wishes.
In Shido’s case, the spiritual power of the spirits he had sealed, or the power of the other spirits flowing through Hieta’s body, was being taken away.
"Anyway, this is my victory."
The moment Ren said that, the scenery around them changed in an instant.
In the blink of an eye, Ren spoke as if she were finally letting everything she had been holding back spill out.
"At last, at last. The time has come. The time to devour wishes, steal spiritual power, and achieve my purpose."
Her purpose was revenge against her mother.
And the first step was killing Itsuka Shido.
"Ren...! Just what are you...!"
"Me? What am I? Hahaha, wasn’t that a little too late to ask? If you’d asked that question through a wish, you would have known my identity."
Everything Ren said was true.
All of this had happened because Shido had not been wary of Ren.
Because he had simply assumed Ren’s role was to grant wishes.
It was the first step in Ren’s grand plan, born from Shido’s mistake.
"Well, in any case, once you’d used up all your wishes, this outcome was unavoidable."
"Ghk...!"
As Shido grew heavier and weaker before her, Ren kept talking without pause, as if performing on stage.
"No matter what kind of feelings a wish is dressed up with, before Samael they are equal and precious. And equally meaningless."
"Ren...!"
"I am the embodiment of evil born from hatred."
In truth, Ren was a spirit born from another spirit’s hatred.
"A born villain who cannot help but hurt others."
In truth, because she was born from hatred, she was a natural-born villain.
She lied, pretended innocence, set traps, deceived, cajoled, and incited.
And in the end, she drove her target into ruin.
So how could anyone call her anything but a born villain?
"To your eyes, what kind of spirit did I look like?"
"You mean... it was all a lie? Wanting to eat my lunch too... laughing at school, all of it!"
"...That’s right."
She was a clown covered in lies.
Everything she said was an empty declaration.
Every expression on her face was a mask, and every word she spoke was a lie.
"The me you were dealing with was nothing more than an illusion."
From the very beginning, when Ren met Shido, she had been unable to stand the desire to kill him.
"You’re saying it was all fake...? Don’t be ridiculous. You expect me to believe that...?"
When Shido shouted in rage, Ren sneered at him.
"Hahaha! Even now, you still can’t accept reality. Look at your situation properly, Shido."
"...Shut up! Everything you say is bogus and lies anyway! Then why would I believe a line like, ‘Everything you said was a lie’――!?"
"...Haha, you got me there. But I have no intention of playing along with that word game. Your fate was decided the moment you opened ‘that’."
The moment Ren took something out, Shido’s pupils shook violently.
Because what she had taken out was unmistakably something he had seen before.
"That is...!"
A small box in Ren’s hand.
It was the same box that had been placed neatly in Shido’s room a few days ago, the one he had opened.
Looking down at the box, Ren slowly examined it and said, "This is the box I was sealed in. Well, to be exact, it’s more like a shell formed by an angel to protect my body, which was placed in the gap between worlds."
The gap between worlds where her hateful, hateful mother had locked her away out of fear.
The box she had created there to protect herself had, by some trigger, emerged into the outside world.
And that trigger was a tiny crack opening in the world.
"Could it be that someone altered history?"
"...!?"
Through the gap created when Shido and Kurumi altered history to save Origami, Ren’s seal had slowly begun to unravel.
"Oh? That face says you’ve figured something out. Fufu... well, fine. It’s all over now."
By now, spiritual power was gathering toward Ren through Samael.
Among it, Hieta’s soul was also flowing in, so Ren was feeling something that could only be called omnipotence.
"Samael is the angel of poison. The moment it activates, it forms a barrier with a certain authority."
That was why Ren had been waiting inside the barrier formed by Samael, saying things to Shido that she didn’t even need to say.
"Yes, this is a world where any wish can be granted. And the one whose wish is fulfilled has their existence stolen by Samael and vanishes."
The moment when Shido would be stripped of his existence by Samael.
"It’s over, Shido. The days I spent with you were fun. Of course――"
The moment Ren said that and tried to erase Shido’s existence.
"I wasn’t having fun at all!"
Whoosh!
Flames roared and engulfed Ren.
The one who attacked Ren was a knight burning by using his own body as kindling.
"Hieta!"
"You look rather troubled, Itsuka-kun."
The avatar of kings manifested within the barrier.
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