Shido entered the department store and waited for Hermit to arrive.
He had gotten there a little earlier than the girl who was being chased by AST.
“This place is creepy...”
Shido, left alone on the floor Hermit was likely to appear on, in the area with the mannequins on display, looked around and rubbed his forearm.
For some reason, Jae, who was supposed to be with him, was nowhere to be seen.
Kotori explained the reason over the intercom.
“Hyun is watching from nearby right now. Don’t worry and focus on the approach.”
The communication device Jae carried had a location-tracking function.
If someone with power comparable to a Spirit were allowed to wander the city freely, there would be nothing more dangerous.
It was something they had explained to Jae in full, and he had nodded and agreed.
Jae knew better than anyone how weak people would see someone with overwhelming power walking around without any safety net.
Even if he was the one who had defeated the incarnations of the kings, that did not mean he had always been strong.
A judge waiting for someone to come to him. Jae had fought the Abyss Watchers at the start, dying over and over again, so there was no way he wouldn’t understand.
“He’s hiding himself, so don’t look around for him.”
“Ah, yeah...”
As Shido nodded awkwardly at Kotori’s words, it happened.
“Shido, [Hermit] has entered the building.”
Hermit had come inside.
At that fact, Shido swallowed dryly and tensed up.
Unlike Toka, Hermit did not strike back at AST.
Kotori and Kannazuki had also said that Hermit was gentler than the other Spirits, so unless something unusual happened, there was little chance of being attacked.
But Shido had seen [Spacequake] with his own eyes, a disaster that could erase an entire neighborhood. He had lived an ordinary high school life until meeting Toka, so there was no way he could stay calm.
As Shido stood tensely in the mannequin-filled space,
“Are you one of the bad people who came to bully Yoshinon too~?”
A voice he recognized from somewhere.
The voice came from right above Shido’s head.
“...Huh?!”
He barely swallowed the scream that nearly escaped him and looked up, only to see Hermit as expected.
Hermit was standing on her hands in midair, staring right at Shido.
Her gravity-defying pose made it clear she was no ordinary human.
“Yoshinon is a good kid, so don’t bully her too much... ohhh~?”
Hermit, who had been studying Shido closely, suddenly made a puzzled sound, spun once, and landed on both feet.
Then the mouth of the rabbit doll in her hand opened.
“So it was you, Lucky Pervert Boy~”
The doll clapped as it spoke, as if it knew him.
Its lifelike movement was completely incomprehensible.
But Shido did not voice his confusion.
Now was the time to focus on the approach.
“Wait a moment.”
Kotori stopped him just as Shido was about to greet her.
They had to wait for the choice that would support the approach to appear.
“There are three choices. You know what kind of choices they are, right?”
This time, the person hearing that was not Shido, but Jae.
“Everyone, begin choosing!”
At Kotori’s command, the graph changed.
Safety, adventure, gamble. Out of the three choices, Jae was not selecting anything.
Kotori knew that would probably happen, but she was only telling him just in case.
By the time all the allotted time had passed,
“Oh?”
Jae had also chosen one of the options.
Kotori, who had not seen him do this when approaching Toka, looked at the choice he had made with interest.
He had picked the third option, gamble.
The content was the bizarre line: “Heh... Who might that be? I’m just a wanderer passing by, that’s all.”
Kotori was puzzled by a choice that was completely unlike Jae’s usual behavior.
“I pressed the wrong one.”
Jae said quietly.
What he had originally meant to choose was the first option, safety.
He had planned not to choose at all, but for the sake of his duty as a bodyguard, he changed his mind and tried to pick the least dangerous option.
But he had mistaken the button for the first choice and the button for the third.
As a result, the choice Jae had actually made was gamble, not safety.
“It’s fine. There’s no meaningful difference.”
Even if Jae had chosen safety, gamble had still been overwhelmingly more likely.
So Kotori simply took note of the fact that he had made a choice, and told Shido the option that had ultimately been selected.
“...What?”
For a moment, Shido wondered if he had heard wrong.
He was genuinely curious what chain of events could possibly lead to that choice.
“Mm~? What’s wrong~?”
But with Hermit standing right in front of him, he had no choice but to leave the question unanswered.
He steadied his breathing for a moment, then spoke.
“Heh... Who might that be? I’m just a wanderer passing by, that’s all.”
He acted cocky, put one foot on a nearby chair, and even swept his bangs back with his hand so they would flutter.
His words and mannerisms, full of every kind of affected coolness, reminded Shido of a certain boy he knew.
“.........”
The result was heavy silence.
Perhaps too stunned to react, Hermit, the doll, and even the rabbit doll all stood there with their mouths open.
The longer the silence dragged on, the more cold sweat gathered at the nape of Shido’s neck.
“Hmm.”
Watching the approach unfold, Jae let out a low murmur.
He had no intention of taking part in Shido’s approach. He also had no intention of interfering with it.
His only assigned duty was escorting Shido. Nothing more.
And yet something felt off. At the same time, it felt familiar.
The atmosphere was heavy, yet not heavy at all.
Jae felt a contradiction in the situation, and suddenly one person came to mind.
“Henri...”
A woman he had met by chance, one of the few people he could at least trust his back to as he moved forward.
Whenever he met her, the atmosphere often grew heavy because of the taciturn Horace beside her, and because Jae himself did not speak much.
The one who had always eased that atmosphere was Henri.
The day Jae accidentally struck Horace’s helmet in battle.
With his helmet knocked askew, Horace could no longer see and staggered around before colliding with Henri, nearly injuring her.
At that time, Henri had quietly said nothing and simply looked at the two of them with cold eyes.
Then—
“Pff... Puhahahahahaha!”
Yes. She had burst out laughing just like that doll.
Hermit’s personality seemed rather cheerful.
That thought made the corners of Jae’s mouth stray just a little from a straight line. The movement was so slight it would be hard to notice even if one looked closely, but his lips did rise faintly.
Even for Jae, whose emotions had been broken and who could no longer feel anything properly, there was still something that reflexively surfaced.
Of course, even so.
Jae’s emotional value was still stuck at zero.
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