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Aki’s sword pierced the zombie right between the eyes.
His body went rigid. His teeth chattered as he planted a foot on the zombie’s head, still stuck on his sword, and shoved it away. Then he turned and cut down the zombie lunging at him from behind.
Thud, thump. The thing’s head hit the floor and rolled.
"Ugh... gross!"
The head ended up at Himeno’s feet.
She lifted one foot slightly, then used Ghost’s arm to grab the head and throw it away. The tossed head flew into the shark fiend’s mouth and vanished from this world.
"Aki, so have you thought about going to Disneyland with me in three weeks?"
Himeno asked as she crushed the head of a zombie rushing at her.
"Yes. I thought about it."
"And?"
"Let’s go. Just the two of us."
Himeno was so surprised by Aki’s answer that she failed to react to the zombie attacking her side. She got an earful from Galli, who hurriedly dealt with it, but that wasn’t the important part.
She remembered what Aki had said at the newbie welcome party. That he wanted to drink with Makima if possible.
He seemed like he’d say he wanted to go with Makima again this time, so I wasn’t expecting anything... what happened?
She moved her hands as she thought.
The problem wasn’t easy to untangle. It was only natural, considering Aki had been tying Makima into everything and loving her for no reason at all, and then suddenly changed his attitude and started treating her warmly. None of it made sense.
What had happened? Was some strange devil wearing Aki’s skin? She really was thinking of all kinds of ridiculous things.
And yet, that didn’t mean she had no guesses at all.
Shin Gongja. A variable that had been thrown into her everyday life one day. Maybe that variable had affected Aki.
But Himeno had already dismissed the conclusion that Gongja was the answer, because she was thinking something like this:
Maybe it’s because he looks like Aki’s younger brother, but lately Gongja-kun and those two... people? Fiends? Hmm. Anyway, it’s definitely had an effect. So maybe it affected this side too...? No. That’s weird, isn’t it? What does Gongja-kun even know that he’d play matchmaker? And human nature and human relationships are completely different things.
Well, unless you actually knew the inside of Makima’s mind and Gongja’s actions, that kind of thought was only natural, so there was no reason to blame Himeno for not finding the right answer.
So Himeno kept repeating those useless thoughts and crushed zombies to death.
And when the zombie numbers were almost completely wiped out—
"Looks like we can handle things here ourselves. Go support the upper floors. You two are fine going, right?"
At Galli’s words, Spider answered with silence, and Shark answered, "I’ll get stronger!!"
"All right, go."
Galli shoved the two of them into the hallway.
The moment Himeno stepped into the corridor, she finally organized her thoughts into one conclusion: Don’t worry about that stuff.
The truth was, the reason or backstory didn’t matter at all. What really mattered was that Aki’s gaze had shifted from Makima to her, to Himeno.
They’d already achieved part of their original goal, so why go digging into the backstory? Especially when they still hadn’t pulled Aki out of Public Safety, and she still hadn’t fully made the chance she’d finally been given her own.
Objectively and subjectively, it was the right call.
"When we get there, let’s start with a headband. What do you think?"
As they walked down the hall, Himeno kept talking to Aki. He answered with things like, "Sure," and "Sounds good."
Their conversation-that-wasn’t-a-conversation ended when they reached the snake devil at the end of the corridor.
The snake devil. The devil Sawatari had controlled before Gongja killed her. How on earth had they recovered it? Was it even real?
No one knew. There was no way to know. They had never spoken to it, and couldn’t.
The instant Aki saw the snake devil, he used the Time Devil’s power.
He would simply cut its throat.
Time stopped. Everything stopped moving.
If I use my power, I can stop time completely. In exchange, I’ll take three times the amount of time from your lifespan. Also, I’ll lend you my power only twice. You think the price is low? No. The price is actually steep. It’s just that you’ll only need it twice.
Just twice. It was absurdly few uses, so Aki should have felt like each one was precious. But he didn’t feel that way at all. He knew Sawatari’s ability, and he had a rough idea where that ability came from.
He climbed the snake’s body, frozen solid in stopped time. When he reached the top—
Slash!
—he cut off its head cleanly.
He released time.
He had used about three minutes, which meant Aki lost about nine minutes of his lifespan.
Himeno wasn’t particularly shocked to see Aki standing on top of the snake’s corpse. Aki had explained the Time Devil’s power to her, with a few details changed.
The two of them shoved the corpse aside a little and headed upward.
And not long after that—
"Hup!"
Thwack!
"Kyaaaah!!!!!"
"That’s too weak. Here, like this."
Bam!!!
"Kyaaaaaaaah!!!!"
"Kahahaha! This bastard’s scream got all girly, didn’t it?"
"Yeah. Kick harder. Like I just did."
"Like this? Like this??"
Bam!!
"Gaaaaah...!"
"Your follow-through is way too weak. Just kick once and make it count."
"Both of you, get out of the way!!!! Power is the strongest!!!!!!!!!!"
Tap-tap-tap—Boom!
"Uh... uuuuh..."
They came upon the three of them in the middle of a competition.
Aki and Himeno weren’t participating, but they weren’t stopping it either.
Well, except for Gongja, whose bleeding only got worse the more he moved.
About two hours later, the zombie cleanup was finished, and at the same time, the First Mission of Division 4 was brought to a close.
The result was Samurai Sword’s capture and the complete cleanup of the Zombie Devil’s remains.
In a word, a total success.
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