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"Asakura student, I'm not lying."
Asakura looked at the girl, who clearly showed a suspicious expression, and said, "When you overdraw your magical power, the countdown to the end of your life has already begun."
"...Even if you say that, I don't feel it at all."
Chihaya Asagumo looked at her hands, feeling at a loss.
Even after obtaining the pocket watch and gaining the superpower to 'restart,' the girl had lived an ordinary life since childhood. It was truly difficult for her to feel any sense of reality about Asakura's almost prophetic, surreal words.
"Is that so? Then I'll show you a little proof."
Asakura reached out and brushed aside the girl's long hair.
Chihaya Asagumo first blushed because he still maintained Ayano Mitsuki's appearance, but then the girl immediately realized that the other party was not Ayano Mitsuki, so she subconsciously took a step back, distancing herself from him.
But at this moment, Asakura already had a strand of brown hair wrapped around his hand.
"When your body tissue leaves the 'you' as defined by mysticism by a certain distance or time, it will be judged as no longer belonging to you. Naturally, the Magic still operating on you will no longer protect it. So, in a sense, its fate also represents your situation after stopping the Magic."
Before Asakura's words had even fallen, the long hair in his hand quickly lost its color and turned into a white thread.
A few more seconds passed, and the white hair remained motionless.
Is this all there is to it?
Just as this thought couldn't help but surface in the girl's mind, Asakura gently twirled the strand of hair. The silver thread, which had seemed unchanged, broke into dust-like residue because of his movement.
"Hair is very difficult to decay under normal circumstances, but its texture will become increasingly brittle with the passage of time, so it ended up like this."
Looking at the broken hair disappearing from the other party's fingertips, Chihaya Asagumo's originally good complexion instantly turned pale.
She felt that she had used all the calmness she had in her life to barely avoid doing anything undignified.
"Ri-right, since releasing the Magic will cause something like this, then can't I just keep it on?" Chihaya Asagumo said as if she had thought of something.
"Just as a credit card has a limit, your Magic cannot continue to be cast in this form of magical power overdraft. It will always have an end, and at that time, the price extracted might not just be your time."
Asakura said seriously, "If it's severe, it might even affect the people around you."
"Then what should I do…?"
Hearing this, Chihaya Asagumo, who had barely managed to maintain her composure, finally broke down a little.
Even though she could still comfort herself with thoughts like, 'It's all just lies, it won't scare me,' after interacting with him for this period, Chihaya Asagumo had more or less realized that the person in front of her had no reason to deceive her.
After all, if she thought about it carefully, she was already like fish on a chopping board; she had absolutely no ability to resist someone who possessed supernatural powers.
"Fortunately, things didn't develop to the worst point before I discovered it," Asakura then said, "If it had truly progressed to that point, I'm afraid even I would have been powerless to help."
The girl looked at him and asked softly, "Can I really trust you…?"
"No problem, trust me like you trusted the Twin Towers before September 11th."
"Won't they be hit very soon then?"
"If you cooperate with me, it's like boarding a giant ship that's proclaimed unsinkable; you can rest assured."
"Didn't it sink on its first voyage?"
"Oh," Asakura let out an unclear sigh, "American goods are really of poor quality."
"I think those two problems had little to do with their inherent quality," Chihaya Asagumo calmly pointed out the flaw in his words: "Also, the Titanic was a ship from a British company."
"These things are completely unimportant. I'm curious why you still have such a high level of vigilance towards me, even now."
"Just the fact that you're still wearing Ayano-kun's face makes it impossible to fully relax."
"You're right," Asakura nodded, agreeing with the girl's statement.
He activated the Magic within his body, obstructing the normal operation of the potion.
Thus, in Chihaya Asagumo's eyes, the features of the 'Ayano Mitsuki' in front of her began to change dramatically like modeling clay.
His originally light-colored hair turned black, his left eye remained unchanged, but the pupil of his right eye became a beautiful and eerie wine red. His face and features were no longer like Ayano Mitsuki's elegant, handsome look, but transformed into an appearance that at first glance had no particular characteristics, but upon closer inspection, had a subtle, somewhat melancholic charm. He could still barely be considered a handsome man.
If she looked closely, she could even notice that the other party's height had increased somewhat, and his build was also a bit more robust. However, Ayano Mitsuki himself was on the thinner side among boys, so it was hard to say that the other party's build was stout. Perhaps he was slightly above average?
"Let me reintroduce myself," he said under the girl's gaze, "My name is Asakura Takuma, and I am a Magician."
"...So it's Asakura-kun," Chihaya Asagumo's expression became a little strange.
"You know me?"
"After all, in the grade's academic performance tests, you're either first or second. It would be harder not to know you," the girl said.
This was a lie.
In fact, she wasn't that concerned about her academic results for the year. It was just that Ayano Mitsuki would occasionally come to her after exams to complain that the alliance of the top two students, who jointly monopolized the year's championship and runner-up, was simply too unbreakable. There was an almost insurmountable gap in scores between them and the third place, and no hope of breaking through the two of them, which was why she had an impression of the name 'Asakura Takuma.'
She had originally thought he was some Great Demon King, but now it seemed he wasn't so scary?
"I thought I was being low-key enough," the boy sighed, saying with a troubled expression, "As a Magician, being too conspicuous isn't a good thing."
"This is probably what's called being overworked as a capable person."
"It must be too painful to be a capable person, you'll die suddenly!"
"Then, is Yukinoshita, who has similar grades to Asakura-kun, also…?"
"No, she's just an ordinary person."
Asakura shook his head. He looked at the girl again and suddenly realized that the rhythm of their conversation seemed to have been taken over by her: "Asakura student has many questions."
"Alright, then one last question," the girl stared intently at Asakura, as if trying to see through his true thoughts: "Why would someone as amazing as Asakura-kun help me?"
"If I absolutely had to say," Asakura thought for a moment, then replied very seriously, "I've already had my fill of dog food, and I really don't want to eat it again…"
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