"Shingai… Hitomi… was it?"
Su Yuzu looked at the girl seated in the wheelchair before her.
For a girl whose very name meant the pupil of an eye, those near grayish-black eyes of hers looked strangely hollow.
So hollow that Su Yuzu half-believed the girl in front of her was blind.
But going by how she'd acted a moment ago — no attendant anywhere in sight, and she'd still laid her hand into Su Yuzu's palm without the slightest fumble — it was probably just Su Yuzu's imagination.
Su Yuzu closed her hand around the fingertips the girl offered.
A flicker of embarrassment crossed the girl's face.
Not a handshake. Just her fingertips, caught and held.
That clearly wasn't how she'd expected this to go.
Even though the person gripping her fingertips was another girl, the whole development still left her at a loss.
She drew her fingers back on reflex.
"Sorry…" Su Yuzu offered softly.
She studied Shingai Hitomi. Those eyes still looked hollow, the focus of her gaze resting nowhere near Su Yuzu but somewhere far off, somewhere no one else could name.
Su Yuzu could be a little wicked at times, but she wasn't so shameless that she'd pounce on every pretty girl she met just to torment her and help herself to a few liberties. Probably.
She only wanted a quick read on the girl's condition.
And, incidentally… to see whether Recruit would trigger outright.
If Recruit did fire off then and there, a whole pile of troublesome questions and doubts might untangle themselves in one stroke.
Of course, Su Yuzu absolutely, positively, definitely did not have a weakness for the frail-and-easy-to-bully archetype.
Definitely not.
After all, everything the games had taught her boiled down to one rule: any character saddled with an ominous, high-maintenance surname — Kamihachi, Mikozawa, Ogami, all of them built around the character for "god" — was either a comic-relief clown or genuinely dangerous trouble.
Besides, even sitting there in a wheelchair with her lashes lowered, this girl was pretty enough to be unlocked as a brand-new character portrait.
That sickly Eldest Young Lady presence, the sort that made Su Yuzu itch to bully her; features refined to an almost excessive degree; and the faint, dangerous something drifting off her — all of it told Su Yuzu the girl was the latter.
The genuinely troublesome kind of trouble.
And yet… from what she'd probed in that brief grip on Shingai Hitomi's hand, Su Yuzu had felt nothing abnormal whatsoever.
No powers at all.
An absolute non-Esper.
Her body was frail past the point of broken, the muscle in her legs so wasted that even if she managed to stand, her knees would tremble and drop her at any moment.
When it came to sheer physical delicacy, Soga Yura had finally met a contender more fragile than herself.
Even if the Recruit did go through, Su Yuzu wouldn't dare run anything remotely useful on her in the way of "Combat Records."
Even the old "Basic Combat Records" worried her — the girl might not be able to bear it and simply faint away.
"Sorry…" Su Yuzu apologized to Shingai Hitomi again. "I just think Little Sister Shingai Hitomi is really cute~"
She grinned, breezy and unbothered. Behind her, the restaurant that had been loud and merry moments ago had gone silent at some point.
Pair after pair of eyes had fixed on Su Yuzu's corner of the room.
Except… over where the "Seat of Evil" sat.
The "Seat of Evil" was still shoveling food down with a clatter of dishes.
Ever since she fell into the Edge of Aberration, she — one of the Aberrants now — had lost both smell and taste.
And of all things, walking among human towns as the great Lord "Seat of Evil," she was still obliged to chew and swallow that sludge of food as though gnawing on wax.
For the Seat of Hunger, no torment in the world was crueler than that.
If she hadn't still carried the ideal of sweeping every last one of the Aberrants off the face of the world,
the "Seat of Evil" would have ended herself long ago and gone back to the Edge of Aberration.
After being eaten into submission by Su Yuzu, the "Seat of Evil" had even caught herself thinking: if that woman had mentioned sooner that she could turn her back into a human, that she could feast properly again, then what in the world had they been fighting for?
She'd have scrubbed herself clean on the spot, lain flat, and let the woman help herself.
Though… ideally, ideally, she'd have been gentle about it.
Kirishika, who wanted very much to watch the gossip unfold, could no longer stand this shameless excuse for a "self" of hers. She swung her small fist and brought it down hard on the "Seat of Evil"'s head. "Quiet!"
"Honestly. It's a tiny bit of food, that's all."
"Behaving like she's never seen the world."
Thinking that, Kirishika stared straight over at Su Yuzu and Shingai Hitomi, then shoved another enormous mouthful of the beef Sakai Miho had cut and dressed for her past her lips.
Crushed. The "Seat of Evil"'s fist was clenched tight enough to crush something to death.
Still… watching Su Yuzu and Shingai Hitomi, Kirishika tilted her head and glanced at the "Seat of Evil" beside her.
"Do you feel it?"
"Feel what?"
"That girl…"
The "Seat of Evil" looked at Shingai Hitomi, at those almost hollow grayish-black eyes, and gave a small nod.
"Mm."
"She's weak. I could crush her to death with one hand." The "Seat of Evil" wore the expression of someone in deep, serious thought. "Anyway, Su Yuzu's flirting with another girl again."
"That's not what I meant!" Kirishika wanted nothing more than to plant another fist on the "Seat of Evil"'s head. But if she did… it would hurt her too.
"Don't you think…"
"…that her condition is a lot like mine?"
"True, she's just as flat. And just as weak."
Thunk—
Kirishika drove another fist into the "Seat of Evil"'s skull, and then both of them clutched their heads in silence.
"Wretches!!!"
"I'm talking about… her state."
"It's the same as mine. Like a… 'hollow shell.'"
The hush of the restaurant broke under the racket of fists thudding against a skull. Su Yuzu turned to look toward Kirishika and the "Seat of Evil" — and found herself facing all those pairs of eyes aimed her way.
Cold sweat was already beading across her skin.
Worse, among the people staring at her were elders like Sakura Koishin and Soga Ishikawa Kiyomi Asumi, which left Su Yuzu feeling twice as mortified.
All she could do was push Shingai Hitomi's wheelchair over to her own table, flustered the whole way.
Soga Yura sat down beside Shingai Hitomi, her crimson eyes meeting the other girl's, and took over from Su Yuzu the weighty duty of looking after the stranger.
As expected of the Soga clan's Eldest Young Lady, perhaps.
Soga Yura handled this sort of business with far more polish than Su Yuzu — and with far more formality and distance, too.
She also caught a distinctly dangerous scent off this seemingly paralyzed girl.
And she got a good deal of information out of Shingai Hitomi.
For instance: the girl had come to the prosecutors' office because her family had a lawsuit to bring.
For instance: she lived far away, had actually slipped out in secret just now, and had only found this place because she'd gotten hungry.
For instance… she liked eggs better than any lavish spread of meat and fish.
It wasn't until the meal broke up that Su Yuzu offered to see the girl home.
Shingai Hitomi only shook her head lightly. "One of the servants… will come for me."
A tall girl found her way to the restaurant, dressed in something thoroughly strange and yet somehow harmonious — a kimono paired with a maid's apron.
She looked at Shingai Hitomi. "Eldest Young Lady—"
Only then did Shingai Hitomi turn her wheelchair around to face Su Yuzu, and at last a hint of a smile surfaced on the perpetually cool girl's face.
"Thank you…"
"…you strange…"
"…little bride."
"What?" Su Yuzu froze on the spot.
"I'm older than you, you know~" Shingai Hitomi struck a pose of lofty seniority.
"Sister Soga ought to be calling me Sister."
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