"Make your choice as soon as possible."
"I won't stay in this world forever."
"So you only have one chance."
"As for what your final decision will be, that is for you to decide."
After Heimdall finished speaking, he returned the hannya mask to Onigawara Rin and brushed past her.
"..."
At this point, Onigawara Rin knelt blankly on the ground, watching that receding back as it gradually moved further away.
Another world?
For someone like her, who had always lived within the square inch of heaven and earth that was the academy, preoccupied daily with the mundane trifles of correcting boys and maintaining order, this vocabulary was simply too distant.
One could even say it was utterly absurd.
However...
"Heh."
Before Senior Rin could recover from the massive shock...
A contemptuous sneer interrupted her train of thought.
Kirukiru Amou followed silently behind Heimdall.
As she passed by Senior Rin, her footsteps paused slightly.
Within those obsidian-like eyes was an undisguised mockery, sweepingly unscrupulously across Senior Rin's youthful face, which no longer had any concealment.
"It really is the face of a crybaby."
The corners of Kirukiru Amou's mouth curled up as she spat out malicious words.
"Compared to that mask, this crybaby face suits the current you much better."
After saying that...
Kirukiru Amou seemed to lose all interest, not even sparing Senior Rin another glance.
She directly stepped out with her long legs, quickly catching up to Heimdall ahead, leaving behind only an arrogant silhouette.
This was a lion's final mercy toward a defeated dog.
"..."
Upon hearing this, Senior Rin bit her lower lip hard.
A crybaby?
No!
Senior Rin whipped her head around, her gaze locking onto the two figures about to disappear around the corner.
Even if her cheeks were still burning with shame, even if her shoulders couldn't stop trembling from the heart palpitations just now...
Her body had already made a choice ahead of her brain.
Fear?
Of course there was fear.
Facing a monster who could crush one's mental defenses with mere presence and even possessed the miraculous power to repair shattered objects—how could one not be afraid?
It was the instinctive reaction engraved in human genes when facing an unknown threat, as natural as an antelope trembling when encountering a lion.
But...
The reason humans were able to stand out from thousands of primitive species and stand at the apex of this planet wasn't just because they learned to sharpen stones or use fire.
It was also because of an instinct older, deeper, and more powerful than fear—
Curiosity.
When the first ape tremblingly climbed down from the safe canopy, its feet touching the peril-filled grassland teeming with saber-toothed tigers and dire wolves...
What drove it to take that step wasn't just the unbearable hunger in its belly.
It was pure curiosity about 'what exactly is on the other side of the horizon.'
It was this curiosity that led humans, during those countless dark and cold nights, to choose not to curl up in the depths of caves, but to look up at the vast starry sky.
It led humans to cross surging oceans, conquer mountains that pierced the clouds, and even attempt to touch the realm of the gods.
Fear certainly allows one to live longer.
But only curiosity allows one to live in a broader world.
At this moment, the same was true for Senior Rin.
If it's true...
What kind of scenery would that be?
The answer was like a wildfire suddenly ignited in the depths of her heart, instantly burning everything dry.
Thinking of all this, Senior Rin gritted her teeth, a flash of decisive severity in her eyes. She immediately grabbed the tachi that had fallen on the ground and stumbled after them.
"Eh... Senior Rin?!"
"W-Wait for me, Senior Rin!"
Seeing this, Nono Mozunono, who had been hiding on the side like background scenery, hurriedly hugged her baton and chased after her with a mournful face.
...
Aichi Coexistence Private Academy, Old School Building Gymnasium.
This building, which rarely saw visitors on ordinary days, was currently shrouded in an unusual silence.
The afternoon sunlight spilled through the high ventilation windows, projecting pillars of light onto the wooden floor, where countless tiny dust motes floated slowly.
A girl had already been waiting here for a long time.
She wore a traditional red-and-white kimono, her long white hair tied into two low twin-tails hanging down her sides.
Her figure was petite, one could even say thin, making her look like an exquisite Japanese doll.
Inaba Tsukiyo.
The youngest of the five swords of the world, and the only middle school student.
At this moment, she was sitting formally on a cushion in the center of the gym, eyes tightly closed, hands placed flat on her knees. A mock sword with the appearance of a tachi lay quietly beside her.
In her perception, the world was black.
But this did not mean nothingness.
On the contrary, for someone who had lost the dominant sense of vision, the world instead revealed its more delicate and essential side.
For human beings, more than 80% of the information processed by the brain comes from vision.
Relying too much on eyes often makes the brain lazy, ignoring the whispers of the wind, the vibrations of the floor, and the temperature changes flowing in the air.
When the door of vision is closed, the windows of hearing, touch, and smell are thrown wide open.
Just like those creatures living in the deep sea or caves, they evolved extraordinary sensory organs to adapt to the darkness.
—Bats accurately prey on moths in the pitch-black night sky, and blind fish never strike rocks in rapid undercurrents.
Therefore...
For Inaba Tsukiyo, every movement in her surroundings instead constructed a world in her mind that was more three-dimensional than what vision could see.
She could hear every sound in the entire academy clearly.
And this was not some kind of magic.
It was a sublimation of biological instinct after training the sense of hearing to the extreme.
And now, all the sounds were conveying a single message to her:
An incredible existence has arrived.
"He's here."
Tsukiyo tilted her head slightly, her ears hidden under her silver-white hair twitching slightly.
Her thin, cherry-colored lips parted slightly as she breathed out two soft words.
"Creak—"
Almost at the same instant her voice fell...
The heavy gymnasium door slowly swung inward.
A flood of light poured into the dim interior as the door opened.
Against the light...
Heimdall's silhouette was stretched long.
Behind him followed the cold-faced Kirukiru Amou, along with the panting Senior Rin and Nono Mozunono, whose faces still bore a lingering flush.