"You're not a researcher. You couldn't possibly understand how I feel right now."
Urgency ran through her voice, along with the certainty that anyone sane would agree.
"It's like a prisoner who's done forty years suddenly finding a beautiful woman standing in front of him."
She'd started gesturing with both hands, all the earlier languor gone, a woman who'd caught sight of a treasure and lost her grip on herself.
"The comparison might not be perfect, but the desperation is identical."
Color rose in her cheeks. Her eyes caught the light.
The hunger for the unknown poured off her.
She stared at Satoru, gaze burning.
The look belonged on a starved animal that had finally spotted meat.
Nothing concealed in it, curiosity and possessiveness both, as though she'd drag him to a lab that minute and take him apart from scalp to soles.
He had the distinct sense of standing in the room without clothes on.
Across all his years he'd met plenty of people who wanted something from him.
Some wanted him dead. Some wanted him useful. Not one had ever looked at him with this pure, clinical intent to disassemble him and understand every piece.
The sensation crawled along his skin.
Every cell of him, laid open to her.
He'd faced formidable beings before. This particular feeling, though, was new.
Even Ryomen Sukuna had only wanted to kill him and wear his body.
Sumire wanted nothing of the sort. She wanted a top-tier specimen.
Novel. Also deeply uncomfortable.
"Ms. Muroto, has anyone told you that a look like that is grounds for a harassment complaint?"
Amusement in it, and a note of surrender.
He shifted back, opening distance between them like she was something that might bite.
"Doesn't matter. Legally speaking, the word for a pervert like that only applies to men."
She waved it away, one eyebrow arching in triumph, delighted with the loophole she'd found. Her smile spread wider.
"Going out there does more than satisfy me. You'd prevent a lot of pointless casualties."
Seriousness crept back into her voice.
For all his lounging and shrugging, she knew what sat underneath. He couldn't stomach watching innocent children thrown away.
"And it would make studying you afterward considerably easier."
No attempt to dress up her motive.
"Research isn't something you toss off in an afternoon, understand. Even lab mice require long stretches of observation before..."
She launched into her plans as though he'd already agreed, sketching which measurements to log, which control experiments to run, how to work backward from his abilities to the principles beneath them.
Satoru propped an elbow on the arm of the sofa and rested his chin in his palm.
He watched the flood of words with a resigned smile, chin cupped, listening with real interest.
"So what you want is a look at how I fight."
The interruption came out flat with certainty.
"Correct."
She nodded, straightforward about it, the heat still in her eyes.
"Stage 4 Gastrea regenerate at an absurd rate. Even Varanium weaponry won't finish one unless you hit something vital."
Her tone hardened as she started explaining the specifics.
At that tier the regeneration became formidable. Wounds from Varanium closed fast anywhere outside the brain and heart.
"I'm curious about a creature like that. What you'd do about it."
The curiosity filled her voice completely.
She'd watched Civil Security teams grind themselves down against monsters like these. She knew what regeneration on that scale cost in lives.
Whatever method he'd use to kill something that conventional weapons couldn't, she wanted to see it.
"Besides, this Cursed Energy of yours, I've seen almost nothing of what it does."
Regret slipped in there.
Everything he'd shown so far amounted to defense, plus one demolished ceiling. Not the shape of the whole thing.
That energy fascinated her past the point of patience.
She kept measuring what she'd witnessed against Gastrea capabilities, running the comparison out loud.
In her head she'd already staged the fight a hundred times over.
Not once could she predict how he'd open.
The blank space only sharpened her appetite.
"If that's what you're hoping for, disappointment is all you'll collect."
Betty set down her juice, wiped the corner of her mouth, and spoke without hurrying.
Faint contempt in it, and the calm of long familiarity, as though the whole idea struck her as childish.
Her small face wore an expression that said you sweet, naive creature.
She'd been at his side long enough to know exactly what he was.
A monster of that grade would take under a second.
Wanting to observe the process amounted to wishful thinking.
Sumire took no offense. Betty knew him far better than she did, and a statement like that came from somewhere.
The girl was no ordinary child.
Small as she looked, she wielded enormous magical power and understood Satoru at a depth Sumire couldn't approach.
So instead of bristling, her curiosity climbed.
"Meaning what?"
She turned toward Betty, questions crowding her voice.
"Is there something I'm missing?"
Interest lit her up further, the shine in her eyes brightening, a woman who'd stumbled onto another vein of treasure.
She leaned in closer, eyes fixed, unwilling to lose a syllable.
"Because the fight ends before you've registered anything worth registering."
Betty answered at the same unhurried pace, matter-of-fact.
She'd witnessed it too many times. Enemies at that level went in an instant, dead before they'd finished reacting.
There was no process to speak of.
She shrugged her small shoulders, picked up the juice again, and pulled another mouthful through the straw.
Believe it or don't.
"Then I have to go! Every scrap adds up. Sooner or later something turns out useful!"
Rather than deflating, she surged.
She'd assumed a Stage 4 Gastrea would occupy him at least briefly. Learning otherwise only deepened her fascination with what he could do.
A single instant would keep her busy for months.
"Never waste an opportunity!"
Fist clenched, jaw set, like a woman preparing to move a mountain.
Satoru considered it for a moment.
He looked at the determination in front of him, then at the unbothered girl beside him.
His fingers tapped the sofa arm while he thought.
Refusing had never really been on the table.
Children dying for nothing didn't sit well with him, and her proposal handed him a convenient excuse to do what he'd have done anyway.
"Fine. Since you're this insistent, I'll go have a look."
Reluctance in the words, and something soft down beneath it.
"Say what you like, you'd have gone even without her asking, I suppose."
Betty stripped the pretense off him without mercy.
She understood him too well.
For all the complaints about hassle and boredom, he couldn't watch innocents die, least of all children.
He'd have ended up on that helicopter regardless.
Her small face wore the smile of someone who'd seen straight through him ages ago, part mischief, part certainty.
"Honestly, you're making me look bad here."
He pushed his lower lip out in mock offense and reached over to rumple her carefully arranged hair into a mess.
"I only think that Gastrea has wandered a bit too far. Nothing else to it."
The stubborn denial came out with a grin he couldn't hide.
Twenty kilometers.
That distance meant those operatives would be pushing deep into Gastrea territory.
Even airlifted, the moment they touched down the things would close in from every direction.
Forget the Stage 4. Landing alive was the open question.
The last excursion made the picture clear enough.
That time they'd gone only a few kilometers past the Monolith and still ended up swarmed.
Without him along, none of them would have come back.
Twenty kilometers turned the whole thing into a descent into hell.
Most of those operatives were ordinary humans.
Even paired with Initiators, surrounded on all sides, they wouldn't last.
For them the mission and a suicide run amounted to the same paperwork.
Gastrea out there caught the scent of humans and converged like sharks on blood.
Their sensitivity to human presence ran for kilometers.
Once they had the trail they came without hesitation and didn't stop until something died.
Whether or not anyone recovered the relic, the people going in weren't coming out.
The Stage 4 alone was nearly unkillable.
Add the endless stream of others feeding into the area and the whole force could deploy and still be wiped out to the last man.
The Legacy of Nanase Village would stay exactly where it was.
"Kindness isn't a character flaw. No need to be so shy about it, I suppose."
Betty batted his hand away and started fixing her hair, grinning through the teasing.
"You saying that doesn't make me feel any better about it."
The denial held. So did the smile, wider now.
He tossed the can into the bin. "Something else bothers me more than any of this. The Gastrea has already covered that much ground. If we go stop it now..."
The sentence ended there. Weight had entered his voice, and the unfinished part carried plainly enough.
Twenty kilometers with the relic in its possession. If a Stage 5 Gastrea really was as attuned to that thing as the reports claimed.
It might already know. It might already be moving.
While he spoke the side door opened, and Seitenshi came out, washed and changed.
She'd put on a clean white dress. Her hair had been combed back into order, and the dust was gone from her face.
The composed, untouchable ruler had been restored.
Only her eyes were rimmed red, and a hollowness lingered around her mouth that soap hadn't touched.
Faint steam and the scent of soap still clung to her.
She crossed to him, stopped, and bowed at ninety degrees, deeply sincere.
Her long hair slid forward off her shoulders and hung in front of her.
"I'm sorry, teacher. I've disappointed you."
Her voice shook around the apology and the blame she'd assigned herself.
Everything that had happened in that chamber traced back to her, the way she saw it. She hadn't controlled her own guards. She hadn't been able to restrain the leadership. So the whole disaster had unfolded, with him there to watch.
"Nothing of the sort."
He waved it off, light, as though the last hour hardly warranted mention.
"None of it was anything you wanted to happen."
Reassurance underneath the ease.
He could see how hard the girl had already been trying.