The girl was all alone, kicking a pebble as she hopped through the hopscotch grid drawn on the ground.
Her eyes stayed fixed on the numbered squares beneath her feet, but her mind was busy reorganizing every piece of information she had gathered.
She had first approached Yoshino after noticing that the rain never touched the girl’s body, a clear sign that she too was a spirit, all in hopes of learning the secret behind silent manifestation.
Unfortunately, Yoshino herself didn’t know much about it.
…Makes sense~
If a spirit had mastered that technique earlier, they’d probably have already blended into the city, changed their appearance, and started living a normal life by now.
Someone as obviously conspicuous as Yoshino was actually proof that she had no one to rely on.
Yet because of that, Kyoumi had managed to confirm far more.
Kyoumi had repeatedly, deliberately compared the texture of Yoshinon with the fabric of Yoshino’s Divine Raiment.
Not just the material, even the tail decoration on the coat that looked similar at a glance felt far softer and higher quality than Yoshinon.
Yoshinon didn’t belong to that Divine Raiment at all.
It didn’t even contain the slightest trace of spiritual power.
That’s why the puppet was always surrounded by a thin layer of spiritual energy that kept it from getting wet.
…Even though both had rabbit-like features that could easily confuse people, in Kyoumi’s judgment:
If Yoshinon were ever separated from Yoshino’s left hand, and as long as Yoshino herself didn’t notice, the puppet’s personality would still be able to manifest.
And that outwardly visible hand puppet was nothing more than an ordinary, human-made puppet.
The edges had even started to fray a little from age, and the stitching felt slightly rough.
Those were details you could notice even if you took good care of it.
Yet Yoshino had said that ever since the moment she first woke up, Yoshinon had always been by her side?
Making the hopscotch game harder and telling tragic fairy tales had also been deliberate attempts to further verify the girl’s hypothesis.
From the outside, a child that age should be energetic and playful, but judging from Yoshino’s personality and her near-instinctive dependence on Yoshinon, she had probably never had many chances to play with children her own age in the past.
She had likely lived in a relatively closed-off environment.
…She never told the storyteller to stop, never showed strong sympathy or confusion toward tragic tales.
That meant she must have heard similar stories many times before, either from the outside world, or perhaps from someone who once wore “Yoshinon” on their hand and told her fairy tales.
“…An artificially created spirit, yet she can’t even remember her own family name…”
When introducing herself, she only gave her first name.
The surname that could have traced her past as a human, the most crucial clue, had been sealed away along with the rest of her memories.
If Spirit Crystals were that cheap and common, the human world wouldn’t be this peaceful.
Yoshino was like Kotori, a spirit born from a human.
But the way the two manifested was completely different.
There were faint impurities mixed into Kotori’s…
The common point was that both had lost the memories of becoming spirits, but Yoshino had lost far more.
In terms of completion, it was hard to say they were made by the same person, but if creating spirits had become some kind of criminal group behind it, that would be absurd…
Moreover… the Neighboring World was a domain that the present world couldn’t interfere with.
If it weren’t, humans wouldn’t need to fight spirits head-on; they could just find a way to cross over and quietly eliminate every spirit while they slept.
…Although Yoshino hadn’t yet answered whether something had drawn her to this city, her expression suggested it was pure coincidence.
But… first Kyoumi herself, then Tohka, Kotori (who was already sealed at that point), status still unknown for now, and now Yoshino.
If even this string of events could be called coincidence, that would be far too optimistic…
There absolutely was something gathering spirits in this city without them realizing it.
Shidou Itsuka?
No, in Kyoumi’s judgment, it was the one who turned Kotori into a spirit…
She still couldn’t confirm exactly how many people were artificially creating spirits, but right now the only one whose location she could pinpoint was the one hiding inside Ratatoskr.
They definitely weren’t on the side of humanity; that much was certain.
Starting from that point and extending her reasoning…
Since they could already turn humans into spirits, and clearly weren’t doing it for research purposes, the culprit was far more likely to be a spirit themselves.
“It’s to increase the number of our kin” would at least make sense as a motive.
But… what exactly was Shidou Itsuka’s role in all this?
Creating spirits, then granting one ordinary human the ability to seal spirit power…
Not only that, but also supporting him as he continued sealing more spirits…
“…Tch…”
The pebble slipped off the top of her shoe.
In that moment of mistake, it fell outside the tenth square.
Out of bounds. Game over.
Just like the clues she could grasp, at the very last step everything remained hazy.
She felt like she could almost pierce through the fog, if only she had that one final, crucial piece.
Shidou Itsuka… Shidou Itsuka…
What exactly did They want from him?
Romance? If that were the case, why not just pursue him directly?
Turn him into one of their kind?
Since They already possessed the ability to convert humans into spirits, would gender really be an obstacle?
Is sealing supposed to filter impurities from the Spirit Crystal?
No, that wouldn’t explain why he needs to keep sealing other spirits and taking up container space.
She couldn’t figure it out.
Only this single point remained completely incomprehensible.
“What a pain~”
She didn’t bother retrieving the pebble.
There was no rush to practice hopscotch.
The same went for this giant puzzle game; there was no need to solve it all at once.
In games, Kyoumi always gave her all.
Losing to Yoshino hadn’t been intentional; she had simply lacked the skill.
Lose once, win it back next time. Simple.
“…If I lose, I can just try again…”
She stretched, turned away without regret, and stepped out of the shrine.
April days were already felt quite long; warm sunlight filtered through the forest of steel buildings.
“How many times do you think you can afford to lose?”
Their goal? Still impossible to read.
But Shidou Itsuka’s importance to Them was absolute.
As long as she confirmed that, even if she didn’t drag him onto the stage herself, They would definitely be restricted in Their movements.
“…Raizen High School, right? Hmm… high school dismissal time…”
In other words, whether she intended to play into Their hand or not, contact with Shidou Itsuka was now inevitable.
Perfect timing to see how Tohka was doing, whether Kotori’s sealing was complete, whether Shidou remembered anything, and she also needed to confirm today’s exact date at some shop…
There seemed to be many things to do, but in reality everything could be settled with just one meeting.
It was getting close to afternoon.
If she hurried, waiting at the school gate would be the correct move.
But Kyoumi was never the kind of woman who rushed impatiently.
On the contrary, she had always been very, very patient.
So, the girl watched as more and more pedestrians appeared on the street, then casually slipped into a narrow alley as if it were coincidence.
Moments later, the ground trembled slightly.
In front of a toy shop, the pavement slowly cracked open.
BOOM—
Like a magic trick, the claw machine displayed outside suddenly dropped into the hole.
Then a giant claw rose from below and carefully placed a manhole cover exactly where the machine had been.
“…Hmm… the feel really is much worse from underground…”
Deep beneath the city, the girl muttered to herself.
Above, the city continued to function normally, completely unaffected by this tiny interlude.