Labyrinth of the Blue Witch (7 page)

Yaze seemed to enjoy cutting in as his sharp eyes picked up Asagi’s broad grin.

“What are you blushing for, Asagi?”

Asagi raised her eyebrows.

“Sh-shut up. It’s got nothing to do with you.”

“Hmm, are they really that big a deal?”

Noticing Kojou staring at the bare tops of her feet, Asagi rudely kicked him away.

“Don’t look, you!”

Yuuma giggled as she watched the interaction between the three of them. “This is good stuff.” Her words, coming as she brought soup to her lips, brought a merry “Nice!” out of Yaze.

“You’ve got pretty good taste to appreciate this place, Tokoyogi. This is a place known only to a select few, even on Itogami Island. This is just between us, but I hear they use Demon Sanctuary research feedback for the special ingredients.

“In other words, rumor has it they use demon food testers with taste buds more sensitive than humans to pick out their stuff.”

Yuuma spoke with visible admiration as she scooped up some soup and offered it in front of Yaze.

“This’s really something. How about you try some, too, Yaze?”

It was a classic
say aaahh
pose. For a moment, Yaze stopped out of apparent shock; then he thrust his face forward, his cheeks red all the while. His motion was made awkward by his uncharacteristic nervousness.

For some reason, Yaze’s compliment was actually polite. “Th-this is delicious.”

Yuuma made a happy-looking nod. “Isn’t it? I’m so glad.”

“…What are you blushing for?” Asagi asked with an amazed look as she watched Yaze flustered by Yuuma’s jubilance.

Yaze clutched his head in visible anguish.

“I-I’m not. It’s a misunderstanding. My heart’s already set on another wo— Yikes?!”

Yaze let out a short yelp as his cell phone rang right then with perfect timing. Judging from the twitch of his face, one might think it was a call from the girlfriend in question.

In contrast to Yaze being thoroughly shaken, Yuuma’s behavior was calm and collected. To her, this sort of thing was just normal communication between friends. Kojou, for his part, calmly continued eating, quite familiar with Yuuma’s personality.

I see
, Asagi thought, accepting something in a roundabout way. No doubt this combined with Kojou’s quite dense personality had shaped his view of how girls expressed goodwill. It was even possible he’d dismiss her having kissed him as normal communication, too.

Having said that, she felt having had a girl like Yuuma around him since he was little meant he couldn’t help it. Glancing sideways, Asagi made a hearty sigh as Yuuma continued merrily eating like some sort of oblivious gigolo.

“…It’s just not fair.”

“What are you talking about?” Kojou asked.

“Nothing at all. Just that a friend like that’s wasted on you, Kojou.”

“That so…?” Kojou’s lips twisted as he replied, looking a tad wounded.

“I’ll have you know she’s had some pretty big blunders too. I mean back during our fifth-grade camping trip—”

Yuuma threatened Kojou with a very calm look on her face.

“You sure about that, Kojou? If you divulge that information, I’ll tell them
that
story about you, you know.”

Kojou swiftly submitted. “I’m very sorry, please forgive me.”

Asagi resumed blowing bubbles into the bottom of her glass as she watched Kojou and Yuuma engaged in a comedy routine.

She hated to admit it, but there was no doubt Yuuma was a very charming girl. Hard as that was, there was no atmosphere of intimacy between her and Kojou at all. At the very least, Kojou treated her completely the same as any guy friend.

It wasn’t so much that Kojou was dense as he was treating her like any old friend. When Asagi thought about it more, it was a lot like her relationship with Motoki Yaze.

Something tugged at her nonetheless. It was vague, based on intuition.

It was the same as the ill feeling she had when seeing bugs’ guts on a serious program. Nothing constituted concrete evidence, but Asagi absolutely did not ignore her malaise, for experience had taught her that it was linked to grievous danger.
I see
, Asagi realized.
I just don’t like this Yuuma Tokoyogi girl.

Asagi was still indulging in such insecure thoughts when Yaze came back from taking the cell call outside the shop.

“You’re serious… Understood. I’ll be back shortly.”

Saying those last words with an unusually grave look on his face, Yaze brusquely hung up the call.

“Yaze? What’s wrong?” Asagi inquired.

“Ahh, sorry. Something’s come up. I’ve gotta be on my way.”

Yaze immediately returned to his usual carefree tone, but the crease between his eyebrows did not vanish. Whatever was happening was apparently no minor emergency.

“What? Your girlfriend yanking your chain?”

“Something like that. See ya!”

Yaze rushed out of the store, his favorite headphones in tow. Kojou had French fries in his mouth when he did a double take while watching him go.

“Hey, you! Pay for what you ate, will ya?!” Kojou bellowed.

“Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

“Don’t
mwa-ha-ha
me!!”

The other guests in the restaurant were flabbergasted as they saw Yaze leave, loud laughter trailing behind him.

Asagi murmured, “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” as her eyes met Yuuma’s, who was sitting opposite her. Seeing the girl send an invigorating, charming smile back at her, Asagi repeated the same line once more in her own heart.
Oh for goodness’ sake.

The next moment, Asagi tilted her head as she felt the smartphone in her pouch vibrate.

“Ah…?”

This was the smartphone Asagi used as her personal work tool. She’d obtained it through the black market with all kinds of illegal modifications included; no one should have had that cell phone’s number.

“Sorry, I have to take this.”

Asagi made a frivolous wave to Kojou and Yuuma as she stood up. No “human” should have known the phone’s number. In other words, the caller wasn’t human at all.

Pressing the
ACCEPT
button, Asagi heard a composite, artificial voice flow out of the smartphone.

“—Miss? Sorry to interrupt you on your day off.”

“What is it, Mogwai? If it’s business, can it wait till later?”

Asagi grilled the AI, her partner, with obvious displeasure. Mogwai was the Ghost of Itogami Island—the avatar of the five supercomputers that held all of Itogami Island’s urban functionality in its paws.

It boasted operational abilities on par with the world’s finest, but it was equally quirky and hard to handle, leading to a poor reputation—but for some reason, Asagi had grown fond of it.

The AI purposefully using a low-fidelity audio transmission meant that the call had a nontrivial level of scrambling in the background.

Mogwai laid things out as if to back up Asagi’s assumptions.

“Sorry, we don’t have the time to spare. It’s an emergency. A Class III Defense Condition has been instituted.”

“Huh? What the heck is this sort of large-scale terrorism?!” Asagi asked back in astonishment. She’d expected there was some kind of trouble happening, but she never expected Class III. The Demon Sanctuary had seven defense conditions, and this was third from the top. It indicated that there was grievous damage to Itogami City’s urban functionality, with a risk of serious loss of human life.

There’d only been one Class III invoked since Asagi had begun working part-time for the Management Corporation—when the Lotharingian Armed Apostle had assaulted Keystone Gate.

At the time, the Island Guard had over a hundred wounded guardsmen. In other words, Itogami Island now faced a peril of equal stature.

“So anyway, the Management Corpration’s sent you an emergency work order. Please and thank you, miss.”

Mogwai’s arbitrary request came without any proper explanation of the circumstances. That only made the gravity of the issue more apparent. Even if she was a genius-level hacker, she was still just a student working part-time, yet they were putting this rather excessive weight on her shoulders. She couldn’t just ignore it and walk away.

“Sheesh…all right already. Just hold on, I’m on my way. What’s the big deal, geez.”

Conveying her acceptance in a frail tone of voice, Asagi hung up the call. It seemed some kind of lethal situation had quietly developed while her back had been turned.

They transferred to the twelfth story aboveground by elevator and headed to a viewing tower above even that.

It was smack in the middle of Itogami Island, the viewing hall of Keystone Gate’s top section—

It was the highest place on the island, possessing a perfect, unobstructed view.

Nagisa made a high-pitched shout of admiration as she rushed out onto the glass floor without the slightest timidity.

“Whoa, the view is incredible!”

It was a donut-shaped room about ten meters in diameter. The walls and floor were all made out of glass, allowing one to look over virtually the entirety of Itogami City from within. Another selling point of the place was that the entire floor gently rotated, so you could take in a 360-degree view just by standing still.

“It’s my first time in the viewing hall. I’ve always wanted to come up here. It’s a lot higher than I thought. Whoa, a souvenir medal dispenser! Key holders, too!”

In complete contrast to his little sister’s childlike high spirits, Kojou’s expression was full of gloom from having paid everyone’s entrance fee. “So expensive… Who’d’ve guessed a little elevator ride could get you ripped off for so much?”

Even if it was the tallest place on the whole island, the fee for just going to the roof—a thousand yen per head—was hard on a high schooler’s wallet just to play tourist. But the hall was even more packed than he’d expected. It really was a must-see stop on any tour of Itogami Island.

Yukina walked onto the floor very gently as if testing its strength. Kojou wanted to laugh as he watched her carefully avoid the glass panels and walk on top of the metal pillars.

“It’s a little scary. It’s like you’re floating in space.”

Kojou spoke when he noticed her hand absolutely refused to pull away from the rail.

“Oh, that’s right, you’re bad with airplanes and stuff, Himeragi.”

To Yukina, who found all types of machines to be awkward, an airplane must have seemed to be a mysterious mass of steel that flew through the air. She probably had a similar feeling where the rotating viewing hall was concerned.

But because of her pride as a watcher, she didn’t seem to want to let Kojou know she was afraid.

“That is incorrect. I am just concerned about the strength of the glass with so many people standing on it. It does not mean I am frightened whatsoever.”

“Right, right.” Kojou let Yukina’s bluffing roll past him like water off a duck as he offered her his hand. “Here.”

Yukina was at a bit of a loss.

“Th-thank you very much,” she said, taking Kojou’s hand. She seemed to be a bit calmer as they walked alongside Kanon, with both their eyes glittering as they began looking through the binoculars that lined the walls.

Kojou felt like a teacher chaperoning elementary schoolers as he watched the girls when Yuuma got close to him and jabbed an elbow into his ribs.

“Pretty girl you got there. She your girlfriend, Kojou?”

“Hah?”

With a suspicious look, Kojou glanced back at the wide grin coming over Yuuma as he shook his head.
No, no, no…

“I told you, that’s Nagisa’s classmate.”

“You look like you get along
really
well…”

“R-right… She just happens to live in the apartment beside us. Total coincidence.”

Of course, Kojou couldn’t tell her the truth—that he was a vampire and she was always keeping an eye on him—so he spun a tense excuse. Yuuma made a strained smile, not in doubt of him but finding added meaning in his words.

“Hmm. Coincidence, huh?”

“What?”

“Nothing, I was just thinking that you haven’t changed any.”

“That ain’t so.”

Kojou sighed at his own expense as Yuuma’s casual words made him really feel the sarcastic whims of destiny.

It’d been four years since he last met her. Things had been extremely stormy during that time. First there was Nagisa’s incident where she was on death’s door, their parents divorced, and Kojou himself had obtained the absurd physical characteristics of the Fourth Primogenitor. He thought of the opportunity to reunite with an old friend like this as a miraculous piece of good fortune.

“I’m relieved you haven’t changed any yourself, Yuuma.”

Kojou said it in a fervent tone, but this time it was Yuuma’s turn to slump her shoulders in letdown.

“…Well that hurts. I’ve been trying to act a lot more feminine.”

Hearing Yuuma murmur in a voice almost too soft to hear, Kojou had a mystified look on him as he glanced back.

“Huh?”

“It’s nothing. Anyway, what an awesome view. So this is the city you live in, Kojou.”

Yuuma spoke as she pressed her forehead to the glass window like a little girl.

Below her eyes, she could see the tightly packed quarters of Itogami City. Beyond, the deep blue sea continued all the way to the horizon. It was a first for Kojou’s eyes, too. The island looked all alone in the world.

Kojou mumbled while squinting from the dazzling rays reflecting off the water’s surface.

“It’s a small island any way you slice it, huh?”

Yuuma shook her head, making her hair swish and flutter.

“It’s interesting, though. It’s like the whole island’s one big theme park. It really is a Demon Sanctuary.”

“It’s usually a lot plainer than this. This is ’cause it’s right before a festival.”

“Right before a festival…truly it is.”

Yuuma made a little mumble and smiled pleasantly. An airplane circling around the city’s airspace to announce the events for that night’s festivities was passing at that exact moment. The festival was finally set to begin in earnest.

Kojou absentmindedly gazed at the teenage girl–idol group depicted on the plane’s fuselage when the cell phone in his parka’s pocket began to ring.