Elpis

There is no time to spare.

Nearly a ton of metal is hurtling toward an elementary school boy walking alone by the roadside.

The driver has lost control and hasn't even hit the brakes.

Perhaps trying to pick up something that has fallen at her feet, the driver is hunched over below the dashboard, her right hand still gripping the steering wheel. In half a second, the boy will be crushed against the hood and sent flying through the windshield.

So instinctively, he raises his hand . . .

He wraps the small, backpack-clad figure in a black rectangular barrier summoned from the void.

The collision is over in an instant.

The pitch-black box absorbs the vehicle's impact head-on and goes flying, bouncing once off a nearby wall before tumbling onto the road.

The runaway vehicle's front wheels drop into a roadside ditch before it slams into a utility pole, scattering sparks. The bumper and hood are so badly mangled it is impossible to tell what caused the damage—twisted metal bent at sharp, unnatural angles.

The rectangular barrier immediately shatters and vanishes.

The boy with glasses appears in the exact same position he'd been in when the barrier enclosed him—lying on his back with his backpack beneath him—and lands gently on the ground.

A recorder tucked into the backpack cushioning his fall simply rolls onto the street. The boy doesn’t have so much as a scratch.

After all, at the moment of impact, the boy’s time was frozen solid.

While the boy sits up with a bewildered expression, looking around to see what has happened, the man in the shadows checks once more that no shocked faces peer from nearby windows—no one who might have witnessed the entire sequence of events.

Time-Stop Field—civilians were forbidden from witnessing this technology that could halt the flow of time within an enclosed space.

A middle-aged woman crawls out of the airbag-filled driver's seat, spots the boy, and rushes toward him in a panic.

She doesn't catch so much as a glimpse of the black barrier that protects the boy. Even if she does see it, there is no third party to confirm what happens. The deserted back street works in their favor.

No . . .

There is a witness nearby.

When he turns around, a black-haired girl in a tracksuit stands silhouetted against the setting sun.

But she isn’t a civilian whose identity needs to be protected. Though still young with traces of childishness in her features, she is a colleague and junior who serves under the same chain of command.

We have orders. Cancel training. Two-person cell deployment.

The girl states this plainly.

Her voice is cold, as if she hasn't just witnessed the miracle that unfolded before her eyes.

Though sudden missions are routine, he can't help feeling suspicious. Colleague or not, she is still just a trainee who can only be trusted with backup support. Mission directives from above should come to him first—he is the team leader, the one who takes point.

The answer to his question comes immediately.

Looking straight at him with dark, emotionless eyes, the sixteen-year-old newcomer continues . . .

Tonight's demon hunt, I'll take point. You provide backup—

Kei.

She concludes by addressing him by name.

◇◇◇

Kei Momokari hates the city at night.

The rows of buildings shrouded in darkness, the streetlights glowing on utility poles—they always fill him with dread.

Worst of all are the darkened cram schools and the bright lights of convenience stores illuminating the night streets.

Whenever he sees those two things, nausea strikes him along with a piercing pain in his chest.

It's closer to fear than disgust. He's afraid of the city at night.

But more than either of those things, what Kei fears most . . . are residential front doors.

Of course, Kei knows the reason all too well.

Twelve years ago, in the autumn of his fifth-grade year, beyond that door, Kei came face to face with his family's death.

He remembers that sense of unease he felt at the entrance when he finally returned home from cram school to find his house completely dark.

The front door that had been left unlocked.

Bloodstains scattered throughout the hallway.

Four shapes illuminated by the living room's fluorescent light that he finally managed to switch on with trembling hands.

What had once been his parents, grandfather, and eighteen-month-old brother had become a pile of bodies, sprawled and heaped together.

The carnage painted in red, red, and red, burned into the back of his eyelids with indelible intensity.

Kei hadn't made it in time.

He had missed the violence that tore through the Momokari home.

If only he hadn't stopped by the convenience store to kill time that night, surely Kei would have arrived before his family died.

The disgust and fear buried deep in his heart—he now understands what they really are: self-hatred, distilled and hardened from such regret.

Why hadn't he gone straight home? Why hadn't he hurried through the night streets? Why had he made that detour? The cruel blade of what if—the thought that if only he had hurried, he would have found his family alive and well behind that door—remains buried deep in Kei's heart.

Of course, if he had made it in time, surely Kei himself would have died too.

Like his family, he would have become a speechless lump of meat.

But he might have been able to save them. He might have been able to help them, or prevent it.

If not that—he might have been able to help them escape.

Though he knows perfectly well that the past is gone and can never be changed, these torturous thoughts still bubble up from the depths of his mind.

That's why Kei is afraid of front doors.

Even when peaceful domestic life seems to continue behind them, he can't help but wonder—isn't the stench of death invisible from the outside festering just beyond that single door?

For Kei, every front door represents the boundary between blessing and curse, the dividing line between life and death, where longing meets hatred, and where regret's blade pierces straight through his body.

Only fragments of memory remain from after he crossed his home's front door that night.

Kei still doesn't even know who called the police.

The sound of sirens lingers faintly in his memory, along with the many footsteps rushing in, his shoulders being shaken, someone covering him with a blanket.

The only thing he remembers clearly is the sight of his younger sister being rescued from under the sofa.

Her pale face was completely stripped of expression.

Her eyes were wide open and unmoving, as if peering into the abyss.

Having lost all ability to react to the outside world, she must have hidden there and witnessed the entire atrocity that raged through the living room.

His sister—Akari Momokari—her heart had fallen into the abyss.

Unlike him, she had been athletic and tomboyish, with a lovely and spirited appearance that convinced everyone around her she would surely become a beauty. Now all of that had been painted over with pitch-black emptiness.

Her arms and legs hung limply.

Her skin was bloodless white.

Her pupils were dilated and remained black.

His sister looked more lifeless than the dead. Her appearance conveyed even less vitality than his parents' bodies, which had been stabbed repeatedly until their organs spilled out.

Kei had stayed in the hospital for about two weeks with his sister, who had become such a hollow shell. There had been police questioning at his bedside as well. But hardly any of what he experienced during that period lingers in his memory.

The only vivid memory he can recall is the scene at the crematorium under the western sun.

Nothing was trailing above the chimney.

Unless it's a very old facility, cremation smoke doesn't come out at all.

Kei couldn't follow with his eyes as the four bodies that had undergone autopsies and been stored were roasted, turned to ash, burned completely, and drawn up into the autumn sky covered with cirrus clouds.

Even so, it could be said that Kei's second life began under that sky.

Both muscle and heart tense up when they receive pain.

He was startled by the sudden voice. He had been staring at the ground from a bench beside the crematorium, but he raised his face and looked up.

A middle-aged man stood there.

He wasn't one of the handful of relatives who had gathered. His clothes were different from the somber black everyone else wore—wrinkled slacks and sandals, with disheveled gray-streaked hair above a plain brown Hawaiian shirt.

That tension only breaks when they die. So when a predator sees its prey's body go limp and still, it loosens its grip.

The man continued speaking, but Kei couldn't grasp what he was saying or what it meant.

But Kei could be certain of one thing. The man wasn't talking to himself. He was speaking directly to him—Kei could sense it.

From the prey's perspective, there's still a slim chance to escape once those jaws relax. That child is in a state where her mind and body have simply switched off.

That child.

Kei understood he was referring to his sister, Akari.

It's a survival mechanism left over from when our ancestors were small primates, the same strategy used by opossums and Japanese badgers. That child switched off her consciousness and body herself. In other words . . .

She's playing dead.

That's what the man said.

The man's words were difficult to follow. Even though Kei was the type of child mocked as a bookish know-it-all, he didn't recognize terms he'd never learned or animal names he'd never heard. But strangely, the man's message seared itself into Kei's heart.

Perhaps it was because the intent behind the man's words felt completely different from the attitude of every other adult around him—adults who hid the truth from him because he was just a child, who spoke in vague terms and glossed over everything.

This man was trying to tell him the truth without sparing him. That's how it felt to Kei.

Kei watched with wide eyes as the man pulled a cigarette from his Hawaiian shirt's chest pocket.

That's exactly why she survived. But that child doesn't have the genetic programming for the crucial circuit that turns those switches back on. The hospital can only wait. Days, months, years, maybe even a lifetime. All they can do is let her sleep in this state of lowered metabolism. But—

The Gate Department can save her.

That's what he heard.

That she could be saved.

He lifted his gaze toward the man again, having almost let it drop to the ground. The western sun blazed behind him, creating such harsh backlighting that Kei couldn't make out his face clearly. It took every ounce of strength he had just to force out words.

Gate . . . Department?

Yeah, the Gate Department . . . G-A-T-E Department.

After spelling it out in the air with his bent cigarette, the man pointed with its unlit tip at the relatives in formal wear receiving the bone urns from crematorium staff.

I've already talked to those folks. The Gate Department will be taking custody of your sister. Nobody wants to take in some kid who just sleeps and burns through money . . . The problem is you.

He held the cigarette lightly between barely parted lips amid his stubble.

Decide right here and now. Either forget all about your family and start a new life with one of those relatives, or come to the Gate Department with your sister. But if you come, you'll be given a role. You'll never be able to return to a normal life again.

The cigarette between his lips caught aflame. The western sun filtered blue through the clear plastic of his cheap lighter. Finally realizing he was being asked for an answer, Kei opened his mouth once more.

What came out wasn't a response, but a question.

Will Akari . . . go back to normal?

She won't. Just like your life can't be rewound.

Exhaling smoke, the man answered cruelly.

But her consciousness will return. And she should be able to become something extraordinary.

Young Kei couldn't grasp what that something extraordinary meant at the time. And not understanding didn't matter. If his sister's consciousness would return, that was all he wanted.

I'll go. Together with Akari.

He stood up from the bench, his small frame rising with determination.

This role . . . what do I have to do?

The man smiled for the first time then.

Nothing complicated. Survive, fight, destroy.

Destro . . . y?

Something pulsed inside Kei—a heavy thump.

The man met his upward gaze with a thin smile. Silhouetted against the western sun behind him, he looked like a devil smirking after sealing a contract for someone's soul.

Search, pursue, hunt down, and destroy them. Those who slaughtered your family.

My . . . family . . .

Another thump.

Purple smoke rose from the man's fingertips, drawn up into the sky streaked with cirrus clouds.

Slaughtering Karmic Chain Possession Agents. Demons that possess humans and incite them to kill their own kind. Since ancient times, the Gate Department has—

Kei was barely listening to the man's words anymore.

Both that strange string of syllables and the ridiculous word demons barely registered. Even thoughts of his sister slipped from his mind in that instant.

Pursuing and destroying his family's killers . . .

Such a concept, familiar from countless manga, dramas, and movies, settled heavily in his mind.

Kei still regrets that moment even now.

Not the choice itself. He regrets that in trying to cling to something that might fill the void in his heart, he forgot about his sister—his only remaining family—even if just for a moment.

But there was no way he could have resisted.

Blood revenge . . .

For Kei, who was still just a child, it was a concept that was far too dark, seductive, and sweet.

◇◇◇

Kei.

The girl's familiar voice, flat and without inflection.

Kei.

The crematorium garden from long ago shimmers at the sound of her voice, breaking apart and dissolving away.

The monochrome world regains its color, and he shifts his gaze to the rearview mirror. In that small rectangular frame, Kei Momokari finally meets the cold stare from the back seat.

Approaching the target area. Get ready. Check your equipment.

Forcing himself to focus on her clipped tone, he pushes away the lingering memories.

Yeah, right, sorry. I'm good here. How about you?

Medication, pressure injector—both secured. Stun gun fully charged.

The girl answers calmly, then after a brief pause, asks this.

As I thought. Still against it? My test.

Yeah . . .

A failure like me. Can’t be a vanguard? Is that it?

Don't call yourself a failure. You're young. It's just too early, that's all.

But you. When it was your turn. You were younger.

The truth of it leaves Kei at a loss for how to respond. As he hesitates, their car slows down and pulls to a stop at the curb.

The luxury sedan that has been tailgating them swerves around aggressively, some guy with a punch perm hanging out the window, laying on the horn as his taillights disappear into the distance.

After enduring a stream of profanity from the passing driver, the van rocks slightly as Kei steps out onto the sidewalk.

Reflected in the passenger window of the white van with "Gate Department Construction" printed in small letters on the side, is the figure of an ordinary office worker.

He is wearing a white shirt, gray slacks, and a jacket.

Add a tie and he could pass for a fresh college graduate in his first corporate job. With his thin, narrow eyes, he can even be mistaken for some timid low-level clerk.

Twelve years since then.

Kei stares at his reflection for a moment—at this adult figure that somehow has emerged from years that feel both endless and fleeting. The elementary school boy who once resolved to throw away his entire future to live with his sister, his only family, is gone.

The van rocks again. Kei turns his attention to the girl stepping out from the back seat.

Her chest shows the faint curve of adolescence beneath a burgundy tracksuit with rolled sleeves. Her sneakers are so beaten and dirty they look ready to fall apart. Black hair pulled back in a ponytail sways as she moves, her straight-cut bangs trimmed just above her eyebrows to keep her vision clear, fluttering as her feet hit the asphalt.

Kei immediately notices that after sliding the door shut, her thin arm doesn't drop to her side but stays raised, fingers massaging the space between her eyebrows.

Even after a year and a half, it still hurts? Mine stopped bothering me after about six months, but since it's a complete eyeball modification, depending on how your body reacts, the pain might . . .

Understood. No problem. Pain during operations—can ignore.

The girl replies with her usual broken speech patterns.

R-right, but you know, getting distracted during a mission would be bad, so maybe this time . . .

Can do it. Concentration—won't neglect.

At her blunt, typical response, Kei turns away and lets out a quiet sigh.

Tasked with training a novice, he tries not to show his frustration, yet he remains oblivious to how badly he is failing to hide his attitude. He misses the moment the girl looks away and bows her head slightly.

Is he really planning to let her do this? What the hell is the master thinking . . .

This junior he can never seem to communicate with properly—tonight's mission called for putting her in the dangerous vanguard position. Apparently, the plan is to throw her into the front lines as a recruitment test for becoming a full sealer.

Gate Department sealers.

Hunters who make their living pursuing, sealing, and destroying demons, constantly walking hand in hand with death.

It's still too early . . . and besides, she's not cut out for this. She shouldn't be turned into a sealer.

Kei is well aware that he is being hypocritical. As the girl pointed out earlier, Kei was given vanguard duty and promoted to full member when he was fifteen. By age alone, she is actually a year older than he'd been.

He glances back at the girl over his shoulder.

Kanae Inui—still sixteen years old, an active high school sophomore.

With her pale, thin arms and petite frame that looks as if she can be easily lifted, she is a trainee newcomer who has somehow survived hellish training that makes Ground Self-Defense Force ranger courses look like a warm-up.

It has been only three months since she left the training facility in Okutama and was placed under Kei's supervision. If tonight's mission determines her official recruitment, she will inherit the title of youngest sealer that has belonged to Kei for many years—making her his first junior as well.

This is their fourth field mission together as training partners. He has been assigned to guide her several times during her training period, so they have crossed paths occasionally over the past two years.

But Kanae always gives him nothing but cold stares and emotionally vacant responses.

She doesn’t actually dislike him—he has finally begun to understand this recently. Kanae treats everyone with the same detached attitude.

It isn’t that she dislikes people, nor is she deliberately putting up barriers to keep others out.

If anything, she is like a hermit who withdraws from human contact, abandons civilization, and chooses to survive alone in the wilderness. She seems to have convinced herself that connecting with people holds no meaning, necessity, or value. With that mindset, her relationships with those around her can’t possibly go smoothly.

Communication never goes well, and every time their eyes meet, he feels uncomfortable.

More than anything, her eyes seem completely empty. To Kei, it looks as if black holes have opened in them, swallowing every trace of light.

The eyes of someone who has lost their foundation.

The eyes of someone who can't look toward the future.

Eyes that belong to those whose families have been slaughtered—burning with stagnant rage.

Kei can't help but wonder.

Had his own eyes once held that same darkness?

Though the final decision rests with those above him, Kei wants to scrawl REJECTED across her recruitment application right away. If he had the authority, he wouldn’t hesitate for a second.

She was certainly excellent physically. Her fighting spirit was solid, her technical learning speed and precision were flawless, and her hand-to-hand combat and close-quarters fighting skills far exceeded his own.

But there is something else.

With eyes like that, she won't survive. That's what he thinks.

People who disregard their own safety can be incredibly strong. But that's the strength of a flame consuming its own life for fuel. People like that die young.

What this girl needs is a reason to keep living. Until she finds and holds onto that for herself, she shouldn't be sent to dangerous assignments—that is Kei's assessment. Until that day comes, she should gain experience in safer departments.

Even as he thinks this, Kei wants to mock and berate himself for his hypocrisy.

He knows it too.

He knows that the same darkness can return to his own eyes just as easily.

Kei hasn't overcome everything either.

Twelve years have simply buried his wounds like sand.

If disturbed, the pain, regret, and hatred would all still be there.

Even now Kei hates the night, blames himself when he sees his reflection in convenience store windows, and fears front doors.

And—I hate that bastard.

The family massacre that had shaken a certain Tokyo residential district that night twelve years ago remains unsolved.

The perpetrator who killed his family still hasn't been caught.

Ogikubo-doji, Twenty-Seven.

Just as he manages to push down the lingering pain that name brought, a sharp, low voice cuts through his earpiece.

All teams, in position. Sealers, what's your status?

It's that same voice that had spoken to him from the crematorium bench twelve years ago.

The same cold confirmation from the man who is both his commander and master.

He almost protests against sending the still-immature girl to the dangerous front lines, but Kei knows well that doing so won't change anything. Somehow holding back his rebellious spirit, he listens as the girl's voice follows his response through the bone-conduction communicator fitted to his right ear.

Kei Momokari—Oborobako, ready.

Kanae Inui—Semimaru, ready.

Roger. Target is a red demon. Third-rank Tailbearer. Vanguard is Inui, backup is Momo. During operational activity, observe Code 102. Within those limits, full release of Semimaru and Oborobako is authorized.

Both pairs of lips move in perfect synchronization.

There is no other choice. Kei finally steels himself.

Then I'll just have to protect her. I won't let her die on a mission with me.

Whether Kanae knows what Kei is thinking or not, she zips her tracksuit up to her neck and stands beside him. He glances at her small shoulder before turning his gaze toward the dark alley squeezed between buildings.

He can see thin utility poles, manholes, and an abandoned bicycle with its saddle missing—all buried in the alley's darkness—now emerging with sharp, restored contrast.

Kei knows that exactly the same thing is happening within the darkness behind the closed eyelids of the girl standing beside him.

Deep within their eyeballs—beyond the pupils, through the crystalline lenses, and reaching the retinas past the vitreous bodies—a dense grid of packed hexagonal pixels quietly stirs to life, rousing itself to unleash their full capabilities.

To capture more light, the outer edges of their pupils open in radial slits.

The crystalline lenses warp in sync, optimizing their refractive index.

And then . . .

Deep within their vision, now modified to see through the dark night, both pairs of eyes capture the faint crimson band trailing beyond the narrow alley. The pixel clusters arranged atop their cone cells are drawing out the traces left by their prey.

These optical sensors that captured invisible entities and projected synthetic images onto the retina—these modified eyeballs called the Heavenly Eye—were proof of employment with the demon-hunting organization known as the Gate Department.

These semi-organic devices constructed with molecular precision were not products of any publicly known technology.

Moreover, they weren't even of human origin.

Just as the demons—their sworn enemies—were certainly not of this world.

Why?

The young man is confused.

Why am I the one running?

It's the witching hour, when even the neon lights have dimmed and the nighttime city is trying to fall asleep. He is running through a narrow, deserted back alley with a knife in his hand.

The front of his hoodie shows slashes from a sharp blade. Blood seeps into his exposed undershirt, but the knife he is gripping doesn't have so much as a drop on its blade. These are wounds from something else entirely.

His eyes, hidden beneath his hood, stay fixed ahead as he runs at full speed.

Even so, the young man can clearly sense his pursuer closing the sixty-foot gap between them. He can picture the bone structure and build of whoever is chasing him without even looking back.

Without even consciously focusing on it, the image forms in his mind on its own.

It isn't a visual image like something seen with normal sight.

He can somehow directly sense the clusters of electrons flowing through the neural and muscle tissue of whoever is closing in from behind.

It is as if unknown, hypersensitive tactile organs like tentacles have sprouted backward from his spine and stretched out, able to ensnare his pursuer, caress them, and trace out their form in the space around him.

He doesn't understand why he can do such a thing.

He simply savors and examines the image of his pursuer that takes shape in his mind.

The form radiates youth. He can feel the healthy tautness of skin and muscle as if tracing it with his fingers. A young woman. Probably still young enough to be called a girl.

Something bursts and dances within his heart.

I want to kill her. I want to kill her so badly.

Even a man could sate this desire. But with a woman, it is something else entirely. They are the givers of life—the sacred counterparts who carry the role of reproduction in every species possessing male and female.

The anxiety—and the desperate yearning to snuff out that flame, no matter what—begins to overwhelm the young man’s heart.

Stop running. Turn around, attack, slaughter. You're the hunter here.

But his legs don’t stop. The pain of the wound across his chest, the bewilderment, and the fear of being suddenly slashed by that mysterious blade all swirl together, while what little remains of his original self deep in his heart puts up only the weakest resistance.

Even as he runs at full speed, the young man's expression is vacant.

He can't even remember the last time he had laughed, gotten angry, felt sad . . . or been genuinely afraid.

It’s from before he gained this ability to sense the pulse of life behind him, and judging by the days, it should be fairly recent. Yet he can’t recall when it was at all.

Only questions remain, like small thorns, pricking at the fragments of consciousness still lingering within him.

Why? Why can I see behind me?

His pursuer keeps closing in without slowing down. Still, he holds the advantage in speed. If he can just keep running for another three minutes, he should be able to shake them off.

Because I was killed from behind before.

The young man has only a vague idea of why he gained this ability to sense what’s behind him.

The experience of being attacked and killed from behind had shaped this ability.

The young man is alive, of course. He has never even experienced a near-death situation.

He hadn't died. Rather, he was the one who had killed.

He thinks back to the middle-aged man he once cornered with his friends in a park near the entertainment district, chasing easy money and cheap thrills. The young man no longer remembers the man’s sudden counterattack, nor the moment when, in a panic, he drove a knife into the man’s back as that expressionless figure used brute force to pin down his friends, fingers reaching to gouge out their eyes.

He isn't even aware that he has taken the invisible entity possessing that man into himself, becoming its new host, nor that most of his thoughts are already being bent and controlled by it. He had felt no doubt when, after the middle-aged man’s body went still, a savage bloodlust consumed him—and he stabbed his longtime companions to death, one after another.

They're alive—so he kills them. That's all there is to it.

The young man continues pounding against the asphalt.

A narrow gap squeezed between mixed-use buildings suddenly catches his eye, and he rushes into it.

In that narrow alley—seemingly private property attached to the buildings—beyond the stale stench of garbage and vomit, a metal fence nearly ten feet high looms ahead.

He crouches low and leaps.

The sound of muscle fibers tearing echoes through his bones.

With agility that would shame an Olympic athlete, he grasps the top of the fence and vaults over it with explosive, beast-like power.

Neither the bone-jarring impact of landing nor the pain from stretched tendons and torn flesh changes his expression. His eyes stay vacant as he smirks inwardly. He senses every aspect of his pursuer’s physical abilities. There’s no way they can easily scale that fence.

Now I can escape.

He can hide somewhere and let his body heal. Then, in a safe place, he will search for his next prey.

That's what the young man is thinking when . . .

SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

A shrill, cicada-like screech echoes through the alley.

The sudden harsh, grating sound makes him instinctively slow his pace and turn around.

A young woman in a tracksuit is closing in right behind him.

Behind her, he sees the fence’s remains scattered in fragments. The pieces are severed so cleanly it looks as if they were merely paper, their cross-sections gleaming.

The woman is holding something strange in her hand.

It is an oval cylinder about ten inches long, with tightly wound white leather cord twisted and linked in diamond patterns, visible between her slender fingers.

A katana handle, without a guard.

The danger lies in the blade extending from it.

A blade blacker than the darkest night, yet one through which the background flickers and shimmers with a ghostly transparency.

What has been crying out is no cicada.

What echoes through the alley is the sound released by that black blade as it closes in on the young man, as if announcing that he is next to be cut down.

◇◇◇

From the corner of her eye, Kanae catches sight of the enemy's knife blade rolling across the ground with a dry clink, its mirror-like cross-section glinting.

The steel is severed by a single flash of her weapon, Semimaru.

Her first strike is a horizontal slash, drawn and unleashed in a single motion as she drops her center of gravity to its limit. In that split second, there is no room to regret the shallow step, the few inches she failed to gain.

The enemy avoids the strike, arching back and sinking low. To press the attack, she twists her wrist and reverses the blade for a second flash—the Tsubame Gaeshi.

But this too cuts only air.

So fast . . . !

Faster than her blade can return, the enemy pushes off with one of his legs, using the momentum of straightening his torso to spring toward Kanae’s left rear.

Meanwhile, Kanae uses the momentum of her stride to surge past him.

Though intentional, letting him slip into her blind spot still stings.

Braking with her sunken right leg, she kicks off the ground in an instant. Unwinding her twisted body like a spring, Kanae finally traces a spiral with her blade through the air in a massive swing, defying the confines of the narrow alleyway.

The radius is wide enough to cover the space where the enemy has leaped, but she can’t tell if it will connect. Even though she senses his rough position through his bloodlust, she doesn’t have the luxury of aiming precisely.

As expected, the third strike also fails to cut the enemy's flesh.

His explosive power and reaction speed . . . they surpass mine.

In that instant of passing by each other, their positions switch.

Sinking her hips and raising her black blade, Semimaru, once more, Kanae focuses on her opponent’s form beyond it.

The young man’s hoodie has somehow been grazed by her blade, hanging halfway off his neck in tatters.

Staring at her with reptilian, emotionless eyes, the enemy discards the useless remnants of his broken knife. He smoothly centers his weight like a predator, settling into a stance ready to explode into motion at any moment.

Kanae sees more than just that in her enemy.

A cluster of light points dances across her retina, overlaying another image onto her visual field. The pixel array reveals the entity possessing the young man—a demon.

A murky crimson vortex swirls around him, clinging to his body.

Rising from his forehead are two deep crimson flame horns, flickering in the gentle breeze.

From his spine, a long trail of the same color grows and drags behind him. It is unmistakably a tail, shimmering with a faint red light.

A demon—a Slaughtering Karmic Chain Possession Agent.

An entity that possesses humans, warps their thoughts to give them a thirst for killing their own kind, and compels the possessed host to commit murder. Its true form is said to exist on the other side of dimensions, where those living in this world can neither see nor touch it.

Invisible, intangible, and incomprehensible.

But in order to seize the human brain, specifically the prefrontal cortex that governs reason, it must tether itself ever so slightly to the atoms and electrons of this world.

In that instant, the air itself begins to shimmer.

The disturbance forces the molecules in the air to shift unnaturally. Nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide—they all swirl and scatter, dragging countless specks of dust along with them.

Her modified eye, the Heavenly Eye, functions as both sensor and simulator, capturing these minute fluctuations. It is like a sailor reading wave patterns to detect reefs hidden beneath the surface.

The colors shadowing the demon are a projection, a synthesis of atmospheric distortions. The flaming horns rising from his forehead are no different. Those flickering horns that seem to burn with real fire are merely heat haze surrounding invisible interference terminals, thrust from the dimensions beyond into human brains.

Just as I thought—my movements . . . they’re being read. But I expected that.

Still holding her stance, Kanae shifts her gaze to the tail extending from the man's back.

A rear-guard sensor that only demons who undergo certain evolutionary processes possess.

This formless yet hyper-sensitive sensory organ penetrates the host's spine and brainstem, linking directly to the cerebrum's visual cortex.

The enemy can see behind himself—or more precisely, places he has already been.

Her attacks have been consistently evaded because Kanae's body overlaps with that sensor's range. Pursuit means following the opponent's path, and chasing from behind inevitably leads to that situation. Her neural pulse patterns have been detected, every movement telegraphed in advance.

But now, the tables have turned.