The crisis known as the Great Cataclysm

“Kimihiko Kimizuka. Nagisa Natsunagi. Charlotte Arisaka Anderson. We’ve been waiting for you.”

Ice Doll, the high-level Federation Government dignitary, turned her masked face toward us.

Technically, it wasn’t just her. A row of a dozen or so officials was looking our way.

“Please, have a seat. The footing’s rather unsteady.”

No sooner had she spoken than I staggered a little.

We were moving across the surface of the water in a yakatabune—practically a floating dining room—that they had chartered. Inside the tatami-floored cabin, a sumptuous meal had been set out for everyone present. Outside, the sun had set, and the light of the boat’s red lanterns swayed.

“I never imagined so many people would show up just to see me,” I told the gathered members.

We’d received the invitation from the Federation Government in late November, when winter was drawing near.

“Board this boat at sixPMthree days from now. You may bring a maximum of two companions.” That was all the letter I’d been given by a Man in Black had said.

I didn’t know what they wanted, which was business as usual, but this time I could make a pretty good guess. Charlie and I exchanged looks.

“Go on, Charlie. Apologize properly. Use your words.”

“H-huhn?!” Charlie glared at me. “Why is this my fault?! Don’t sell me out with no warning!”

“Well, you’re the one who suggested it back then, right?”

“L-liar! With the way you showed up that time, it just felt like, you know, the right thing to say! That means it’s your fault the Akashic records got broken— Ah!” Charlie hastily clapped a hand over her mouth. She really was a proper idiot.

The other day, our pursuit of Abel A. Schoenberg, enemy of the world, had taken Charlie and I to the control tower where the Akashic records slept. While we were there, we’d fired two bullets into the System.

Of course, we’d done it because we decided breaking them would be better than letting Abel steal the records. However, that didn’t change the fact that we’d busted the secret the Federation Government had tirelessly tried to protect. That was why I’d been prepared for a dressing down from them. And yet…

“It was Kimizuka! It’s his fault! He’s the reason the Akashic records got broken and why the mood between us got a little strange for a second!”

“Oh, man. And after you were so honest back then. You asked me to save you and everything. If you were like that all the time, even I’d be more—”

“! Bringing that up is against the rules! …Oh, come on! Back then, you were more, like, how do I put it? You know what I mean…and now you’re so, so… Why?!”

Just as Charlie was launching into an angry, pretty incomprehensible tirade, Nagisa stopped her. “Hang on. This is starting to feel like a romcom.” She gave me and Charlie a cold, steady look, then promptly switched gears, turning to face the government officials. “Neither of them was to blame for that.” She spread her arms wide, as if shielding us. “Kimihiko and Charlie only broke the System to protect the world from Abel. If you won’t forgive them for that… If you plan to hurt my precious friends, then I won’t forgive you.”

That got a reaction out of Ice Doll. “You’re saying that you, a Tuner, would defy the Federation Government?”

“Well, I’m being a hero because I want to protect my friends. If I can’t do that, I don’t mind being an enemy of the world instead.”

Natsunagi’s words made my breath catch for a second.

I was sure she meant it at face value. However, her remark reminded me of a conversation I’d had with Abel. According to him, the Tuners were sure to turn evil someday—to become enemies of the world. He’d said it was their fate.

“I see,” Ice Doll murmured, and a silence settled over the room. “However, we have no intention of blaming you. The System was damaged, yes, but it isn’t the sort of thing that could be destroyed completely with two bullets. Besides…” Ice Doll got to her feet, and the other dignitaries stood up with her. “Singularity, we owe you an apology. We’re terribly sorry.”

The entire group bowed their heads.

“Wh-what’s going on?” Charlie didn’t seem to know where to look. They weren’t scolding us but apologizing? Why in the world were they—?

“—Oh, I get it.” The officials’ attitudes had brought one answer to mind. “Is this about how a government faction was working with Abel?”

That was the group of hard-liners who were trying to erase the Singularity. Since their interests had aligned with Abel’s, they’d conspired to get rid of me. In fact, Abel had hit me with his code of loss, and I’d spent three weeks basically dead.

“So what’s happened in your organization between then and now?” Nagisa asked.

The group finally raised their heads again. “Some of the hard-liners have been assigned new duties.”

“You mean they’ve been demoted?” Apparently, they hadn’t been stripped of their positions in the government entirely.

“At this point, we moderates are in power, and we’re searching for a way to coexist with the Singularity. You have no enemies here,” Ice Doll told me. “Be at ease.”

The other government officials sat back down, and the three of us followed suit. Extravagant food and liquor were spread out all across the table. Was this supposed to be part of the apology? Encouraging underage drinking, though? Were they aware that they were supposed to be an organization working on the side of the law?

“Lot’s not here?” Charlie asked. She took another look around at the masked group. “He didn’t seem to be a hard-liner.”

“……”

Ice Doll didn’t answer. What did that silence mean?

If memory served me right, Lot had been the bureaucrat who’d shown Charlie how to get to the control tower. Had something about him caught her attention?

“What do you think, Kimihiko?” Nagisa whispered to me. I couldn’t figure out what she was getting at.

“I mean, you’re the one who took the most damage from that.”

Oh. She was asking whether we should accept the bureaucrats’ explanation and their apology.

“You really are kind. You’re getting mad on my account?”

“…Dummy. Don’t tease me.” Nagisa shoved me lightly.

“Well, for now, let’s accept their apology or whatever they want. Setting aside the question of whether or not we trust them, Abel’s a threat to them, too. Isn’t that right, Ice Doll?”

“Yes. The world’s worst criminal, the Phantom Thief, Abel Arsene Schoenberg—we can no longer allow him to roam at large.”

Yeah, it was enough if they acknowledged that. At this point, making peace with them and cooperating to a certain degree would be the best move.

“In exchange, tell me, Ice Doll: You dignitaries knew what the Akashic records really were, didn’t you? Why did you keep that a secret from the Tuners? How long has the world had a thing like that?”

If they meant to cooperate with the Tuners, it seemed like they could have told them about something like the records.

Or so I thought, but…

“Ice Doll does not have the authority to answer questions about the Akashic records.”

A mechanical answer—quite literally—slipped from Ice Doll’s lips. It was like listening to a robot.

The response seemed like a total joke, and Charlie started forward. “Would you people just—”

But Nagisa stopped her. “No, Charlie, that’s not it. I’m pretty sure Ice Doll genuinely can’t tell us.”

“What do you mean? Are you saying someone’s put her under a gag order or…?” But before Charlie even finished the sentence, something seemed to dawn on her. Her eyes widened. “You can’t mean—are you saying the System that runs the world is keeping her from talking, too?”

Natsunagi nodded.

The System managed the world from outside, like a program. Sometimes it caused phenomena that actively ignored the laws of physics, and we couldn’t escape its influence. Apparently, its core, the Akashic records, called all the shots.

“Why are the Akashic records able to decide a thing like that in the first place?” Charlie asked with a frown.

Why did the Akashic records get to determine everything? What sort of logic had brought them into being, and why were they still considered the standard for what was correct?

Abel had said that the world had another secret. There must be something we still needed to learn.

“If the government can’t tell us, I guess we’ll just have to ask Abel.”

We would have to meet with our enemy, who’d vanished from the face of the Earth, one more time.

“There is one more thing we must tell you,” Ice Doll said. But just then, the sliding door at the back of the room opened.

“—Mia?”

Mia Whitlock entered dressed in her Oracle outfit. I seriously hadn’t expected her to be on the boat. Had she come all the way to Japan from her clock tower in England?

“Wow, good for you. Are you finally getting over being a shut-in?”

“I—I told you not to call me that… Ugh, I feel sick…” The boat rocked very slightly, and Mia clapped a hand over her mouth.

I’d thought she looked pale. So she was seasick, huh? No one with a heart would ask what she’d been up to while she was waiting. As always, the word “pathetic” seemed to suit her.

A few minutes later, after Mia had managed to regain her composure, she came to stand in front of us again. “The truth is, there’s been a new prophecy.”

The Oracle had foreseen a new future crisis.

“It’s clearly different from any previous global crisis, though. I didn’t get any specifics, but the meaning behind it was, without a doubt, that the world was falling to pieces and scattering. That it was ending. It’s as if the vague sense of wrongness I’ve had for the past six months has finally taken shape…”

Even as she spoke, Mia seemed to be grasping for words, as if she wasn’t quite sure how to describe it.

“If even the Oracle doesn’t know, does that mean it’s deeply connected to the Akashic records?”

“Considering the timing, I think there’s a very good possibility. That secret of the world is something neither we Tuners nor the Federation Government can control.”

Mia shot a glance at the bureaucrats she’d just taken a jab at. However, none of them were about to react to a barb like that with how things stood.

Instead, Ice Doll said, “We invited your group here after hearing what the Oracle had to say on this matter.” Her mask faced us squarely. “We have decided to call this crisis the Great Cataclysm.”

The Great Cataclysm. That name reflected the fact that they were on their highest possible alert.

“It is extremely likely that Phantom Thief Abel A. Schoenberg will contribute to the Great Cataclysm. Having decided to coexist with you, Singularity, we have no choice but to rely on you and the Ace Detective. Please help us save the human race.”

Phrasing her request in a way the detective could never refuse, the icy official bowed her head one last time.

Proof ofTafel Anatomie

Right after we finished our meeting with Ice Doll and disembarked from the boat, Stephen Bluefield the Inventor contacted us for the first time in several months.

He kept it brief, just telling us to come to the hospital. Still, that was enough to convey that Siesta’s post-surgery observation period was over.

A Man in Black came to pick us up. Nagisa, Charlie, Mia, and I leaped into the car and headed for the clinic where Siesta had been hospitalized so long ago. The drive seemed to take forever, but it was probably only about twenty or thirty minutes.

It was after eleven at night. When we arrived, we raced into the hospital waiting room without even bothering to catch our breath. Stephen was standing there under the unreliable fluorescent lights.

“How’s Siesta?!” I asked, planting my hands on my knees.

It was only then that I realized someone was already in the waiting room, sitting on a couch.

“Saikawa?”

“Kimizuka…” Saikawa looked at me, then down at the ground without another word.

I repeated my question.

“How’s Siesta…?”

Even as I said it, I thought I didn’t want to know the answer.

“The Daydream hasn’t awakened yet,” Stephen told me, his gazed fixed ahead.

What did that mean? Stephen had told us the surgery was a success and that he’d just need to keep Siesta under observation for a little while. By the time that was over, she should have woken up.

“…Don’t tell me it’s because of those aftereffects.”

Siesta had used the power of Seed’s seed to house her consciousness in her heart. That meant there was a risk that a transplant would cause her to lose her personality and memories. We’d given it a lot of thought but had ultimately decided to ask Stephen to perform the surgery.

“No, the problem is more fundamental than that. Both medically and scientifically, the conditions to awaken the Daydream have already been satisfied. Yet she shows no sign of regaining consciousness.”

“Why…?!”

“Kimizuka.” Charlie shook her head.

…I know. Yelling won’t help anything.

“There is a certain hypothesis that the human body has long been equipped with an organ that governs the concepts of mind, soul, and emotion.” Stephen turned, his white lab coat flaring out behind him, and started pacing. “That organ is invisible. Intangible. However, they say it definitely exists somewhere in the body. I’ve known several doctors and holy men who’ve espoused this theory. And while I understood the theory, I didn’t agree with it.”

“…No doubt. No gods nor ghosts nor unknown organs,” Mia—a woman whose own position was deemed “holy”—murmured self-deprecatingly. Things that weren’t seen couldn’t be believed. There were no grounds for it. This was particularly true for a doctor and scientist like Stephen.

“However, after seeing a certain sample, I began to rethink my position.” Stephen stopped in his tracks. “I’m referring to Seed.”

Seed was the leader of SPES, our former enemy. Why bring him up now, though?

“After coming to Earth, the primordial seed survived by parasitically attaching itself to a wide variety of creatures, ultimately learning the structure of human DNA and assuming a human shape.”

“Right. Then Seed created pseudohumans like Cerberus and Chameleon as clones of himself.”

True, they’d been able to transform and possessed superhuman powers. But even then, they’d looked no different from us and had the same emotions we did…

“—No way. Are you saying Seed even learned about human emotions from the structure of our DNA?”

So Seed hadn’t deliberately picked up on human emotions while he was camouflaging himself as a person? Instead, he’d acquired them when he parasitically attached to a human and copied their physical form…because he’d developed the organ that governed emotions? That was what Stephen seemed to be implying.

“Come to think of it, Drachma told us something like that before,” Nagisa said, as if just remembering. “He said that recent research had discovered an organ hidden between the human nasal cavity and the pharynx.”

That’s right. He’d also told us that Seed’s seed might have firmly rooted itself in that organ in Nagisa, resulting in her word-soul ability.

“Therefore,” Stephen said, summing things up, “I have formulated the following hypothesis:

“The human body has an organ that governs a person’s will.”

Once, long ago, I’d thought about where the soul might be. It had been when Nagisa was hovering between life and death and wouldn’t wake up. Siesta and I had racked our brains, and we’d even asked Scarlet. “Where is the soul? Where do human emotions and human consciousness lie?”

Just now, using the concept of “will,” which I’d only been introduced to the other day, Stephen had given his answer: Human will lay somewhere inside the body, invisible.

“Don’t tell me the Vampire’s undead also come back to life with only their instincts because…”

If that was true, had Scarlet already picked up on the answer back then?

“The Daydream’s situation was a bit unique, though.” Guessing that I’d understood, Stephen went on. “She said she’d used the power of the seed to shift her consciousness into her heart. In short, she must have given a part of her will to her heart. Though it doesn’t seem she was aware that was what she’d done…”

“If that was only a part of it, then where’s the rest? Where’s the will Siesta didn’t give to her heart? It exists somewhere in her body as an invisible organ, right? If it’s there, shouldn’t she wake up…?”

“Yes, I had also been expecting that to happen. However, it didn’t,” Stephen said, calmly stating the facts. “There’s only one conceivable cause: The organ that governs the Daydream’s will is not currently inside her body. It seems likely that someone has taken it.”

Someone had taken…an organ?

Not only that, this was an organ that couldn’t be seen or touched. If anyone could pull off an incomprehensible feat like that, it must be—

“Abel.”

Mia’s small voice echoed through the dark hospital.

It was him. That guy’s codes had taken Siesta’s will. Stolen it.

But when? How?

“Kimihiko. You met the Phantom Thief once before,” Nagisa reminded me. “With Siesta, right?”

Over a year ago, Siesta had awakened in Nagisa’s place for a short time. Just once, while she was awake, we’d encountered the Phantom Thief.

He’d been passing himself off as the Revolutionary then…but he might have used that opportunity to tag Siesta with a code—a special code that, when the time came, would extract the organ that governed her will from her body.

“How many times are you going to ridicule us before you’re satisfied, Abel?” I couldn’t stay on my feet, and I slumped to the sofa.

“I thought I’d finally, finally get to see Ma’am. But now…” Charlie, who had been enduring all this in silence, spoke as if she was forcing the words out. She was gripping a jeweled pendant she said Siesta had given her a long time ago.

She adored Siesta and had followed her closer than anyone else. I knew that. I was the one who knew it best. After all, I’d watched her do it constantly for the past three years.

“…We’re not done yet. We’re just getting started!” The voice belonged to Saikawa. Rising to her feet, she looked at Stephen. “So if we can take the organ that controls her will back from the enemy, Siesta will wake up?”

“Yes, I believe there’s a good chance of that happening.”

“Don’t say there’s a good chance! Say it’s absolute, a sure thing.”

Saikawa had removed her eye patch, and her blue eye pierced Stephen. Up until now, the Inventor had never so much as flinched—at least, not as far as I’d seen—but for the first time, his eyes widened slightly.

“You really do have an intriguing voice,” he murmured before giving a small sigh. “I promise. If you truly manage to achieve a feat like that, it’s sure to happen.”

Once Saikawa heard him say that, she turned to us.

“Well then, let’s set out on an adventure to save our friend.”

Heading off on the final journey

Four days later, I was lugging a huge suitcase through Japan’s international airport.

“Geez. You didn’t need to come see me off,” I said, turning around in the departure lobby to give Saikawa and Charlie a wry smile.

Saikawa was wearing a disguise to keep people from recognizing her, and despite us getting along like cats and dogs, Charlie had also come all the way to the airport to see me off. They clearly trusted me a lot.

“Um, Kimizuka? I’m amazed you can say that after you spammed us with all your flight details.”

“Seriously. You even texted and said, ‘Don’t bother coming to see me off.’ If you wanted us to come, you should’ve just said so.”

Saikawa and Charlie’s cold, annoyed looks cut deep.

I mean, that hadn’t been what I’d intended at all, but…

“Still, you’re really going, huh?” Charlie’s expression turned serious again.

“Yeah. I’ll retake everything from Abel.”

A new prophecy about the Great Cataclysm had been made last night.

Mia had foretold that the unprecedented, world-encompassing crisis would likely be centered near the western tip of Europe, in France.

If Abel really had stolen the organ that housed Siesta’s will, I’d make sure to retake it no matter what. Ice Doll’s request was secondary to that.

“…I’m sorry, Kimizuka. Here I was so fired up earlier, and I can’t even help.” Saikawa hung her head, looking dejected. In the end, she’d decided to stay in Japan, having said that she wouldn’t be able to keep up with the fight and would just end up holding us back.

“There’s absolutely nothing for you to feel bad about. You either, Charlie. Take care of Saikawa, all right?”

We’d put Charlie in charge of protecting Saikawa and the sleeping Siesta. There was no guarantee that Abel wouldn’t take advantage of the fact that I wasn’t around to show up. If he did, since Charlie’s will was strong enough to resist his codes, we needed her there.

“Are you sure it’s okay, though?” Charlie looked down, hugging her arms. “Noches is with Ma’am. So is Stephen. Maybe you’re the Singularity and maybe you managed to seal Abel once, but that doesn’t mean it’s bound to work this time…”

She looked up again, and our eyes met.

The agent’s emerald gaze was always strong, but now it wavered uneasily.

…Good grief. I never thought I’d cause Charlie to make a face like that.

“You’re that worried about me? Do you think maybe you like me way too much?”

“H-huhn?!” Blue veins stood out on Charlie’s temples, as if that was completely unthinkable. “You?! Wh-who would ever—?! …Argh, never mind, I shouldn’t have bothered! Just go wherever you want, all by yourself! Yui, let’s go home!”

“Uh, Charlie? Are you okay? You’re reacting like a stereotypical tsundere heroine.”

That said, I could see why Charlie was having a hard time accepting this. She’d made an excellent point. What were the odds that I’d win if I went head-to-head with Abel?

If I felt the current situation was way too unfair and that let me draw on my power as the Singularity, I might be able to resist him. However, ultimately, that wasn’t something I could consciously control.

“It’ll be fine! It’s for times like this that you’ve got the detective here.”

Just then, Nagisa showed up pulling a large, wheeled suitcase. Mia peeked out from behind her.

“Kimihiko and I will catch Abel for sure. We’ll wake Siesta up, too, and save the world while we’re at it.”

Her expression was brimming with confidence. The girl who’d always compared herself to Siesta as the Ace Detective was gone.

“Thanks for coming to see us off, Mia.”

Mia practically always wore her Oracle costume, but today she was in regular street clothes. I’d gotten to see something nice before I left the country.

“Wh-what? Why are you staring?”

“Oh, I was just thinking you have good taste in clothes.”

“You’re just making fun of me. I’m sure you’re laughing on the inside, thinking a shut-in like me tried to enjoy herself by being a bit stylish, got ahead of herself, and completely wiped out!”

“As always, your negativity is through the roof.” A wry smile crossed my face, but just then, Saikawa tugged on my sleeve.

“K-Kimizuka? You seem quite close to Mia, but the ‘younger heroine’ spot is mine, right? No girl who showed up that late in the game would have a chance at beating me. Right?!”

“Oh, Saikawa, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you react like that. I like it.”

“Gnrrrrgh,” Saikawa growled in frustration. She took a deep breath, then her expression turned serious again. “Kimizuka, I’m making an exception. Just this once, I’ll keep a seat in the personnel section open at my next concert…so make sure you come home safely.”

“In that case, I’ll have to make sure I come back no matter what.”

Who would’ve thought top idol Yui-nya would ever say something like that to me? At this rate, I might have to take responsibility and become Saikawa’s husband one of these days.

“I probably won’t be able to see anything else about the future connected to the Great Cataclysm. But as the Oracle, I’ll pray for you at least. I’m sure you’ll be able to save Boss. Not because you’re the Singularity, but because you’re Kimihiko Kimizuka.”

“Even you’re saying that sort of stuff, Mia? I’m starting to feel invincible all of a sudden.”

“Are you dumb?” Mia responded coldly, but then she smiled.

“Th-that line was better than mine…,” Saikawa said, flustered. Her sense of rivalry had been stoked. Meanwhile, Mia—who didn’t know much about the outside world—seemed to be wondering who this girl that looked like some sort of celebrity was.

“I think this is the first time Yui’s been in this particular position.”

“They just completely cut through all the tension.”

Nagisa and Charlie exchanged smiles.

Yeesh. Even without Siesta, it’s still this noisy?

Something someone once said suddenly popped into my head.

The man had called himself my teacher. I didn’t remember the exact words, but he’d told me that from here on out, I’d keep meeting the people I was supposed to meet. That someone would always be with me…so the fact that I didn’t have family or friends right then didn’t make me different.

I hadn’t been sure I believed in that future, but at the very least, I’d tried to help the people I could.

“Huh. So he told the truth sometimes, too.”

Putting a little distance between myself and the lively group of four, I looked up. It wasn’t like there was anything to see. For now, though, I didn’t have many options, so up was where I looked.

Between one thing and another, our boarding time was coming up fast. Nagisa and I were the only ones who would be leaving Japan, so I shook hands with Saikawa and Mia.

I met eyes with Charlie, too, but we both looked away uncomfortably.

“…………”

Well, we probably didn’t need words. Pulling my suitcase, I turned to follow Nagisa.

“Kimizuka!” Charlie unexpectedly called after me.

I looked back. Her eyes were trembling. She didn’t seem to know what to say.

Oh, right. We’d spent too much time neglecting words.

“What’s up?”

I waited for her to speak. Waited for those brief, clumsy, yet precious words.

“Make sure you come back.”

“Will do. After I save the world.” I walked up to Charlie, and I’m not sure who initiated it, but we hugged each other lightly. Then Charlie put her arms around Nagisa as well.

“Okay, we’ll be back.”

It was a guidepost of sorts that would let us save the world, wake up the sleeping beauty, and reach our happy ending.

Believing everything was sure to work out, we set off on our journey.

The ill-omened night train

After parting with Mia, Saikawa, and Charlie at the airport, Nagisa and I flew to France. From there, we boarded the train to the area that was predicted to be the epicenter of the Great Cataclysm.

There weren’t many passengers, but we sat side by side in a two-person seat.

Nagisa seemed tired; she was starting to nod off. It was around nine in the evening. For today, once we got to our destination, we’d probably head straight to our hotel and rest.

“So the big event starts tomorrow, huh?”

We were definitely going to have to fight Abel one more time. At which point, we’d probably need the power of the Singularity.

I’d once unlocked a door that led to Abel and managed to pin him down temporarily using a power even I couldn’t explain that well. …How had that been possible, though? What exactly was “the Singularity”?

I’d been told it was the power to shift the world’s axis.

That it was this super-convenient thing that would make my subconscious wishes come true.

Did I actually have the ability to do something like that? If so, it seemed weird that I’d spent my life constantly getting dragged into unfair situations like this.

…Or should I be looking at it the other way around? That I’d only run into all this unfairness so I could work a once-in-a-lifetime miracle? In that case, would I have to allow for a little unfairness in my everyday life? That seemed like just the sort of logic I needed to convince myself.

“What do you think, Nagisa?”

What exactly was the role of the Singularity? Who was this person called Kimihiko Kimizuka?

Nagisa didn’t respond. She was asleep, breathing peacefully, her head slumped on my shoulder. With a wry smile, I reached out toward her but stopped myself short.

How long had it been since I’d gotten such a close look at Nagisa’s face? Those long eyelashes, that smooth skin. My gaze was unintentionally drawn to her lips, which were painted a sophisticated shade.

“…Staring like this probably isn’t a great move,” I murmured to myself.

Even I didn’t think I’d be able to talk my way out of that one. I dragged my eyes away, focusing straight ahead.

Come to think of it, that guy had said something about this to me before. Professor Moriya, who’d turned out to be Abel in disguise, had told me I actually felt close to Nagisa Natsunagi.

“Well, of course I do.”

I’d say that as often as anybody wanted, even without the hypnosis. Just how much had she given me anyway? And how much of that had I not repaid her for yet? Until the day those two things balanced out, at the very least, I had no intention of leaving Nagisa.

…As her business partner. I felt a little guilty about adding that convenient phrase, but that was the conclusion I’d come to.

“I’ll be relying on you,” I told the sleeping Nagisa, before overcoming my earlier hesitation and gently stroking her hair.

I didn’t mean anything big by it. It was just a gesture of appreciation.

As I was telling myself that and patting Nagisa’s head, her face flushed redder and redder, and her closed lips began to twitch restlessly. …I see. That means—

“You should’ve told me sooner if you were awake!”

“B—but…!”

For both our sakes, I wasn’t going to ask her when she’d started pretending to be asleep.

“Okay, we’re going to have a serious discussion, starting now.”

“Huh?! This sweet situation’s over already?! You’ve got to be kidding.” Nagisa gave me a disbelieving look, but no matter how much she pleaded, it was over.

“…Meanie.” Nagisa sighed, but she did understand how urgent this was. “You mean you want to talk about Abel, right?” she said, promptly switching gears. “You met him before, didn’t you, Kimihiko? What did you think? Be honest.”

“What did I think…? That’s pretty vague.”

“But it’s important to know our enemy, isn’t it?”

She had a point. And the truth was that we knew hardly anything about him. An ostentatious title like “the world’s most heinous criminal” didn’t tell us a thing about his real nature.

Protecting the world was fine, and of course we were going to save our friend. However, if we were going to do either of those things, it was vital that we understood the barrier that was blocking our path.

“I think I told you this before, but Abel said his objective was to create a better world.”

He’d stolen the Akashic records and completely taken control of the world with his codes, all for the sake of that ideal.

“It really is weird, though,” I continued. “He’s trying to create a world without evil or sin, but practically all he does is plan crimes. His words and actions contradict each other.”

“Yes, I think so, too. However, it did sound like Abel thinks there are no truly innocent people in the world, so he probably sees this as an arbitrary form of punishment against them.”

“…I see. A necessary evil in the service of creating an ideal world, huh?”

Of course, there was no way Abel was telling us everything he felt. We probably still had a lot to learn about him. Why was he so fixated on evil and sin? Why try to remake this world into a utopia?

“Personally, I think there are two layers to his motive.” Nagisa held up two fingers. “Let’s say I want to kill you, for example.”

“That’s an extremely nasty hypothetical. …So? What’s your motive?”

“I love you so much that I don’t want some other woman to take you.”

“Don’t say something terrifying like that with a straight face. This is just a hypothetical, right?”

Still, I got what Nagisa was trying to say. That was probably the first layer of the motive.

“And here’s the second layer,” she continued. “Why did I end up loving you so much I want to kill you?”

“I see. You mean that second question is the most important part of the motive?”

“Right. It’s the one that’s closest to the unconscious mind.”

Basically, Nagisa was trying to say that there might be a second layer to Abel’s motive for trying to remake the world, so we shouldn’t just slap a label on him like he’s doing it because he was born evil.

“By the way, what made you fall for me hard enough to want to kill me?”

“I—I told you that was only a hypothetical. Say any more than that and I’ll double-kill you!”

“This makes that line take on a different meaning, too. You’re double-killing me because you love me twice as much.”

“Look, would you just behave and focus on being an oblivious sort of protagonist?!” Nagisa said, clutching her head. It didn’t seem to make much sense—wasn’t it better for a detective’s assistant to be quick on the uptake rather than oblivious?—but I decided not to push it.

“Sorry, my bad. You’re right; we were talking about Abel.”

Why was he maintaining his position as the world’s worst criminal?

“Why don’t we think about it in terms of a ‘whydunit’?”

It was one of the patterns a mystery novel could take. A story that focused on who was the criminal was a “whodunit,” one that focused on how the crime was committed was a “howdunit,” while if the mystery centered around why the crime had been done, it was called a “whydunit.”

The former Ace Detective, Siesta, had tended to focus on the who and how: Who had perpetrated the crime, and how had they done it? She hadn’t seemed to consider the why of the crime, the criminal’s motive, to be all that important. She’d been a little awkward at picking up on other people’s emotions.

On the other hand, there was another Ace Detective who excelled at that: Nagisa Natsunagi. She was extremely passionate and always sensitive of the emotions of those around her. Now she was trying to decipher Abel’s emotions—his will itself.

“Abel’s true motive in plotting crimes, huh? We should have the scope to think about that, for sure.”

“Yes. I’ll try to put my thoughts together a bit,” Nagisa said, stretching.

Why was Abel always causing incidents like these?

It would have been easy to say it was because he was an eccentric criminal. However, he’d once said that his motive was to create a “good world.” The key behind how to think about this contradiction had to be in there somewhere.

“You still don’t understand?”

The air around us changed in an instant. It felt like a sense of wrongness centered around a seat across the aisle from us.

In that seat sat Abel.

“…Professor Moriya,” Nagisa said, her eyes widening.

I tried to get up but quickly realized my legs wouldn’t cooperate. We couldn’t move. He must have hit us with some sort of code.

“A motive? I have nothing of the sort. I am ‘evil’; nothing more, nothing less. Just like you, and like the human race.”

Abel was holding a paperback book. His eyes stayed on it as he spoke. A second later, I caught a glimpse of his profile reflected in the window of the train. He looked like a hollow-cheeked grim reaper.

“Now then. Go, and find your way back.”

Abel snapped his fingers. Immediately, all the other passengers on the train vanished.

“What is this?”

The next thing I knew, Abel had disappeared as well. And what’s more…

“Nagisa?”

This time, she wasn’t pretending to be asleep.

Nagisa fell over onto my lap, as heavy as a corpse.

“Nagisa… Nagisa!

In the blink of an eye, Abel Arsene Schoenberg had stolen the Ace Detective from the Singularity.

A crimson flare goes up

I got off the train when it reached the end of the line.

There wasn’t a soul on the platform, which was unnatural. Yet the trains were still running and the station’s automatic announcements still playing. It seemed the systems that operated this station and the town hadn’t stopped functioning even with all the people gone.

“Let’s go, Nagisa.”

I shifted where I was carrying Nagisa on my back, resettling her weight.

“…………”

Nagisa hadn’t woken since falling asleep. She hadn’t so much as twitched.

It had undoubtedly been Abel’s code that erased the other passengers and put Nagisa to sleep. Was it the code of loss he’d once used on me or something like it?

“…You were smiling so much just a few minutes ago.”

Either way, it seemed as if Nagisa’s spirit had been taken to some other world. It was just as Abel had said: She’d gone somewhere and had to find her way back.

“I swear I’ll save you.”

I walked through the station, which was so quiet it didn’t even seem real, then exited through the ticket barrier.

As I’d expected, there were no people in town, either.

Carrying Nagisa, I walked boldly down the middle of the street in the moonlight. It wasn’t as if any cars would be using it anyway. I only had one idea of a place to go, somewhere Nagisa had mentioned during the flight over.

“Come to think of it, I hear Bruno’s house is near there.”

She’d learned about it long ago, when we’d desperately needed the Information Broker’s help and she’d been trying to find him.

“If we have the time, I’d kinda like to meet with him before we fight Abel,” Nagisa had said shyly. Secretly, she’d been counting on Bruno.

Naturally, the Information Broker had lots of hideouts all over the world, and there was no guarantee that he’d be here now. He also didn’t share his knowledge unless it was some kind of an emergency, so I had no idea whether he’d even help us.

Still, the Information Broker always preserved the world’s balance. He watched the scales. If the Great Cataclysm was about to occur right here, wouldn’t the scales of his justice tip in the direction I was hoping they would? Especially now, when the worst enemy in history was actively trying to destroy the balance of the world?

“Nagisa, I think you could stand to gain a little weight,” I said to the sleeping girl on my back.

She’d grumbled that she’d been eating too much lately, but she was plenty light.

“Or will you get mad and wake up if I grumble about how heavy you are?”

If that woke her up, I didn’t think I’d care if it got me double-killed.

I wandered down the dark road for ten minutes, then twenty, until I finally saw a figure up ahead.

At first, I thought it might be Abel but soon realized the silhouette belonged to a woman. Not only that, but it was someone I recognized. I called out her name.

“Ms. Fuubi.”

I’d seen crimson hair floating in the darkness. Fuubi Kase the Assassin was standing there.

“So you’re alive, huh?”

“Don’t just kill me off,” she retorted, giving me a threatening, razor-sharp look. But then her expression softened.

She looked as if a weight had been taken off her shoulders. Where had she gone after the incident with Ryan, and what had she been thinking about? I got the feeling that now wasn’t the time to bring it up.

So instead I asked, “What’s happening in this country?”

What was going on here—or possibly all around the world? Was this the Great Cataclysm?

“People have disappeared; that’s a clear, visible fact. However, as you know, Abel isn’t trying to destroy the human race. He just wants to create and run a new world. This is probably the prep stage of that.” Ms. Fuubi lit a cigarette, took a drag, then exhaled the smoke.

“…‘The prep stage.’ So he’s taken the people away somewhere, and he’s plotting something?” A way to completely control the world. A way to rid it of evil and sin.

“Wait, don’t tell me… Is he planning to puppet everything the human race does?”

Could he do what he’d done to Siesta, for example, and steal the organs that housed people’s will? Then he could control everyone using his codes, managing this world like a machine… Was that what Abel was after?

“What are you doing here, Ms. Fuubi?”

“Taking care of Abel has always been the Assassin’s mission. Though it looks like the higher-ups have given up on that.”

…Ah. So Ms. Fuubi had been watching for the enemy in the spot where the Great Cataclysm was supposed to occur? The Federation Government had nothing to do with this, though, so she must be trying to take care of Abel on her own.

“But it looks like it was useless. No matter what kind of history we’ve got or what reason I’ve got to fight him, he won’t even let me stand on the battlefield, let alone fall in combat. …The enemy’s not looking at me,” she murmured, gazing up at the night sky. The ash from her cigarette silently scorched the concrete.

“But you’re not planning to let that get you down, are you?” I asked. Ms. Fuubi looked at me. “You’re not the type. You aren’t an avenger who obsesses over a single enemy. You’re always focused on what’s beyond that… A hunting dog who never stops glaring up.”

Which is why I want you to leave Abel to us. In exchange, Fuubi Kase, someday in the future—

“—Who are you to say that to me?”

Bang! A hollow gunshot rang out.

Ms. Fuubi was pointing her gun up at the sky.

“…And you fired because…?”

“Because I was damn irritated.”

“Hurry up and get fired as a police officer already!”

Good grief. Here’s hoping.

Still carrying Nagisa, I walked past Ms. Fuubi.

“Do you know where you’re going?”

I stopped, then turned back.

“You know you’ll never find him by walking around blindly.” Ms. Fuubi stubbed out her cigarette in a portable ashtray, then shoved a piece of notepaper into my jacket pocket.

“Honestly, you’re a lifesaver. I didn’t know the exact location.”

Apparently, she’d known where I was trying to go.

“That man won’t help people who only lean on others, though.”

“I know. I’m pretty sure I understand what it’s going to take to save Nagisa.”

Abel’s code had trapped Nagisa in some other world. To save her, I’d need the power to interfere with that world, and the key to that was probably—

“Fine, then. I’ll take over for you here.” Without even waiting for me to finish, Ms. Fuubi shifted Nagisa from my back to hers. “This one’s got a good body for wrapping your arms around.”

“Don’t talk like some middle-aged guy.”

I was starting to get nervous about leaving this to Ms. Fuubi…

“Take this.” Ms. Fuubi tossed me a key to a motorcycle that was parked nearby. Thanking her, I straddled the bike, leaving Nagisa in the Assassin’s care.

“Why are you going so far to help me?” I asked.

Ms. Fuubi glanced over her shoulder at Nagisa’s face. “She did me a favor the other day. I’m just paying her back.”

The chosen world

It took me about fifteen minutes to reach the mansion where Nagisa said Bruno lived.

No one answered the bell, but when I pushed hard, the large gate opened. I made my way through the vast garden on foot and stopped at the front door. I took a short breath in, let it out, then pushed the door open.

The mansion was completely silent.

A staircase towered at the far end of a red carpet. Under normal circumstances, would I have been welcomed in by maids and a butler? Right now, the place felt deserted. Lanterns set at regular intervals faintly illuminated the mansion, but that combined with the fact that the doors hadn’t been locked felt as if they’d been expecting visitors. All alone, I set off to explore.

The mansion was a strange place.

For one thing, there were an awful lot of staircases. This made it easy to lose track of which floor I was on. The building had a high ceiling with an atrium in the center and narrow catwalk-like paths strung all over the place. I didn’t know quite how to describe it. It almost felt like there was no clear boundary where one floor ended and the next began.

That said, it wasn’t as if the building had been constructed without taking its residents into consideration. There were long slopes and elevators in addition to the staircases that made every part of the house accessible. When I looked down, I noticed there were tactile paving blocks in the floor, and what appeared to be speakers were attached to the walls. The mansion was deserted now, but I felt like I’d caught a glimpse of what it was normally like.

The mansion had so many rooms it was impossible to keep track of them all, but most of them seemed to be living quarters. They looked like they belonged to the maids, butlers, and cooks who worked here. It was clear from a glance at their furnishings that the servants were of all different ages, genders, and nationalities.

This place was a small world in and of itself.

It was a microcosm created by an old man who’d crossed many national borders during his long journey, reflected on the fact that those borders had no color or shape, and had been asking himself what that meant ever since. That was what made this mansion what it was.

As I was exploring, I found myself underground and eventually arrived at an enormous library. It was closer in size to a public library than a private one and large enough that I could imagine it held every single book in the world. The entire space almost seemed like a physical manifestation of the mind of the Information Broker, Bruno Belmondo.

The place was dark, with only minimal lighting. Without really thinking, I took a thick book from a nearby shelf and illuminated it with my smartphone.

“An illustrated record, huh?”

Every page held ancient pictures so simple they were almost pictographs.

This one, for example, was of a grotesque monster surrounded by a group of twelve figures holding spears and other weapons. It seemed familiar, as if I’d seen that sight somewhere else before.

“It’s an enemy of the world and the Tuners.”

A figure materialized from the darkness.

It was a white-whiskered man with a cane—the master of the mansion, Bruno Belmondo. “I suppose I should have expected no less of the Singularity. You’ve picked up an interesting book.” He came to stand beside me looking completely at ease, as if he’d known I’d come here. As he looked at the page I’d opened to, his eyes narrowed slightly.

“As you can see, the Tuners have been the shields protecting the world since the dawn of history.”

Twelve heroes confronted the monster. Apparently, the history of the Tuners stretched back several thousand years.

“I bet there were positions here that aren’t around anymore,” I said.

“Yes, those change with the times. The Sorcerer, the Sage, and the Paladin, for example. All of these were important positions that existed before I became the Information Broker.”

As I listened to Bruno, I turned the page. The next image showed what looked like an upside-down triangle with a large group of people kneeling beneath it.

“Is this the System?”

The monument shaped like an upside-down pyramid that Charlie and I had seen and tried to destroy. Did the fact that it was shown here mean the Akashic records were also at least several thousand years old?

“In antiquity, humans considered the Akashic records something like a vessel of the divine.”

Bruno spoke about this secret of the world as if he’d seen it himself. The Information Broker must have known about this all along, as I’d assumed.

“Does that mean humans have entrusted things to the Akashic records since long ago?”

“If I had to say, the records probably fulfilled a role similar to divination. Fortune-telling has always been an integral part of human life. Even in modern Japan, I believe the culture is quite a familiar one.”

“Yeah, well. Every time I check the horoscope on the morning infotainment show, mine’s always dead last for some reason, so I don’t believe in them myself.”

Bruno chuckled. “You see, fortune-telling isn’t actually a spiritual matter. For all living beings, not just humans, living in the same location for a prolonged period of time carries risk. As long as natural disasters and food issues exist, they will be forced out of their homes one day. However, without some sort of standard, we don’t know where we should go or where best to live. It’s easy for us to hesitate.”

“So you’re saying that’s where fortune-telling comes in? That people leave their decisions—their futures—up to the invisible teachings of oracles?” I found myself looking at the drawing of the inverted pyramid. “A logical system meant to safeguard human survival instincts…”

That was the Akashic records.

If that was true, plotting to destroy them might be akin to defying the very gods themselves.

“While we’re at it, look at the next page as well,” Bruno prompted.

I turned the page. There, the grotesque monster I’d seen earlier had taken on an even more ominous shape and was clinging to the inverted pyramid.

“No way… Is this Abel?”

The way the thing was trying to control the Akashic records seemed a whole lot like Abel to me. Had the Great Cataclysm been prophesied this far back in time?

“No, that monster isn’t Abel nor is it a Tuner who’s turned evil. It is the Singularity.” Bruno let a brief pause hang between us. “Fundamentally, the Singularity is a great crisis that could very well threaten the world’s continued existence. Said to be born once every few centuries, this dangerous element unconsciously remakes the world, ignoring the price of doing so. The Singularity is an entity with the arrogance of a god.”

Silence fell in the library.

“I…see.”

A stiff smile had settled on my face at some point.

Apparently, that tiresome nature—the one I’d always called my “knack for getting dragged into things”—was a curse that had been viewed as a disaster for the past several millennia.

As proof, the Tuners were all lined up in front of that Singularity monster with their weapons at the ready, prepared to put down that unparalleled disaster.

“Well, no wonder the government bunch is so eager to get rid of me.”

Even if that meant joining forces with Abel Arsene Schoenberg, the Phantom Thief.

“Take a closer look,” Bruno said, gently chiding me.

A single solitary figure was facing a different direction. While all the other Tuners were aiming their weapons at the Singularity, that figure held no weapon. In fact, its arms were spread wide as if it were trying to shield the monster.

“That’s the Ace Detective.” Bruno’s tone sounded mildly exasperated, but also as if he found it endearing. “Of course, the name of the position has changed with the times. It has been known as the Seeker and the Adventurer. Their mission has always been to pursue the truth, and they have quelled disasters by protecting the Singularity rather than killing it. Look.” Bruno flipped through the pages of the heavy book.

They showed a negative version of history.

The Tuner who was now known as the Ace Detective had fought desperately to protect the Singularities of history—and either the detective had been killed by the other Tuners or the Singularity had died. It was an unhappy legacy.

“Even so, no Ace Detective ever gave up,” Bruno continued. “They alone believed that the Singularity did more than simply bring about disaster.”

“…So the Singularities of every age have been protected by the Ace Detective? Or rather, by the ally of justice in that position, whatever it was called at the time?”

The last page showed the Tuners finally putting down their weapons with two figures in front of them. One was seated on the ground, while the other was gently holding out its left hand.

“Now, down to business.”

Bruno must have guessed why I was here. He led me into an inner room.

This room was also lined with dense rows of shelves, but in the center was a clear space with a table. Two books had been set on the desk, side by side.

“I once chose between knowing everything and giving that up in exchange for the ability to work a single miracle.”

“You’re saying those two choices correspond to these two books?”

Bruno nodded silently. Either know everything about the world or be allowed to make whatever one thing you want to happen. If there was something that could present a human being with options like that, it would have to be…

“Are these books the Akashic records?”

Or maybe “part of them” was a better way to put it. The bulk of the records had to be housed in the depths of the System—that inverted pyramid floating in the control tower.

If Bruno’s story was true, though, why had he alone been given the right to make such a powerful choice?

The System was said to manage this world like a program…but had it needed a human who could freely use that program? The sort of person Abel was claiming to be?

“Bruno, the Akashic records chose you, didn’t they?”

Maybe not as their one and only administrator but as an ally on humanity’s side who would guide the world properly.

“No, I won it for myself with my will.” Bruno looked uncharacteristically proud as he gazed at the two books. Omniscience or a single miracle? Since he was the Information Broker, it was clear which one he’d chosen.

“Now, what will you do?”

“No way. Are you telling me I could be omniscient, too?”

“No. You’ve been given two completely different options.”

Bruno pointed at the left book, then the right one.

“Will you choose the power to save your neighbor or the power to save everything else?”

Oh, that.

“So in the end, it comes back to that decision.”

These two choices could be rephrased as “save the girl or save the world.”

The white demon had said something similar once. That when the girl and the world were placed on the scales, there was no chance that I would choose the world. I had thought so, too. I’d also thought that made me a failure as the Singularity.

Now here I was, faced with that same question again. The girl or the world? I couldn’t avoid it. I needed that answer now, and I gave it bluntly, without hesitation.

“I’ll save the girl who’ll save the world.”

First, I’d save the girl—the detective—then she and I would save our companions. And finally, the world.

That was my answer.

“Are you sure that’s what you want?” the world’s wisdom asked before the final judgment. “You might want to take a peek inside, just to see.”

Neither of us had touched the books yet.

Even so, light seeped out of them, flickering with what looked like moving images.

An idol was singing in a huge stadium. In the front row sat a couple who seemed to be her parents, smiling and cheering their daughter on.

A blond-haired girl was enjoying a picnic with her family. A mother was eating a sandwich her daughter had made, looking as if she found it delicious.

A blue-haired girl was in her room playing video games with somebody. A parent’s kind voice came from beyond the door, telling her to make sure she didn’t spend too much time gaming.

“Say the Akashic records respond to your will and save your neighbor, and therefore your companions. What then? You’ll be waking them from the happy dreams they’re having right now. Tearing apart those idyllic daydreams, in which no enemies of the world appear and there are no crises or evils.”

…I see. So Saikawa, Charlie, and Mia, who’d all stayed in Japan, had been trapped by Abel’s codes?

“I’m sorry.”

Right now, they were dreaming of their perfect world. Of the new world Abel was trying to create. Maybe the people from this country who’d vanished were doing the same thing.

“You’re about to shatter their dreams.”

A shudder ran through me. I was about to destroy their idyllic dreams…

“—I’m fine with that.”

They could resent me for it. I didn’t mind if they threw rocks or pointed spears at me. I already knew that, as far as the world was concerned, the Singularity was a cataclysm. That had been determined thousands of years ago.

“Even if they call me the Great Cataclysm later.”

I touched the book on the left.

A bright, piercing light instantly flooded out of it.

“This is the right choice, isn’t it?”

But Bruno wasn’t there anymore.

All I heard was what sounded like a single word:

“Corretto.”

Beginning with the Original Sin

After leaving Bruno’s mansion, I jumped back onto the motorcycle and headed for the embassy of the Mizoev Federation.

Nobody had summoned me. If I had to say why I was going there, it was because my instincts as the Singularity were telling me to. For some reason, I knew for a fact that our enemy was there.

There were no guards out front when I got there.

I went inside the embassy and walked around on my own, eventually finding Abel Arsene Schoenberg in a spacious office that looked like it belonged to the president of a country.

“How many times do you suppose we’ve faced off like this by now?”

Abel didn’t even glance at me. He was at the desk in the back of the room, writing something long on a piece of parchment. He must have known I’d come. Either that or maybe one of his codes had been what had called me here.

“The first time I met you was a pretty similar situation, wasn’t it?”

That had been over a year ago. At the time, Abel had been passing himself off as Fritz Stewart, the Revolutionary and a politician, and Siesta and I had failed to catch him.

Back then, Siesta had sworn an oath to him. She’d said that a new Ace Detective was about to take her place. That the girl was incredibly passionate and would never lose to an enemy who used human hearts the way he did.

However, that Ace Detective wasn’t here now.

“Abel, where have you put Nagisa?”

Abel didn’t answer. In Bruno’s library, I’d seen the happy dreams in which Saikawa, Charlie, and Mia were being held, but I hadn’t seen Nagisa. It was likely that the Ace Detective had been more carefully hidden from the Singularity than everyone else.

“Actually, let me change my question: What did you do to the people of this country?”

Finally, Abel glanced up at me. “If you mean the vanished human race, it’s temporary, and they only seem to have disappeared. Once all the preparations are in place, I vow to put them back in their proper places.”

That was the answer Ms. Fuubi and I had predicted.

“I’m currently preparing to rewrite the malicious genes humanity innately possesses,” Abel said. “Through my previous vast criminal undertakings, I created the necessary codes. Now I’ll borrow the power of the Akashic records and apply the change to the entire human race. That will eliminate evil from the world. A new world is about to be born right here. A world where no one harbors malice, so naturally, there will be no sinners. A perfect world where all ideals become real.”

It’s not possible, I almost said before I could stop myself.

There was no way you could call something like that ‘ideal.’ Controlling people as if they were computer programs? Even if that brought peace to the world, the result wouldn’t be a world anyone wanted. But…

“Abel, what made you come up with this?”

That was what I had to ask about with this whydunit. Why had the criminal committed this crime? I needed to shed light on his motive.

“It’s simple.” Abel’s pen kept moving as he spoke. “I was born like this: as an evil program to guide humans toward an ideal world.”

That was Abel’s answer. Just as he’d said on the train, he claimed there was no motive behind his crimes. That he was evil, pure and simple.

“I see,” I said plainly, then began confirming the answers I’d found.

“So you really are the progenitor of the human race.”

For a moment, Abel’s pen stopped.

Several hours ago, in Bruno’s library, I’d touched a book that was part of the Akashic records. Its pages had held the story of a certain man.

The young man had been born several thousand years ago, maybe even further in the past. He had been favored by God and lived as a sheepherder until one day, driven by jealousy, his older brother Cain had killed him. It was the first murder in human history.

However, in that moment, the man’s real life began. He was reborn. What’s more, he retained the memories of his previous life. Why had his brother killed him? The man lived his second life confused and bewildered by his first—and he’d ended up suffering the same fate. In an age where humans still lived in caves, a greedy tribe had stolen his provisions and murdered him.

In his third life, once again, the man was born with the memories of his previous lives. However, he was worked like a plow horse by a lazy leader and died without even getting a drink of water. On his fourth, his tenth, his hundredth life, he was killed by human wrath, lust, pride, and gluttony.

“That was you, Abel Arsene Schoenberg.”

Having begun as history’s first murder victim, Abel had been reborn again and again, accumulating more memories while being inflicted with every kind of wickedness humans were capable of.

This time, he’d have a good life. This time, he’d be happy. He must have thought it dozens—hundreds of times while he lived as people of different genders with all sorts of different backgrounds. His hopes had always been dashed, though. Human malice had always killed Abel.

At some point, a realization had occurred to him: Whatever he was, he was no longer human. He must be a program designed to make the world aware of the evil that came from humans. He thought God must have defined him as “evil.”

“And so, Abel, in order to rebel against that god—the Akashic records—you’re trying to make this world a utopia with no concept of evil. Isn’t that right?”

The ticking of the clock was the only other sound in the room as I hammered home my point.

“I never thought so much had been recorded,” Abel said after a short silence. “…I will make it. No matter what I have to sacrifice, I’ll create a utopia governed by righteousness and logic, where no unfairness exists.”

He’d just confirmed my theory.

“I see. In that case, we’ll shut it down as many times as it takes.”

I drew my gun and leveled it at him. I knew he wouldn’t be easy to hit, but I was sure this was what the Ace Detective would do if she were here.

“You can’t kill me. But I can’t kill you, either.”

Unexpectedly, Abel ignored the gun. He didn’t try to hit me with another code, either, but just started scrawling on the parchment again. “As I said, my mission is to rewrite the human race’s malicious genes. It would be difficult to generate a code to kill the Singularity at the same time.”

“…You did say that the closer a person or phenomenon was to the center of the world, the harder it was to manipulate it with a program.”

That was why even Abel hadn’t been able to kill me or Nagisa directly. Trapping us in dream worlds had been the best he could do. —And yet.

“Abel, what have you been writing?”

It had been bugging me all this time. He’d hardly so much as glanced at me since I got here. What was he doing? Working on a code to rewrite humanity’s malicious genes? But hadn’t he said that was done already?

I thought about it logically. Say someone was trying to pull off a crime. If they knew their plan wasn’t going to go well, what would they do? They’d almost certainly take a hostage. Bank robberies, hijackings, kidnappings—I’d been dragged into all those things, many times, and I’d seen it happen.

“No…” I felt my skin crawl. That was the exact situation we were in.

“Singularity, will you take an order from me?” Abel set down his pen and looked up. “To protect the loved ones of you and your companions back home, I want you to surrender to me.”

“…And if I refuse?”

“I’ll activate a code that makes the leaders of every country in the world press the buttons that activate certain weapons.”

So that was the code Abel had been writing. He didn’t even have to say what those “certain weapons” were. If I didn’t voluntarily choose defeat, the world would be…

“______________!”

My eyes went to the gun I was pointing at Abel. Where should I really be pointing it?

It probably doesn’t matter.

I didn’t have a messiah complex or anything, but if it was just a fact that my death would save the world, well, that was fine. I could deal with it.

It was too bad this was happening when I’d recently started doing better in the human relationships department, but clearly you couldn’t compare the weight of a single life with the lives of eight billion people. That said…

“If I die here, there are a few lives no one will be able to save.”

“I see. Then it’s a pity, but it seems negotiations are unsuccessful.”

Ignoring the gun I had trained on him, Abel reached toward the phone on the desk.

“Hey,” I called out to him. “I’m negotiating with Abel right now.”

His hand froze in midair.

“So don’t get in the way, Cain.”

What that left hand grasped

This whole time, I’d been thinking it was weird.

Abel Arsene Schoenberg had declared he was going to make a new world without sin but was simultaneously carrying out countless crimes. There was a big inconsistency there.

How could Abel hate human sins and still commit them himself?

Maybe he felt that a few sacrifices were necessary, and that since everyone was evil anyway, it didn’t matter if they were sacrificed. That resolved the inconsistency to some extent. It was the “necessary evil” mindset.

However, it felt as if the gap between Abel’s philosophy and his actions couldn’t be explained so easily. Not unless I hypothesized the existence of a second malicious being who was Abel’s polar opposite—someone like Cain, who’d become history’s first murderer when he killed his brother.

“Of course, the name Cain is just a placeholder.”

I was sure this guy had another personality. Abel, a genuine victim who was trying to create a world without evil, and Cain, the aggressor who symbolized the malice of the human race. Maybe he’d been carrying out this plan, which ordinary people couldn’t wrap their heads around, because both personalities’ minds were inhabiting the same space.

“See, one of my friends had something similar,” I told him. I was remembering the black-haired girl with red eyes. “So—Professor Moriya. It’s a second personality who’s been carrying out all your crimes, isn’t it?”

I wasn’t sure which name to call him by—Abel or Cain—so I’d gone with that old familiar one instead, then waited for him to evaluate my deduction.

“I see. So that’s your answer?” The professor laced his fingers together and closed his eyes. He stayed like that for five seconds. Ten. Twenty.

Then his eyes opened—and the situation started unraveling.

“In that case, you fail.”

The next thing I knew, golden chains had appeared from out of nowhere and hauled me up by my arms.

“……!”

Abel had attacked with a code. Even if he couldn’t kill the Singularity, it was apparently easy enough to temporarily restrain me.

“The ‘split personality’ hypothesis as a whole isn’t bad. However, it won’t do for you to base your reasoning off a friend. Research should be subjective, fair…and original.”

From the way Abel spoke, he might have been advising a seminar student.

“I haven’t been taken over by the personality you term ‘Cain.’ If I had to say one way or the other, I am the one controlling Cain, the code of the Original Sin. There is no other interpretation. A fiendish alternate personality is carrying out my crimes? I don’t use such self-serving logic. I’ll swear that on God’s name as many times as I must.”

Abel picked up the telephone receiver, his eyes wide.

“I believe in the rightness of my wrongdoing.”

A code that would make the leaders of every country push the buttons that triggered certain weapons—that was what he was about to execute right now, right in front of me.

“Stop…!”

There was only one way I could make him stop, though. I had to take my life into my own hands and—

“So you think it’s all right for a Familiar to just disappear without letting his master know what he’s doing?”

I thought I heard a voice from somewhere.

The next moment, the window shattered and a flash of light filled the room. The hand Abel had reached toward the receiver with now had a shining aqua-blue arrow sticking out of it.

“That blue light… It can’t be.”

The arrow had punched right through Abel’s hand and pinned it to the desk.

“How on earth did she acquire a will this strong?”

It wasn’t anything as intense as agony, but Abel grimaced as if he couldn’t shake the strangeness of what was happening.

“You probably wouldn’t understand, Abel.”

Just how many times had the girl who’d fired that arrow been unfairly attacked, only to look up at the sky and grow stronger? Even if she could never run again, she would remain a shield of justice.

“The tables have turned.”

Since Abel’s attention had been diverted for a moment, the gold chains binding me had come off. I leveled my gun at him again. I probably couldn’t kill Abel, either. But if I could at least bind him the way he’d bound me—

“Have they really?” Abel asked, without turning a hair. “I was genuinely startled by your wills. They’ve grown far stronger than they were when I observed them long ago. However, even at this level, they won’t be able to counter my codes. They only appear capable of it now because I’m dividing my power between this and another location.”

He was splitting his power between two places? Did that mean he was currently in the middle of rewriting the human race’s malicious genes with his code? No, if that was it, he wouldn’t have gone out of his way to tell us.

“Did you really think I was simply standing idly by on the matter of the Singularity all this time? Did you think I’d resorted to using conventional weapons because it alone couldn’t be killed? —My analysis of the Singularity is complete.”

Just then, Abel’s right arm was severed at the shoulder. Freed from the arrow that had pinned him down, he immediately closed the gap to stand right in front of me.

“I’d planned to discard my right arm, but I have the perfect spare.”

Someone else’s arm sprouted from Abel’s shoulder. I knew whose it was. He’d stolen it from Ookami the Enforcer during a fight.

Abel looked at me and smiled.

“I am the Phantom Thief. When I truly want something, I steal it.”

I didn’t even have time to run before Abel’s right arm plunged into my stomach.

“______________!”

Right. If he couldn’t kill me, he could just steal the key to analyzing the Akashic records. The power of the Singularity itself.

Weirdly, it didn’t hurt. There was no blood. However, I could feel something being dragged out of me. He’d definitely taken something: the power to change the world.

“Why are you smiling?”

It was the first time I’d seen Abel look surprised.

It wasn’t really that surprising, though, was it?

“Think about it,” I responded. “Would I even want an ability that always puts me dead last in the morning horoscope?”

This power has never once been useful in my day-to-day life. You can have it. Steal it all you want. In exchange…

“You’re going to give me back Siesta’s will.”

As my mind began growing hazy, I stuck my own left arm into Abel’s chest. A hint of pain flickered across his face.

“…Kimihiko Kimizuka. Don’t tell me all along, you…”

That’s right. I’d had a mission that was only possible to carry out in this single moment, when the paths of the Singularity and the Phantom Thief intersected.

I hadn’t chosen the world but the girl.

I sensed the echo of something familiar just beyond my outstretched fingers.

“You’re in there, aren’t you?”

In exchange for the power to save the world, I had Siesta’s heart clutched in my left hand.

The Magical Girl’s last will

The car jolted, waking me up. A seat belt was across my chest. I’d fallen asleep in the passenger seat. On my left, holding the steering wheel, was—

“Sies…ta?”

My eyes hadn’t adjusted to the light yet, but I thought I’d seen a familiar profile.

“Are you stupid, Kimihiko?”

However, those caustic words immediately smacked down that idea.

I recognized that tone all too well. Noches—a girl who was the spitting image of Siesta—was behind the steering wheel in her usual maid uniform.

“You…were okay.”

Since Saikawa, Charlie, and Mia had been trapped by Abel’s codes after staying in Japan, I thought the same must have happened to Noches. Not only was she okay, but she’d even come all the way to France.

“I am not human, so I do not have a will. I’ll never be manipulated by Abel’s codes.”

Noches didn’t sound as if she felt bad about it. In fact, she seemed rather proud.

She was what you’d call an android, having been created by Stephen the Inventor. She probably didn’t have the organ that housed will, which apparently all humans had. Not even Stephen could make an invisible organ.

“I finally managed to be useful.”

Despite that, Noches’s smile seemed gentler than that of any human. No matter who said otherwise, even if she herself denied its existence, I wanted to believe in her heart.

“Noches, what’s the situation?”

How long had I been out after my fight with Abel?

My phone display told me that two hours had passed. There were no cars on the road around us, and the town was as empty as ever. So were things still as bad as they’d been earlier?

“A short distance from here, Abel seems to have begun the final preparations for creating his new world. The other Tuners are desperately holding him at bay. This information comes from the Assassin, who went on ahead to join them.”

So that was where we were headed now?

“Hm. Then what about Nagisa? I left her with Ms. Fuubi…”

“You genuinely haven’t noticed, have you?” said a voice from the back seat.

It wasn’t Nagisa’s, though.

“Rill…!”

When I turned around, I saw Reloaded—the Magical Girl and my former master-slash-partner. Nagisa was asleep on her lap.

“You saved my butt back there. Thanks.”

“Rill hadn’t been in actual combat for a long time, but apparently, she hasn’t lost her touch,” she said with a proud smile.

The last time Rill had been on the front lines was her battle with Gluttony.

“The real fight’s still to come, though,” I said. “The Great Cataclysm won’t end unless we defeat Abel. We can’t save the world.”

A momentary silence filled the car.

Noches was the first one to pick up on what that meant.

“Kimihiko, your true objective isn’t saving the world, is it?”

I saw Rill’s eyes widen slightly in the rearview mirror.

“You’re not trying to save the world, but the girl.”

She was right. That had been my wish and the choice I’d made. Before I saved the world, I was going to save the girl—or rather, girls.

Nagisa Natsunagi, who was asleep in the back seat, and one more…

“Kimihiko.” Noches handed me my phone.

I put it to my ear.

“Did you get it?”

No greeting, no preamble. Stephen Bluefield the Inventor got straight to the point as always.

“Yeah, I took it back from Abel. What’s next?”

“The Daydream has already been transported to your destination. I’ll send you the coordinates.”

That was the Inventor all over. He was always prepared.

“Stephen, we can leave the operation to you, right? …That said, how am I supposed to give you an organ neither of us can see?”

The invisible organ that was said to house Siesta’s will.

Frankly, I felt as if I had it, but that was all it was: a feeling. From this point on, we’d have to rely on the knowledge of an expert—or so I’d thought.

“No, saving the Daydream is a job for you, the Singularity.”

“…Uh, how am I supposed to do that? I don’t even have the Singularity’s power anymore, either…”

“Her will is inside you. All you have to do is return it to her.”

And with that, he hung up.

“Geez. Not fair.” My usual complaint escaped me, and I sighed.

“It sounds like you’re in top form.”

“In what way? If you’re going deaf, get Stephen to take a look at you.”

Rill cheerfully laughed off my retort.

“What am I supposed to do about this…?”

I’d stolen Siesta’s will back from Abel. Although it was impossible to see or touch, I could tell I definitely had it. It sounded like some sort of brainteaser, so the way to put it back where it belonged was…

“Kimihiko, back when you were trapped by Abel’s code of loss…,” Noches began, keeping her eyes on the road. “When you’d lost your five senses and your emotions, Nagisa took care of you every day. She’d tell you about what had happened that day, and feed you, and move your limbs so your muscles didn’t stiffen up.”

…Oh. So the things I’d been doing for Siesta, Nagisa had done for me.

“She changed your clothes, bathed you.”

“Wait a second, aren’t things like that jobs for the nurses?”

“She stroked your hair, and sometimes she got into bed with you.”

“Okay, you’re completely making that up! Nagisa’s got more sense than that!”

I was starting to get a little uneasy, though… Nagisa, wake up and deny this already.

“But you just wouldn’t wake up. You were like that for weeks.”

…Yeah. I’d caused them a lot of trouble. Not just Nagisa but Noches and the rest as well.

“The method we finally found was to give you back what you wanted most. The thing your will was constantly searching for, even if the shape of it was a little different.”

That’s right; I’d wanted to find that sky again. To be ten thousand meters up, working as a certain person’s assistant and saving people. So that day, Nagisa had met me “for the first time” again when I’d been unable to haul myself out of that cold bath.

“That’s why, this time, I’m sure things will also work out…”

“Yeah. I’m all right now,” I told her.

Noches’s eyes went wide for a moment, then she smiled. “I see. May I speed up, then?”

“Sure. Floor it.”

About an hour later, we reached our destination. It was a small island in a bay on the west coast of France, where an enormous abbey towered like a castle. Since it was a tourist spot, there was a land route that made it possible to get across to the island by car, even at high tide. Right now, though, there were no residents here, let alone tourists.

An enormous monument hung in the sky, gleaming silver, in place of the moon. The System. This world’s mechanical overseer, the device that was loaded with the Akashic records. And right beside it was a floating human figure with wings longer than it was tall.

“Abel.”

That thing wasn’t human anymore. Now that he’d absorbed my Singularity ability, the Akashic records were completely at his mercy. He was a god, or a devil.

At this point, I knew why he’d created those monsters, the Seven Deadly Sins. Abel was the physical embodiment of human malice—the Original Sin.

“The Great Cataclysm,” Noches murmured. She’d gotten out of the car and was standing beside me, looking up at Abel.

“I’m gonna have to clean up my own mess here, huh?”

I’d created this monster. When offered a choice between the girl and the world, I’d picked the former. In order to retake Siesta’s will, I’d tossed away the power of the Singularity and given it to a great evil. I had to step up and take responsibility for that.

“You aren’t the only one who’ll be fighting. Look.”

Noches pointed at something. Two motorcycles were racing down a distant hill road.

“It’s the Assassin and the Enforcer,” she murmured, her eyes better than any human’s. Ms. Fuubi and Ookami both had scores to settle with Abel. Right now, they seemed to be distracting him or maybe drawing his attacks. The System was blinking an ominous purple and raining down clustered laser beams as if it were tracking them.

“And there’s another.” Noches narrowed her eyes. A human silhouette was up on the abbey’s roof. Before long, the ricocheting beams from the System started to target that figure as well, but when the black smoke cleared, he was standing there unscathed.

“It appears to be Full-Face the Hero.”

“…Yeah. I think I met him at a Federal Council once.”

That said, we’d never spoken. Had he been involved in a series of tales I’d known nothing about?

Just then, lightning raced across the dark sky, and Noches shouted, “Get down!” Was Abel actually controlling the weather with programs, too? Thin tendrils of lightning struck at us, writhing like snakes.

“We may need another large Fair-Weather Doll.”

Something repelled the lightning. I’d squeezed my eyes shut, but I could sense that bright light even through my closed eyelids.

When I opened my eyes, Rill was floating in space in a carriage that looked like something out of a children’s story, holding a staff cloaked in aqua-blue light. Had the wheelchair she’d been in a second ago transformed? Was it one of Stephen’s inventions? No, this was—

“…Oh. It ended up looking fancier than Rill meant it to.” Rill smiled wryly, gazing down at the carriage. “Still, it’s what an anime magical girl would use, isn’t it? She was that way, too.” And with that, Rill took flight. “Pride, Greed, Lust, Envy, Sloth, Wrath, and Gluttony. Our wills are on the side of justice, and they won’t lose to mere facets of human malice.”

The Magical Girl’s carriage soared through the air, using blinding beams of light to strike back at the lightning tracking her. It really wasn’t the Singularity who saved the world; it was the Tuners of justice.

“Does this mean the enemy isn’t the only one who can make use of the System?” Noches asked, looking up at Rill. Currently, the peninsula over which the System was floating was the control tower, and all the Tuners could use their wills to draw on the System’s power.

In no time at all, Rill had swept away all the attacks from the sky. Her carriage descended to the ground, then vanished as if a spell had been broken. I ran toward Rill to help her stand—but quickly realized there was no need.

“My, that takes Rill back. Standing on her own two feet.”

Rill’s feet were firmly planted on the ground.

The best doctor in the world had told her she’d never stand or walk again, yet here she was, standing tall without anyone’s help.

It was a temporary miracle worked by the Akashic records.

“Rill…”

“Why do you look like you’re about to cry?” Rill asked, glancing at my face. She gave a wry smile, then turned to confront the enemy in the sky again. “Leave this to Rill and the others. You head for the abbey, Kimihiko.”

Stephen had told me he’d had the Men in Black bring Siesta’s sleeping body to the abbey. It was clear what I had to do.

“Thank you, Kimihiko. You made Rill an ally of justice again.”

“…What are you talking about? You’ve always been the Magical Girl and my partner.”

Reloaded grinned. Then she took off running and vaulted into the air, racing through the sky.

She wasn’t using magic or science but the will of justice.

“Noches, take care of Nagisa until I get back.”

“I will. Stay safe.”

All alone, I started for the abbey to wake up the sleeping beauty.

The final Council

As I was searching the gloomy abbey, I overheard the faint sound of voices in conversation. I followed them and eventually saw two figures facing each other across a table in what seemed to be a dining hall.

One was an old woman wearing a mask. The other was a young woman in a black veil. I couldn’t see either of their faces, but I knew them both: Ice Doll, the Federation Government dignitary, and Youkaki, the Revolutionary.

I would have liked to know what those two were talking about, but for now, I backtracked so they wouldn’t notice me. For personal reasons, I particularly didn’t want to meet Ice Doll.

“You’ve really done it now, Kimihiko Kimizuka.”

She’d spotted me instantly. Her tone seemed two degrees colder than normal.

“I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop.” I raised my hands casually in surrender.

It was clear why Ice Doll was mad: The other day, she and the other government officials had gone out of their way to come to Japan in person and ask me to shut down the Great Cataclysm—something I’d screwed up big-time. She might even know Abel had stolen the power of the Singularity from me.

“I won’t make excuses. Boil me, stab me, roast me; do whatever you want.”

I went over to Ice Doll and Youkaki. There was a chessboard with a game in progress on the table between them.

“If this goes on, Abel may well destroy the world.” For now, Ice Doll didn’t bring up my crime. She moved her king. “Now that the enemy has control of the Akashic records, I would imagine he can operate any weapon in the world directly, without going through others. The Revolutionary here has been working in the shadows all this time to prevent that from happening.”

“You think Abel’s forgotten his goal of creating a new world and is going to destroy it instead?”

“Either that or he may simply wipe this island off the map. All the people who would hinder the establishment of his new world are gathered here.”

…True, most of the Tuners were here right now. As far as Abel was concerned, this would be a great chance to eliminate them all in one stroke.

“Now then, Kimihiko Kimizuka. What will you do?” Ice Doll asked, continuing her chess match with the silent Revolutionary. “You created this monster. How will you deal with him?”

She was telling me, in no uncertain terms, that I had to reap what I’d sown. That was how I was supposed to take responsibility for my crime—and I didn’t really have the right to refuse.

That said, why was Ice Doll here? Why had she been lying in wait in this particular spot? She must know that Siesta was up ahead and that I was trying to go to her. In which case, this wasn’t just an ambush, but a threat.

“It’s simple.” I spelled out my answer clearly. “In that case, I’ll just break the Akashic records. I won’t use just two bullets, like last time; I’ll smash them to pieces so Abel can never misuse them again.”

There was a moment of silence, then Ice Doll spoke. “You too, Kimihiko Kimizuka? You would use such a simplistic approach…?”

From that “you too,” I guessed the Revolutionary had given that same answer earlier.

“Without the Akashic records, the Tuners won’t be able to use the power of the System, either. There’s no knowing what sort of enemies of the world may appear in the future. Will you be able to stand against them, even without your wills?” Ice Doll pressed. “Do you understand what sort of future lies beyond the destruction of the world’s natural principles?”

“Even if there is no absolute truth, I think people can decide things for themselves.”

After all, wasn’t that the point of people’s “wills”?

“I really wish you’d get it through your skull that clever rhetoric won’t save the world,” she snapped.

“Geez, that’s pretty harsh.”

That said, I understood Ice Doll’s logic.

If another powerful enemy of the world appeared someday, would the heroes be able to fight it without the power of the System? I’d relinquished the nature of the Singularity, so by rights, I wouldn’t even be able to join in that fight. I’d be a bystander. I probably wasn’t even allowed to give my two cents on the matter. However…

“Can’t you look at it this way? Aren’t the Akashic records, that set of absolute standards, what separates good from evil to begin with?”

Justice and malice only existed because of the scales that balanced them. It was what separated Tuners from the enemies of the world. Invisible borders had always divided us. And so… “If the Akashic records are gone, won’t enemies of the world stop manifesting, too?”

It was a deduction that fell short of the Ace Detective’s skills, that of a perpetual assistant.

“Interesting,” Youkaki said. It was the first time I’d heard her voice. “Regardless of what he may be now, those are the words of a former Singularity. There’s no guarantee that a future like that won’t come to pass. What do you think, Ice Doll?”

She’d left the decision up to the icy official.

It took Ice Doll a full fifteen seconds to speak. She had likely been silently communicating with the other government dignitaries.

“Go.”

In effect, she was giving me permission to abandon the Akashic records.

My course of action was set. However, that would have to wait until after I’d saved the detective. Siesta came first.

I walked past Ice Doll and Youkaki.

“How do you intend to awaken the Daydream?” Ice Doll called after me.

“I’ll give Siesta’s will what it wants. Her wish is to live as the Ace Detective. I’m just going to remind her of that mission.”

Just like before, when I’d been trapped by Abel’s code of loss and Nagisa had seen through to the truth: that I wanted to go back to being the detective’s assistant. When she’d talked to me and met me again “for the first time.”

“I see. Will it really be that easy, though?”

I stopped in my tracks.

“There are twelve Tuner positions,” Ice Doll continued. “Only one person can be the Ace Detective. At present, Nagisa Natsunagi holds that post. I hear that, by some coincidence, she is also asleep right now. Which girl do you intend to acknowledge as the Ace Detective?”

My breath caught in my throat. I knew I’d been avoiding that question.

When asked to choose between the girl and the world, I’d chosen “the girl.” However, there were actually two girls: Siesta and Nagisa Natsunagi.

I’d been purposely vague all this time. I’d said I was saving the girl, but I hadn’t said which one. Of course, I planned to save them both.

“You know from prior experience, don’t you? You’re aware of what happens when you try to make it so two Ace Detectives exist at once.”

It was a bitter memory. Siesta had once given her life to save Nagisa; then more than a year later, Nagisa had returned Siesta’s heart to her and gone to sleep. After that, Alicia’s heart had awakened Nagisa, but the effect of the seed had put Siesta to sleep again. The two Ace Detectives had never been able to exist together for long.

In other words, Siesta and Nagisa Natsunagi couldn’t live in the same time or place.

“That is how the position of Ace Detective has been since ancient times.”

“…You people put them in that position, and then you talk like that?”

“We have nothing to do with it. All final decisions are made by the Akashic records.”

Ice Doll went on to explain the process by which Tuners were chosen. What it all boiled down to was more evidence that two Ace Detectives couldn’t exist at the same time. But there was no point delving deeper into that topic right now.

“Which of them will you choose as the Ace Detective?” Ice Doll asked me again.

This time, I had to pick one: Nagisa Natsunagi or Siesta. Which of the two girls would I let live as the Ace Detective? However—

“I’m not obligated to tell you that.”

—I knew I was just taking my frustration out on her, but I didn’t want to talk about this with the same people who’d made the Ace Detective do their bidding all these years.

“I see. In that case, I promise that whatever decision you make will be of no concern to us. In exchange—”

“I know. Leave the world after that to me.”

I left without so much as a glance behind me.

Climbing higher through the abbey, I found a private room with a balcony. In the room was a bed, and in the bed lay a girl, her hands folded on her chest, fast asleep.

“Siesta,” I called.

She didn’t answer.

I didn’t see the doctor who said he’d carried her up here.

“Geez. I can’t believe you can sleep through something like this.”

I gave her a wry smile. Siesta looked comfortable, breathing slowly and peacefully.

Thunder was rumbling outside, and the Tuners were locked in combat with the world’s worst enemy. When people thought about the end of the world, they probably visualized a sight just like that.

“Okay, how should I do this?”

Come on, Siesta. What should we do? It sounds like the world allows only one Ace Detective at a time.

Siesta, what do you want?

What is it you truly wish for? What’s genuinely important to you? What is your will…your heart, searching for? What can I give you?

“Siesta. I—”

And then I gave her my answer.

-Again-

After talking with Ice Doll and Youkaki, reaching my decision, and leaving the abbey, I’d gone back to the car that was still parked at the edge of the island. There were two people inside it now: me in the front passenger seat and a girl asleep in the back seat.

“Nn…huh? I…” The girl sat up, rubbing her eyes.

“You awake, Nagisa?”

The Ace Detective had just been released from Abel’s code.

“Ah, mm-hmm. Kimihiko…”

Nagisa looked around, still dazed. The situation when she’d blacked out on the train was very different from the one in which she’d just awoken, and she seemed to be trying to fill in the gaps with what she remembered.

“Want some water?”

“Th-thanks.”

As I handed her the plastic bottle, our fingertips touched.

Nagisa looked at me, then quickly averted her gaze. It was dark in the car, but her cheeks still looked kind of red. “Um, I sort of had a dream.” She managed to drink the water, fanning her face with her other hand.

I considered saying I had one of those myself actually but asked her a question instead. “Was it a good dream?”

Nagisa seemed to think a little, then smiled. “Not bad, I guess!”

“Not bad,” huh? I gave a wry smile, but it quickly turned into a sincere one.

Nagisa and I sat there smiling at each other for a little while.

“So, Kimihiko. What’s the situation?”

“Right. It would be faster to get out and see for yourself.”

Nagisa and I climbed out of the car and looked up at the dark sky.

The enormous System still floated there. Beneath it was a large shining disk, like a platform to stand on. I thought that was probably where Abel was.

The sight made Nagisa press her lips together firmly. “Kimihiko, there’s something I need to talk with Professor Moriya about.” She seemed to have encountered the truth I’d learned about Abel, too…or maybe she’d gone even further.

“Are you all right now? Physically?”

“Want to feel my body to check?” Nagisa joked, turning to face me with a smile. All her wounds from earlier were gone. “Let’s shut down the Great Cataclysm together, just the two of us,” she said, her gaze filled with determination.

“‘Just the two of us’? Come on, don’t shut me out like that.”

The voice had come from behind us, and Nagisa turned around to look.

From where I was standing, I’d been able to see her the whole time.

A certain girl had been gazing at Nagisa from a little ways away, waiting impatiently, willing her to hurry up and notice her.

“No way. Seriously?”

Nagisa gasped, her red eyes wide.

“Sies…ta…?”

There stood the sleeping beauty who we’d been waiting all this time to wake up. The detective, Siesta, was smiling, her short, pale-silver hair fluttering in the wind.

“It’s been a long time, Nagi— Whoa!”

Nagisa had lunged at her before Siesta could finish her sentence. She hugged her tightly, calling out over and over in a voice blurred with tears the name of her friend who’d finally come home. Siesta looked startled at first, but then she smiled and gently rubbed Nagisa’s back.

“Welcome back, Siesta.”

“Thanks, Nagisa. I’m home.”

The two girls gently let go, took a step back, and smiled at each other.

The sight I’d always wanted to see, the wish I’d always wanted to come true, was happening right before my eyes.

“Looks like this was the right order to do things in.” Relief washed over me. I’d gambled and won.

I’d guessed that I would need one thing to rescue Nagisa from Abel’s code: an ability that Siesta had shown me time and time again—the Daydream’s power to unfold her own internal landscape and summon others into it so she could talk with them.

We’d assumed that ability was based in Siesta’s heart, but by now, I knew it was a product of her will. As such, I’d woken up Siesta in the abbey first, then the two of us had interfered with the world of the code in which Nagisa had been trapped and brought her back.

“I see. So you took Siesta’s will from Abel, Kimihiko. What’s more, her memories and personality haven’t changed.” Nagisa gave a sigh of relief. “But how exactly did you wake her—?”

However, before she could finish, Nagisa was interrupted by a ferocious rumble of thunder.

“I’d love to bask in this touching reunion, but relaxing with some tea will have to wait until after we’ve stopped the Great Cataclysm. That’s fine by you, right, Siesta?”

There were countless things I wanted to say to her, but they could wait until after. For now, I filled Siesta in on the crisis.

“How about that. Before you knew it, you ended up in a position that gave you the initiative, Kimi.”

“Yeah, during the year you spent asleep. How’s that? I’ve turned into a reliable man now, right?”

“Hmm. You do have a face that would get many girls’ hopes up for no good reason.”

Yeesh, not fair.

Sighing, I opened the trunk of the car and gave Siesta the item Noches had brought along.

“Here. We won’t get anywhere without this, will we?”

Siesta’s eyes widened for a moment, but her expression quickly changed to a smile as she slung the weapon—her musket—over her right shoulder. “Brilliant work, Assistant.”

The three of us left the car behind and raced toward the battlefield.

The situation was worse than it had been when we’d arrived. The System was under Abel’s control, and countless lasers rained down from the inverted pyramid, destroying buildings and scorching the earth. However, every so often, the vector of a laser twisted. That was the Tuners, repelling the attacks with their wills.

Blocking the beams of light wasn’t all they were doing. The arrows the Magical Girl fired from a distance targeted Abel, and the Assassin was in a helicopter now instead of on her motorcycle, letting off shot after shot with her gun. Was the helicopter being piloted by a Man in Black or Noches?

“Well, Assistant? How do we stop this?”

“We destroy the Akashic records.”

“You say that like it’s easy.” Siesta gave a bitter smile. “I really can’t see the Phantom Thief letting you just stroll in and break them, though.”

“No. Which means we’re going to need to talk Abel around.”

However, as Abel himself had told us, his will had created this situation. He’d turned himself into the Great Cataclysm as the ultimate premeditated crime.

Even so, we had to make him acknowledge that this new world was wrong.

“I’ll do it,” Nagisa said. Her red eyes shone with determination, proudly conveying that this was her mission. “…So I want you two to help me make a path.”

Siesta’s eyes widened slightly, but she nodded rather happily. “In that case, my assistant and I will support you.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Nagisa. “Suddenly, I feel like there’s no way we’ll lose.”

The two detectives smiled at each other.

Of the three of us, I think I was the surest that we wouldn’t lose.

“Okay, now we just need to figure out how we’re going to reach Abel…”

Just then, a set of stairs appeared. It was an incredibly long staircase of light that led up to the System floating high in the air. A stairway to Abel. What in the world…?

“I sense everyone’s wills,” Siesta said. “Somewhere far away, strong wills are praying that we’ll return.”

A manifestation of will this great… Could it be the power of the Oracle? Maybe the idol and the agent were also praying for us somewhere.

“Shall we go, then?”

And so we started up the stairway of light.

“Huh? I’m in the middle?” Nagisa asked. We were walking up the stairs side by side, with me on Nagisa’s right and Siesta on her left. I really would’ve preferred to run, but the footing wasn’t very stable, and if we fell, the battle would be over before it even started.

“Well, sure. This was your idea.” Right now, both Siesta and I were acting as the assistant. “If you’re nervous, want me to hold your hand?” I asked, offering my palm. “Here.”

“Oh, that’s a good idea. Here, hold mine, too.”

“Why are you both holding my hands?! I look like a little kid! Honestly!” Nagisa fumed. Her outburst really did make her sound like a little kid, though, and both Siesta and I burst out laughing. It felt like this had been an ordinary part of our daily lives at some point long ago.

Days when the three of us had walked side by side. A happy memory we wished would happen again someday.

“Duck, you two.”

Just then, reflected laser beams came flying at us from the System. It almost seemed like punishment for taking all the tension out of the situation.

“That’s a bad habit of ours, isn’t it? We forget we’re on the battlefield and start laughing,” Siesta said, nodding to herself. She swept her musket to the side, knocking away the lasers.

“No kidding. Thanks to that, we never do manage to stay tense during the most important parts.”

“Oh? I’d always imagined you’d tremble like a newborn fawn anyway, Kimi.”

“Huhn? Did you sleep so long it made you dumb? I’m extremely brave these days. I could probably take down most demon kings.”

“I don’t think cosplaying as the world’s greatest hero would be a good look on you.”

“Siesta, you really should apologize to me. See, when I get serious—”

“Oh, for crying out loud! Don’t have a lovers’ quarrel with me sandwiched in the middle!”

Even though Nagisa was yelling, she looked the happiest of the three of us for some reason.

This almost feels like a dream.

Was that shallow of me to think? Or was I really not tense at all, here on the brink of the final battle? If it was dreams we were talking about, I’d had my fill of them: The blissful dreams where Mia, Saikawa, and Charlotte were trapped, for example. As well as the dream of a new world that Abel had talked about over and over.

What was the difference between them? They were the same sort of dreams, the same sort of ideals. But there seemed to be a decisive difference between them.

That was why I’d turned down that kind dream in the library. I was so close. It felt as if I’d have the answer if I just thought about it a bit longer. Or maybe it was something I’d known all along but hadn’t been able to see.

“We should probably start putting our hearts into this.” Siesta’s face turned serious, and she focused on the path ahead.

Above us, the System was gradually looming larger and larger.

Just then, a gust of wind buffeted us, and we stopped and stood still so we wouldn’t fall.

“I feel it,” Nagisa said, once the wind died down. “I feel Abel’s will.”

The Ace Detective, who knew Abel’s despair better than anyone, glared at the sky.

We kept going, climbing the stairs to reach the final answer.

That’s why we’ll live on

At the top of the stairs was a big circular platform of light.

“—Abel.”

Our enemy was there as well, a dozen or so meters in front of us.

He looked nothing like he had before. The Phantom Thief wore a mask and held a big sword. Black wings had grown from his back, and his white body—I couldn’t tell if it was bone or armor—was twice as big as it had been. He wasn’t human, but a supernatural. This was the form of the Original Sin, something that could be called the ancestor of the Seven Deadly Sins.

We knew what we had to do, though: Talk Abel’s will around; then destroy the giant System floating over his head along with its “brain”—the Akashic records. Our first move here would be crucial if we were going to pull that off.

“I’ll keep questioning Abel’s will,” Nagisa said. “So I want you two to open a path for me.”

We exchanged looks and nodded.

It was only then that I realized the stairway we’d used to get here had vanished.

“Did Mia and the others’ wills hit their limit…?”

“Either that or we were the only ones allowed to enter this place.”

Oh, I see. If Siesta’s deduction was correct, we couldn’t hope for reinforcements.

No matter how much we cried, screamed, or raged about it, this would be the final battle. But naturally, I still wanted us to be able to smile at the end of it.

“Abel.”

Nagisa took a step forward. Siesta and I both braced ourselves—but a second later, Abel was there in front of us.

“Nagisa…!”

Siesta reacted first. She grabbed Nagisa then me, almost as an afterthought, and threw herself out of harm’s way. Abel’s sword swept right through the spot where we’d just been.

“Now that you’re the Singularity, there’s no one you can’t kill. That how it is?”

Abel turned around. His eyes, looking down at us from behind that mask, had turned a red so dark it was almost black.

“Listen, Abel!” Nagisa shouted. But by then, our foe was already swinging his sword down toward us again. Nagisa instantly used her will to manifest a red saber and tried to deflect the other sword.

“—Huh?”

There was no way she’d been careless. I knew the history behind the sword she was holding, but its blade snapped as if it were a toy. The tip of Abel’s sword nicked her shoulder, and bright blood spurted into the air.

“…Nagisa! Dammit!”

I tried to draw my gun from the holster at my hip, but by then, Siesta had lunged forward, leveling her musket. “That thing’s our target, right?”

There was a gunshot and a burst of sparks. She’d fired a bullet toward the System.

However, the next thing I knew, Abel was gone. Right before the bullet hit its target, he manifested in front of the System, taking the shot himself.

“Assistant, get Nagisa!”

Siesta used that as an opportunity to fire more shots at the enemy. As she attacked, I tended to Nagisa. Her shoulder was bleeding, but fortunately, the wound was shallow.

“Are you okay? Grab on to me.”

“This is nothing. It doesn’t hurt at all.” She was using a word-soul to trick herself. Although she needed to lean on my shoulder to do it, Nagisa promptly got back up.

“Abel, I’ve seen your despair. I know all about it!”

Abel appeared, having evaded Siesta’s barrage of gunfire unscathed.

Undaunted, Siesta charged him alone, gun raised. Two bullets imbued with will hit home, then a third—but Abel didn’t even flinch.

Then wordlessly, he slowly raised his sword and cut through empty space. Immediately, an invisible shock wave hit Siesta, hurling her backward.

“Siesta…!”

“……! My body, it’s…on fire.”

Siesta had collapsed, and as I tried to run to her, something cut me.

“……! What…is this?”

I slumped to the ground. In the same moment, I understood exactly what Siesta had meant.

The pain felt like my organs were being incinerated. Was it my heart, my lungs, my stomach? …No. What was burning was the invisible organ that housed my will.

“N-Nagisa…!”

Nagisa’s face was contorted in pain. Her will was burning just like ours. Even so, she made her way toward Abel using her saber as a crutch.

“…The despair you showed me. At first, I thought you were using it to attack me. I thought you were trying to make me suffer, to separate me from the Singularity. That wasn’t it, though! You just wanted me to know, didn’t you?! To know that pain and the limitations of this world!”

A ring made up of countless lights formed around the floating System, and it fired them at Nagisa all at once. Neither Siesta nor I could move.

Yet the lights ricocheted back as if they’d been blocked by an unseen wall. Whose will had protected Nagisa? There were countless heroes here, but I was sure it hadn’t been any one person. That shield had been created by their combined will.

“Abel! Your program has a motive! Even your codes have a will! There are other ways to vent your hatred…!”

The next second, the System began to blink a dark color. It fired thick rays of murky-colored light, which thrashed against the barrier in front of Nagisa, trying to shatter it.

“……! I’m a detective! Let me save you!” Nagisa shouted to Abel, stabbing her red saber into the ground. But her voice didn’t reach him. That murky torrent had hidden Abel from view.

“That ideal is incorrect.”

Just then, as Nagisa kept pleading desperately, a figure approached her. I hadn’t thought anyone would be able to intrude on a place like this.

However, strangely, I did suspect that if anyone could pull it off, it would be this guy. Lately, he’d always appeared at unexpected moments to provide just enough support and intel, then give me a lecture to top it all off. Basically, this guy’s role was to make mine redundant, and he was a giant pain in the butt.

“……I’m gonna outwit you someday, I swear.”

Even though my insides hurt, I stood in front of him, blocking his way. “What are you planning to say to Nagisa, Ookami?”

Ookami was the Enforcer, but he’d been a proxy assistant before that. Even in a situation like this, he was completely calm as he faced me. “I was only going to advise Nagisa Natsunagi to kill Abel.”

Then Ookami laid out his reasoning.

He said that all the Tuners should focus exclusively on ending Abel. That that was more likely to shut down the Great Cataclysm than a vague approach like trying to persuade him.

“Ookami, weren’t you Nagisa’s right-hand man?”

“It’s also the assistant’s job to correct the detective’s mistakes,” he retorted. “Listen closely. When you had to choose between the world and the girl, you chose the girl. Then you decided to work with that girl to save the world. In that case, go through with it: Save the world with her. There’s no need for you to save the enemy, as well. Figure out what you can save with your own two hands and what you can’t.”

Ookami was right. There was nothing strange about what he was saying.

Those were words I’d also lived by, in fact. I’d tried to save the people I could see, the ones I could reach. Since I’d been born with this weird nature, I’d thought that was the best way for me to live. Even Siesta hadn’t been able to save everything. She’d admitted as much herself.

That meant it was fine this way. It really was. I’d save my neighbor, that neighbor would extend their hand to someone else, and if that ring kept on expanding, we would eventually save the world. That was the answer we’d found during our journey. However…

“This is a fight to eliminate borders.”

This was the only battle—this moment right here—where we had to save everything.

Even if it was starry-eyed idealism or mere convenience, this time we couldn’t draw a line between neighbors and enemies. Since we were trying to destroy the Akashic records, the world’s standards for what was “correct,” we couldn’t measure anything by our own standards. Right now, we had to throw those scales away.

“…So please, Ookami. Let the detective…save…everything…” My whole body shook, but I managed to grab Ookami’s shirtfront.

Abel’s code had almost completely burned my will away.

“You’re only like this because you flippantly discarded the Singularity’s ability.”

I couldn’t hold out, and my knees had buckled, dumping me on the ground. Ookami looked down at me with an exasperated look.

“……I didn’t discard…the Singularity’s power… I let him steal it.”

“…What?”

People said the Singularity was the ability to turn unfairness on its head. It made idealism real and materialized convenient outcomes.

Now that that power was Abel’s, his will had manifested. The most unfair grief he harbored, his screams—everyone could hear them now.

“No, don’t! Stay back! Please let me go!”

The scream of a young woman facing a murderer, for instance. Ookami seemed to have heard it, too; his eyes never showed much emotion, but they’d widened slightly.

That wasn’t the only voice I’d been hearing, though. Countless screams echoed, so terrible they made me want to plug my ears.

“I’m scared! Dad! Mom!” “It hurts, it hurts, it hurts! Stop, please; forgive me!” “I’m begging you, just spare the children! Anyone but them!” “Why do you steal from us?! You take everything! This is our country!” “I hate this. I can’t die and leave them behind… I can’t die…”

The sound of life being corrupted and crumbling away. These weren’t just scenes that Abel had experienced in his other lives. Through that murky torrent of light, we heard the last screams of people all over the world from the past several thousand years. That supernatural form was an accumulation of everyone whose lives had been taken by human malice.

That was how Nagisa had heard Abel’s voice. How she’d been able to listen to his will. Everything was in there. She was extending a hand to those who had been driven to despair by the unfairness of the world and lost their lives. Saving Abel meant saving the souls of all these dead people.

“Go,” Ookami said. “If you let the Ace Detective die, I’ll kill you.”

“…That’s scary stuff.” I gave a wry smile, but by the time I looked up again, Ookami was gone. It had probably been only his will that had actually come here, the way Nagisa’s and mine had once done long ago.

Still feeling that burning pain, I pushed myself to my feet. I managed to get back up. The will Ookami had left behind must have filled up my empty organ, which I found seriously irritating. He was going to act all self-important again because I owed him one.

“Unfair.”

My feet were still unsteady, but I headed in Nagisa’s direction regardless.

“…Nagisa!”

But just then, the shield that had been protecting us finally crumbled, releasing that torrent of human malice and the screams of those whose lives had been tainted by it.

“Kimihiko!”

At the last second, I caught Nagisa’s fingertips, and we took each other’s hand. We knew exactly where we needed to go and pushed ahead, struggling against the current. Nagisa was crying, but she wiped her tears away and kept going. We walked forward, hatred and sadness raining down on us from head to toe.

“……Dammit.”

The torrent grew more forceful until eventually we couldn’t even breathe, let alone keep walking. Churning malice poured into us, as if we were swallowing seawater, and I almost lost my grip on Nagisa’s hand. …That hand was the one thing I couldn’t afford to let go of. After all, stories begin by taking someone’s hand.

“Let’s go, Nagisa! We’re going…to Abel!”

In order to save everything, we’d—

“I’m proud of you two.”

Just then, a ray of light cut through the torrent, separating it to reveal a girl. No—she seemed too sacred for a term like “girl.” The first thing I felt seeing her was awe.

She wore a dress of white and gold. On her back was one large white wing, and behind her streamed hair that seemed to have grown long in seconds. It was Siesta. Through the power of the System, she’d taken the form of a goddess.

“Let’s save the world together.”

Crystals of light gathered, and a weapon with a crescent-shaped blade materialized in her right hand, shining gold. No matter how many times her will burned, she’d keep fighting as long as she was on the battlefield. That was how this proud ally of justice, who had come back from the jaws of death time and time again, chose to live.

“Abel? Arsene? Or is your real name something else?”

Siesta took off running so fast she practically vanished.

I couldn’t see her; only her voice seemed to linger where she’d been. She lunged at Abel, who held his greatsword at the ready.

“Who are you? What is your name? Your will…?”

“This body has but one will.”

It was the first time Abel had spoken here on the battlefield.

By the time my eyes managed to catch up, the fight was already over.

Siesta’s sword slash had been just a little faster, and she’d shattered Abel’s bone armor.

“_____________! I won’t…forget. This will…won’t let me…forget.”

Abel staggered but managed to stay on his feet and let out a shout.

“Their deaths weren’t in vain. They were killed by evil, but their last wills won’t ever die!”

Abel had wanted to make us understand.

Humans were evil. As such, they had to be punished. We couldn’t pretend that all the people who’d been killed by evil had never existed.

And yet, on the other side of suffering waited a utopia. We could make a world where crimes never happened, where the human race had been freed from malice. “Why can’t you understand that?” Abel had asked the Ace Detective from the top of a mound of one hundred billion corpses.

“Professor Moriya,” Nagisa responded not as a detective but as a student. “This is why I accept the world, unfair as it is.”

In the next moment, sound and light enveloped us.

Countless images began to stream past all at once, just as they had in the darkness Nagisa had been trapped in.

Someone presented a bouquet of roses to somebody in a hospital bed. They weren’t “get well soon” flowers but for a marriage proposal.

In the entryway of a house, a young boy saw his father come home and froze to the spot, crying. His father had just returned from two years on the battlefield.

It was the anniversary of the death of a woman’s mother. A crowd of relatives had gathered in a Japanese-style room of the family home, where her baby gave a first joyous cry.

“Because the world is overflowing with moments like these, too.”

True, the world was warped. There was no end to the violence and discrimination and poverty. As long the Seven Deadly Sins existed, people would keep opening the door to misfortune every day. For that reason, if someone put a utopia where malice didn’t exist beyond that door instead, people might cling to it. But—

“We want to live so we can find a neighbor who we can get angry at how ridiculous this unfair world is with and join in laughing it off.”

I stood next to Nagisa, and Siesta came up to stand on her other side.

Humans lived in a way that was bound to make them unhappy.

But in the spaces in between, there were also times of laughter.

Silly banter with a classmate; listening to the songs of an idol singer we adored; making up with someone we’d never gotten along with; rushing out of a room we’d holed ourselves up in; searching for a new dream, a new reason to live; drinking extra-special black tea—in each one of those moments, we felt our reason for living.

People were bound to be unhappy.

But that was why we left on journeys to find happiness.

“And where do the last wills of those who died in the process go?” Abel—no, Professor Moriya—asked. This would likely be his final question. “They weren’t able to grasp even those brief moments of joy. Who will soothe their regrets?”

“We will—those of us who remain. We’ll make sure of it.”

Those weren’t just empty words or convenient excuses.

Nagisa planned to live as the detective, and she would spend her whole life extending a hand to those people.

“I see,” the professor muttered briefly. It almost looked like his expression softened very slightly.

Suddenly, something crawled out of his body—a shadow. The darkness grew, and before long, it had formed the silhouette of an enormous witch wearing a dress that looked like a curtain.

“Is that the code of Cain, the Original Sin?”

Professor Moriya had always sworn he wasn’t being controlled by that thing. He’d said it served him. But now the shadow fled, having lost its vessel.

It made for the System’s inverted pyramid, enveloping the light. The enormous shadow engulfed the Akashic records, attempting to swallow them.

“Destroy them,” the professor said. “If nothing else, destroy the Akashic records and the sins of the human race with them.”

No one had used a weapon, yet great cracks began to run through the System. It probably proved that it wasn’t just the detectives who were here: The wills of those who weighed justice on the scales had all voluntarily chosen to abandon the Akashic records.

“Even if you destroy them, a new world will come one day.”

And with Abel’s words lingering in the air, our surroundings were enveloped in light.

The end

When the light cleared away and I came to my senses, I was standing on the ground. I couldn’t see the shining platform anywhere. It looked as if I was back where I’d been before I climbed those stairs.

A little ways away, I saw Nagisa and Siesta looking around as well. Our eyes met, and the three of us gazed at each other, dumbfounded.

“Kimihiko!” Rill raced over to me in her wheelchair, panting. “Is it all over?” She swallowed hard, her expression tense.

“—Yeah. Though I couldn’t really do much to help.”

Basically all I’d done was help the detective save face.

Rill’s eyes widened, but her expression quickly softened. “Ah. So business as usual then.”

“Don’t make it sound like I’m always useless.”

We stared at each other for a few seconds, then started grinning at the same time.

Behind Rill, Noches had joined Siesta and Nagisa, who were all chatting cheerfully.

“Is it really over?”

Our fight had finally come to an end.

As I looked at their smiles, the tension went out of my shoulders in a rush.

This was why we’d worked so hard. This was the future we’d been aiming for. Now we could—

“It looks like it’s all settled,” a voice said behind me.

I turned around to see the red-haired Assassin, Fuubi Kase. A short distance behind her were the Enforcer, the Hero, and the other Tuners.

“I took the liberty of doing things my way a bit.”

“What do you mean ‘a bit,’ you idiot?” Ms. Fuubi seemed exasperated, but as she looked at us now that we’d achieved our goal, a faint smile crossed her face.

Noticing her, Nagisa and the others came over, and Siesta stepped forward. “It’s been a long time, Fuubi.”

The two of them were meeting again for the first time in over a year. The other Tuners all stared at Siesta with great interest. She was a hero who’d returned from the jaws of death not once but twice.

“Ha! At this point, it seems dumb to be surprised.” Ms. Fuubi snorted, laughing it off. “It’s not like I’ll have anything to do with you from here on out anyway.”

“Now that’s a sad thing to say. We’re a detective and a police officer. Let’s get along.”

For a moment, Ms. Fuubi’s eyes widened in surprise.

“You are going to keep being a police officer, aren’t you?” Siesta asked, her blue eyes fixed on the Assassin.

After a brief silence, Ms. Fuubi gave a thin smile. “I’m not sure. Never mind that—we should talk about what we’re going to do with him.”

Ms. Fuubi’s eyes narrowed sharply, and I suddenly realized he was there again.

“Abel.”

The Tuners’ attention—and their weapons—came to bear on him. The Assassin aimed her pistol, the Magical Girl pointed her staff, and the Enforcer leveled his great sickle. Abel was their mortal enemy not just as a Tuner but on a personal level.

“Wait.” Nagisa stood in front of Ms. Fuubi, her arms spread wide.

“What are you trying to pull?” the Assassin asked. “Sure, the Akashic records were destroyed, but you’re not planning to just let Abel walk, are you?”

“Of course not. I don’t have the slightest intention of defending his crimes. However, it wouldn’t be justice to kill him here,” Nagisa said, not retreating a single step. “The way I see it, justice means continuing to think about the future.”

A dubious expression crossed Ms. Fuubi’s face, but she lowered her gun.

Seeing her reaction, Reloaded spoke up. “So you think letting Abel live will lead to justice in the future?”

“He has a power that isn’t like ours. We’ll have him use it for the sake of the world.”

Right, the world no longer had the Akashic records. It was true that we’d have to think about the ideal shape of justice in this new world.

At that, Reloaded lowered her staff. Every eye came to focus on Ookami, the only one left pointing a weapon. Ookami had been opposed to our plan from the start and wanted to kill Abel all along.

“Either way, he’ll need to return everything he stole first,” Ookami said, lowering his sickle. The tension finally eased, and the mood relaxed a little.

“Can he do that now that the System’s broken, though?”

Could Abel still use his code abilities?

“The Akashic records are still here,” Abel said. Something that looked like orange particles of light were rising from his right hand.

“…So the Akashic records were under your control, and you preserved some of them inside yourself?”

That meant Abel could still use his codes. Were those particles of light data he’d stolen from the world? Then if he returned it…

“So you’re giving up on controlling the world?”

On staying evil?

“No, I won’t stop being evil,” Abel answered, as if he’d picked up on what I really meant. “I will reign as the enemy of the world for all eternity, and you will continue to wonder. About the ideal shape of justice; about what ‘peace’ means; about human foolishness; about the seven sins; about how to atone for one’s crimes; about knowing one knows nothing; about the unconscious evil that is self-sacrifice.”

I heard several sets of footsteps, and a group of people wearing white masks and outfits surrounded Abel.

“A military guard under the direct control of the Federation Government,” Siesta murmured quietly.

The group promptly began to put Abel in restraints: a series of rings, starting with his ankles. The Federation Government must be thinking of locking him up again—permanently, this time.

“I will always be watching from the farthest ends of the world. I’ll be listening. You won’t be able to escape. Peace will never come. Rest will be an impossibility. Evil will be born so long as humans live. By the time this body withers away, a new disaster will appear.”

A collar was fastened around his neck. Yet even then, Abel continued to address the Tuners, or perhaps the government officials who must be watching this play out remotely.

“This evil will shall never die.”

Abel Arsene Schoenberg vowed that he would remain the worst criminal in the world for all time.

It was a challenge to us.

He was saying that if we rejected this form of evil, we should try to make the new world some other way. Until we did, Abel A. Schoenberg would remain a threat to the world. That was the point we had to compromise on now.

“Good. That’s what we want.”

They went to put a sack over his head—but just then, a big hole opened up in the left side of Abel’s chest.

“Huh?”

None of us could believe what we were seeing. Not even Ms. Fuubi or Siesta. Noches murmured, staring wide-eyed at the sky. “The Akashic records.”

The inverted pyramid of the System floated in the sky on the verge of crumbling apart; however, a design like an enormous eye had surfaced on it. The eye seemed to be peering at us and at this world.

After that, everything happened in an instant. The Hero was the first to move, but something that looked like crystal grew up from the ground and trapped his lower body. The same thing had happened to me, Nagisa, Siesta, and the other Tuners; we were all trapped by the mysterious crystals.

“…! Don’t tell me—is the Federation Government doing this?”

A second later, though, I realized that the white-clad guards who’d restrained Abel had all been completely encased in crystal. This wasn’t the government’s doing.

“So it was too much for those without wills, hm?” Abel said.

Did he know what was going on?

“Breaking the System activated a repair program. It seems to be trying to retake the Akashic records from me.”

This time, a hole appeared in Abel’s lower abdomen. His eyes widened.

“Then—no way… Is that…?”

“The will of the Earth? …Of the world?”

Even as the creeping crystals made them wince in pain, Nagisa and Siesta looked up. The sky had begun to crumble apart like shattered glass.

“—A reboot. It’s planning to make it as if nothing ever happened?”

By now, Abel’s lower body had been completely blown away. The expression on his face looked like he was smiling, but it also seemed sad.

“The cataclysm won’t end.”

And with that, Abel Arsene Schoenberg was erased from this world entirely.

“_____________!”

I put out a hand, reaching for _____________, who’d vanished.

“…Who?”

Who was I reaching out for? Who had been there just now?

Who had we been fighting all this time?

“Assistant!”

Somebody was calling out to me—Siesta. She was reaching out to me. …I knew that much. I remembered her; how could I ever forget Siesta? But why was she here? How was she awake?

“Kimihiko!” Nagisa yelled. I had the feeling she’d told me something important just a few hours ago, but what was it? How had I responded? And when had we started calling each other by our first names?

My memories were getting fuzzier.

We’d been fighting one of the Tuners, ___ __________ ______, all this time. I had a nature known as ___ ____________, and the two of us had been fighting ___ ______________, the world’s secret. And then… Yeah. Just now, that fight had ended. I was pretty sure the result had been…

“—! Siesta! Nagisa!”

I desperately tried to reach out for them, but I couldn’t move anymore.

“It’s all right!” Nagisa said. Even though the crystal had crawled all the way up to her neck now, she kept doing everything she could to convey her emotions. “No matter what we forget, we’ll be together. I’m sure our future selves will find one another again!”

…Right. She was right. If it was the three of us, we’d be okay.

Siesta and Nagisa were the detectives, and I was their assistant.

I remembered that much. It was the one thing I could never forget. So…!

“Someday, let’s leave on another journey to save the world,” Siesta said, smiling at the very end, and Nagisa and I nodded.

On that day, the world was reborn.

Transcending the void, the story resumes

“That’s why we’ll need to keep acting separately, Nagisa. Thanks for understanding.”

In an airport lounge, I nodded to Nagisa’s image on my laptop. I’d sent an e-mail in advance to tell her about the truth of the Great Cataclysm, which we’d learned in the control tower just the other day.

“Sure. Leave finding Charlie to me. I’ll be relying on Ookami for most of it, though.”

Ookami had gone back to the Security Police a year ago, and he’d been investigating a lead that Charlie was a member of a known terrorist organization. He and Nagisa were currently working their way through a list of the group’s hideouts, but apparently they hadn’t found Charlie yet.

“Charlie disappeared while she was chasing the Assassin, so normally I’d suspect Ms. Fuubi, but…”

“It doesn’t look that way to you, right, Kimihiko?”

After we’d parted ways at the control tower, Ms. Fuubi had started working on her own again. She hadn’t told us any details, but she was likely planning to contact the Federation Government.

She’d always been like that. All she’d say was that she had business with the people at the top. I’d asked Noel to get us a meeting with the government dignitaries as well, but she was still arranging it.

“I wonder if this means Charlie really did get pulled into some sort of unexpected situation.”

“Yeah. Well, we can’t write off the possibility that she just made it look like that, met up with members of the organization, and is plotting something, as Ookami says.”

Would Charlie do something like that? …Or rather, would she even come up with a plan that clever? This was Charlie we were talking about; she always just charged ahead as she saw fit. In that case, where was she now, and what was she doing?

“In any case, I’ll stick it out for a few more days. I wonder which country we’re headed to next…”

Nagisa stretched on the screen. She was also in an airport lounge in some foreign country. School was out for spring break, but she’d been away from Japan for days now, so the fatigue was probably building up.

“How’s Mia doing? She’s not used to moving around this much, either.”

“Oh, she went back to London. She said that since the world’s records had been retaken, her power as the Oracle might come back, too. She’s going to devote some time to her duties in the clock tower.”

Oh, so that’s what she was hoping for? Even if it was unstable, the System was still on Earth, meaning Mia’s ability to see the future just might come back before too long…

“Huh? Wait a second. Nagisa, does that mean you’re alone with Ookami?”

“Hm? Yes, why?”

“You’re traveling with Ookami, just the two of you?!”

…What would that be like?

Nagisa and Ookami alone together? From morning till night? For days on end?

“I think my brain’s gonna break.”

My head was starting to hurt, and the voices around me seemed to fade out.

“Kimihiko? Hello? Earth to Kimihiko.”

I drained my incredibly bitter coffee, then turned back to the screen. “Give Ookami a message for me. Tell him that if he tries anything weird, I’ll use the power of the Singularity and everything else I’ve got to erase him, concept and all.”

“Yes, yes. You say that, but you’re all alone with Siesta, aren’t you?” Nagisa stared at me through the screen.

When we discovered that something abnormal was definitely going on, we’d decided that Siesta and I would go investigate the areas where the strangeness was occurring while we waited to make contact with the government.

“You don’t want me being alone with Ookami, but you’re getting along reeeeeally well with Siesta.”

“What do you mean by that? This is just work.” Work that hadn’t changed in the past seven years. “What, Nagisa? Don’t tell me you’re jealous or something.” That being the case, I ignored my own situation and replied with some of our usual banter.

“…Don’t tease me like that, okay?” Nagisa looked away, twirling a lock of her hair around her finger.

I hadn’t told her everything about our lost past. That is to say, I hadn’t done anything as gauche as reminding Nagisa of the true feelings she’d told me about on the day of the Great Cataclysm. She’d remembered on her own, though. She knew what she’d said to me back then.

“I-it’s been over a year, by the way. People’s feelings can change in a year. Back then, I, um, I probably just got caught up in the moment. So, uh…” As she spoke, Nagisa flushed red and averted her gaze. “J-just forget about it, okay?”

Sheesh. And after I finally managed to recover such an important memory…

“All right. We’ll act just like we always do, then.”

“…Yeah! Just like always.”

Well, it probably wouldn’t get awkward after all this time, but if that was what Nagisa wanted… “In that case, I figure it’s okay to assume that—like always—you’re a complete masochist, and that no matter who teases you or how, you’ll act like you’re mad, but you’re really getting pleasure out of the humiliation. Right?”

“Like hell it is! Wh-why would you drag the conversation back to something like that?! I said no teasing! If I have to pick, I’m going to be a complete sadist when it comes to you, Kimihiko!”

“No, you can’t take things back that far. The only time you came off as a total sadist was right at the beginning. You showed your true colors real fast.”

“~~~! Fine, I don’t even care! I really do hate you! You’re a tactless, inconsiderate, inhuman guy with no personality who doesn’t understand the tiniest bit about a girl’s feelings!”

Nagisa pounded the table, venting her anger at me. She was scaring the other waiting passengers.

“You look like you’re having fun,” I said—but just then, a girl stole one of my earphones.

“Nagisa, if you get too angry, you’ll ruin that cute face of yours.”

“…Did you come to bait me on purpose, Siesta?” Nagisa glared at her resentfully.

“I can’t help it; seeing that expression makes me want to pick on you. Be careful, okay?”

“You’re telling the person who’s getting picked on to be careful?!”

Nagisa’s reaction was a perfect ten out of ten, and Siesta giggled.

“Sorry, sorry. I came to ask you for a favor, actually. I know I’ve said it before but make sure you take good care of Charlie.” At that, Siesta’s expression shifted, and her tone turned serious. “I think everything about her situation is connected to this. I’m not kidding when I say that every single move we make from now on is going to be incredibly important for the world that’s to come.”

With that, Siesta added, “This time, for sure, we’ll clean up after the events from one year ago,” and Nagisa nodded firmly.

“Siesta, we should get going,” I cut in.

Our departure time was coming up fast.

Siesta and I were setting out for another few days to investigate the irregularities with the world.

“Okay, Nagisa. See you.”

“All right. You and Siesta be careful, too. And make sure you keep a proper distance between you.”

“What sort of a warning is that?”

A vow before dawn

Our next stop was in South America. After transferring planes twice, we reached the country our destination was in, then headed deeper into the mountains.

According to Siesta, there were several locations in the world that acted as “observation points”—places where it was possible to check the Earth’s balance. One was the desert in northern Africa with those enormous stone pyramids and another the great waterfall in North America that acted as a border between two countries.

A little while ago, when Siesta had gone off by herself just after the Ritual of Sacred Return, she’d been trekking around those places. This time, we were bound for a certain salt lake that lay on a high plateau in South America. It was known as the flattest place on Earth, and when rainwater accumulated on the surface and spread in an endlessly thin layer, it looked like a gigantic mirror.

It was night when we reached our accommodations near the salt plain. The hotel was clearly geared toward tourists, with the walls and even the furniture made of salt blocks. It could practically be called an entire salt town. We ate dinner at the hotel restaurant, then bathed in the spa.

“I’m exhausted.”

I toppled over onto the bed, face down. Twenty wasn’t old enough to be losing my stamina, but constantly being on the move had wiped me out.

On top of that, a lot of the past year had been peaceful. I’d spent weekday afternoons at university and the rest of my time doing stuff like investigating cheating spouses and finding lost pets at Siesta’s detective agency. It had been a while since I’d flown around the world like this.

“I bet you’re tired too, huh, Siesta?” I asked, rolling onto my back. Then I remembered. “…It’s just me in here, huh?”

Siesta wasn’t in the room with me.

We’d been together up until dinner at the restaurant, but Siesta had ended up taking a different room since the hotel had a vacancy.

“Not that it matters or anything. It’s fine.”

Just being in the same room didn’t mean we were going to do anything special.

We’d usually stayed together when we traveled together in the past, but now we had more money. Being able to spend our time separately without having to be considerate of each other was nice in its own way.

I didn’t have anything else to do and I did have a lot of fatigue built up, so I wasted no time in getting ready for bed.

It was early spring in Japan, but it was still really cold here. I turned on the heat and pulled the covers up to my shoulders. Come to think of it, I’d often been hit with the unreasonable request “Tell me a funny story” just before we went to sleep way back when. I closed my eyes, thinking back to those distant days.

How much time had passed?

Feeling a heavy weight on my lower abdomen, I opened my eyes. The room was dark, and the world around was sketched in vague outlines. But something…no, someone was definitely on top of me.

“Morning.”

It was Siesta.

She was looking down at me, wearing her usual winter dress.

“…Does this even count as ‘morning’?”

What time was it? It was still dark outside the window. It wasn’t even dawn yet.

“…What happened to your habit of sleeping in?”

“Are you stupid, Kimi?”

Not fair, I thought, but I yawned before I could actually complain. I was way too sleepy.

“This is work. Hurry up—get dressed.” Siesta played with the drawstrings of the hoodie I was wearing as she spoke, tightening it and loosening it.

“You’ve got to be kidding. Can’t it wait till the sun’s up?”

“There are things we can only investigate at this hour. Come on, get up.” Still sitting on me, Siesta pulled on my arms, trying to make me get up.

“…Sleepy. Can’t move. Dress me.”

“This is the opposite to how it always is. All right, hands up.” Sighing, Siesta pulled my hoodie off. “Hey, you’re still training properly. Good job, good for you.” Siesta touched my body all over, nodding with satisfaction.

“Your hands are cold.”

“It means my heart is that much warmer.”

“Really? Yeah, it does seem like that. It’s hard to tell through your clothes, though.”

“…Okay, you change your bottoms. I’ll be waiting in the lobby.” Siesta hurriedly got down off the bed for some reason and left the room. Had I done something? I was so sleepy I couldn’t really tell.

Ten minutes later, I met up with Siesta in the lobby and we headed for the lake.

“It sure is cold.”

I was wearing a coat, gloves, and a scarf, but even fully kitted out for winter, the cold wind made me shiver. The world around us was still dim. Working by the light of a flashlight, Siesta collected water from the shallow lake in a test tube.

Apparently, it was possible to measure the way the world was leaning by looking at the moisture content and salt concentration, specific elements in the atmosphere, and changes in the ecosystem at observation points like these—but that was just how I interpreted it. It had been explained to me in far more difficult language, but the conversation had been so technical that I hadn’t been able to understand all of it.

Siesta had probably been doing this sort of job for ages, though. Since before I’d even come to know the real meaning of the term “Ace Detective.”

“Siesta, how much did you know back then?”

Had she known the secret of the Akashic records? The true identity of the Phantom Thief? About the power of wills and the Singularity? Siesta hadn’t told me a thing about any of them.

Had she done that to protect me, the Singularity? Just how much had Siesta actually known about the secrets of this world?

“You’re giving me too much credit, Kimi,” Siesta said with a wry smile. She shook the test tube, which she’d added some sort of chemical to.

“So you didn’t know all about it, like Bruno?”

“At the time, SPES was my only enemy. I didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with anything else. Even with both hands, I couldn’t hold all that much.”

Back then, I’d put Siesta on too high a pedestal.

She was really just a human being. She had the same emotions as anyone else; she’d just been hiding them. I’d leaned on that strength of hers more than I should have, and I hadn’t noticed that her hands were full. Holding a gun in her right hand and my hand in her left had been all she could manage. And yet…

“Did I help you at all?” I asked Siesta to her back. I hadn’t known a thing then. How much had I been able to support her? Had I managed to walk beside her as an equal?

“It’s pretty late to be getting anxious, isn’t it?”

“I’m just making small talk,” I said, trying to save face.

Siesta broke into a smile. “I didn’t let go of your hand for those three years, Kimi. How you interpret that is up to you.”

“You mean…?”

“Now then.” Siesta stood back up without waiting for my response. “This is still just a quick result, but at this point, it doesn’t seem like there are any disasters.”

“…For better or worse, huh?”

Siesta had said the same thing after her earlier solo investigation. Apparently, retaking the world’s records hadn’t changed anything here.

“But Yggdrasil’s seeds have begun to overrun the planet. The world must be behaving strangely…right?”

“Yes. In which case this, too, may be the will of the Earth itself.” Siesta was gazing out at the lake before us. “The Tuners’ mission was to balance the world, but we’ve probably been dismissed from our roles. I don’t know whether that’s the cause or the effect, but it feels as if the world is trying to end of its own accord.”

“That’s… That’s ridiculous.”

Did the Federation Government know about this, and were they giving up on the world? Were they doing it because they knew the Akashic records weren’t functioning properly, so the Tuners no longer had the power to save the planet? If so—

“It’s because I let Abel steal them.”

Back then, in order to retake Siesta’s will, I’d handed the mechanism behind the world over to Abel.

“It’s my fault the world’s…”

The wind blew around us.

For a little while, it was the only sound.

“It’s almost morning.”

The world had been dyed a deep blue, but orange light was gradually stealing in.

The lake stretched far into the distance with nothing to interrupt it. The water was just a few centimeters deep, and as the rumors said, its surface reflected the colors of the sky like a mirror.

“It’s all right.”

I heard someone running over the water.

A white-haired angel leaped on that heavenly mirror reflecting the dawn, looking as if she was dancing.

“I’ll prove you didn’t make the wrong choice, Kimi.”

No one else was here. No one else was listening.

It was a vow made in a world that was ours alone.

“The neighbor you saved is going to save the world. That way, I’ll prove you were right.”

The sky moved across the mirrored surface of the lake. Deep blue clouds and sunlight slowly flowed beneath our feet, and I set off through that sky toward the angel.

“Was this why we woke up so early?”

This time, I’d really, truly stand beside her.

Smiling at each other, Siesta and I gazed at the distant horizon together.

The eve of the revolution

Having woken up unusually early, we wasted no time checking out of the hotel after we got back. I asked Siesta if we were heading for the next observation point, but she told me, “There’s someone I need to see for a bit.”

It was actually pretty nostalgic the way she kept me in the dark and moved things along by herself. We came down from the mountains in a car driven by a Man in Black, then headed southwest.

“Is this person an enemy or an ally?”

“Mm. I really couldn’t say,” Siesta answered with a frown, sitting in the back seat. It sounded like I’d need to psych myself up a little before we got there.

“By the way, Kimi, do you have travel insurance?”

“Don’t ask something scary like that.”

“Make sure to tell your loved ones how you feel about them.”

“Seriously, where are you taking me?!”

After traveling for over ten hours, including multiple breaks, we reached a town near the nation’s border. It was a suburban area with hardly any high-rises. The car stopped in front of one particular run-down building.

“This seems like a pretty dangerous town. The buildings and streets are riddled with bullet holes.”

“Even if there are no more major enemies of the world, that doesn’t mean human malice and violence have disappeared. The world isn’t peaceful or anything like it yet. …Anyway, shall we go?” Siesta opened the trunk and took out a silver attaché case. It went without saying what was inside. I grabbed my backpack and followed Siesta into the building.

It was a tiny clinic, which meant I could pretty much guess who Siesta was here to see. We found him in an exam room, typing on a keyboard.

“Stephen.”

Since I’d recently revisited my memories of the past, it felt as if I’d talked to him just the other day, but it had actually been about a month since we last met. Stephen had been secretly helping Bruno amidst the Ritual of Sacred Return, during which he, the Revolutionary, and the Hero had made contact with me.

“Do you still have the origin text?” Stephen asked, his hands falling still. It was just like last time: He’d tried to get that book from me to shut down the ritual.

“You’re still after this, even now?” I took the origin text out of my bag. I’d been carrying it around with me ever since that day. It was a mysterious book that showed me the future only when a major choice was bearing down on us. I’d received it directly from Mia the Oracle, the original owner.

“Assistant, give that to Stephen,” Siesta prompted me unexpectedly.

“…You’re sure?”

“That was his condition for agreeing to meet today.”

Good grief. When had they cut that deal? I didn’t have much of a choice, so I handed over the origin text. Stephen examined it closely, but of course, the book showed no sign of activating its power.

“I mean, it doesn’t even react when I touch it.”

I’d only borrowed its power once, and it had never worked after that. I’d honestly been thinking it was about time I gave it back to Mia.

“It may have carried out its primary role already,” Siesta said.

“Then its purpose was to return the Singularity’s rightful power to him?” Stephen asked. “Seeing the future must have been a secondary, incidental effect.”

Come to think of it, way back when Rill and I had been dealing with a crisis known as Pandemonium, a bizarre creature known as the White Tengu had appeared. It had told us that the world held several devices for recording the past and the future. The Sacred Relics had been such artifacts, but maybe the origin text was another one.

“Now then, Daydream. Why have you come to see me?” Handing the origin text back to me, Stephen got down to business.

Siesta drew a small breath. “Actually, I’d like to ask you a similar question: What are you doing here, Stephen?”

This was a tiny clinic in a foreign country—all he could be doing here was working as a doctor. Stephen saved the lives of many people all around the world, disregarding national borders. However, that probably wasn’t what Siesta was asking.

“You were Bruno’s comrade,” Siesta went on. “The Assassin inherited his last will, just like you, and she’s been working to retake the world’s lost records. She’s still trying to contact the people at the top. So what are you doing?”

Stephen’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses.

“What about the Revolutionary and the Hero? What are you all doing? —Or maybe the question I should be asking is what have you really been trying to do?”

Siesta seemed to be insinuating that Stephen and Bruno’s other allies had some sort of special plan, and that it had already ended in failure.

“That’s a bad habit among detectives: You self-importantly withhold the conclusion you’ve already come to and list off facts in an attempt to defuse any problems. It’s an abysmal waste of time.” The doctor—a man who lived by the principle of efficiency—turned back to the electronic patient file on his computer.

“He’s talking smack about you, Siesta.”

“That’s quite all right. If someone can’t understand the romance of being a detective, nothing else they do is bound to work out, either.”

Her expression was deadpan, but she was insanely mad.

Technically, this doctor saved your life, you know…

“Then I’ll ask for him,” I said, cutting in. “What are you getting at, Siesta? What do you think the Inventor, the Revolutionary, and the Hero were plotting?”

As the assistant, I smoothed things over. Siesta nodded, then presented a theory I’d never even suspected. “After Bruno’s death, the three of you tried to acquire the Akashic records. You made it look as if you’d inherited his will but were actually taking advantage of the fact that everyone around the world had forgotten about the records.”

Stephen didn’t speak. But he was listening.

“However, you found out that the System, which held the Akashic records, couldn’t be used as it once could. That’s why you abandoned your plan and went back to being a doctor, isn’t it?”

The Akashic records could be used to change the workings of the world.

In fact, that was exactly what Abel had once plotted to do. So Siesta thought Stephen’s group had been attempting the same thing?

“But, Siesta, Stephen agreed to get rid of the Akashic records. That’s why we were able to destroy the System: because all the Tuners willed it to be that way.”

“Back then, yes. He had an ulterior motive, though. Like you, his group was hoping that if the Akashic records disappeared, the enemies of the world would, too. But things weren’t that simple. Even with the Akashic records gone, the world they’d hoped for didn’t come to pass.”

Silence filled the room. We all knew who the next one to speak should be and were waiting for it to happen.

When Stephen finally opened his mouth, he explained the motives of his absent former comrades.

“Youkaki the Revolutionary was born in the slums of a certain country. Although she began making a living as a prostitute from a young age, her unwavering will allowed her to obtain extraordinarily good looks and conversation skills, and in the end, she had the world’s politicians wrapped around her little finger. She needed the Akashic records to erase the concept of status from the world.

“Full-Face the Hero was a war orphan. To others, he always seemed to have an abnormally strong will for justice, and before he knew it, he’d become a symbol of justice himself. That trust saw him trapped holding the switches for powerful weapons sleeping all over the world. However, this contradiction later brought him to a standstill, and he tried to use the power of the Akashic records to do away with all weapons.”

They had both been chasing their ideal, driven by their will, and the strength of their wish had led them to pursue an as yet unseen taboo. There was hardly anything separating them from Abel.

The only difference was that both the Revolutionary and the Hero had once held back. They hadn’t reached for that Pandora’s box—the Akashic records—and had even thought that throwing it away might make their dreams a reality.

But the world hadn’t changed. Poverty, violence, and war hadn’t disappeared. That was what the world’s wisdom, Bruno Belmondo, had argued until the very end.

“That’s why you needed the Akashic records again.” They’d needed the System once more to turn their wills into power so they could change the world.

“It isn’t possible anymore, though,” Siesta murmured quietly.

The System’s light had already died, and it had lost most of its power.

“No. Which means you have no need to be wary of us any longer.” Stephen stared at the attaché case by our feet as he spoke.

He’d effectively acknowledged that our theory was correct. Was that why Siesta had come here? To make sure she knew who was a friend and who was an enemy?

“What was it that you wanted to do with the Akashic records, Stephen?”

Even if it was a wish that couldn’t come true, he’d gone against Bruno’s wishes, so I figured he could fill us in on at least that much. But just then—

“It looks like it was a good thing we came prepared.”

—Siesta turned around, leveling her pistol. The silver attaché case had clearly been a fake out. She’d been carrying a concealed weapon that was easier to use in close quarters.

So who’d managed to sneak up behind us? The Revolutionary, the Hero, or some as yet unseen enemy? I turned around, but what I saw startled me.

“…A kid?”

A boy about ten years old was holding a gun with shaking hands. Siesta’s eyes widened slightly. The assailant was smaller than either of us had expected.

“Our visitor has nothing to do with this conversation,” Stephen said, slowly rising from his chair. He continued in Japanese so only Siesta and I would understand. “The other day, this boy’s father was attacked and killed by a mugger. The mugger was also seriously wounded in the struggle, and he was brought to this clinic. I operated on him and saved his life.”

…Ah, so that’s what this was.

Stephen’s explanation had been brief, but it was enough for the pieces to click into place. In other words, the kid was here for revenge. He was pointing a gun at the doctor who’d dared to save the man who’d killed his father.

“I’ll talk to him,” Stephen said, making Siesta lower her gun. He went to stand in front of the boy, who hadn’t managed to steady his aim yet. “I won’t tell you nothing good comes of revenge. But I have a duty to save people’s lives, regardless of whether those people are good or bad. I’m a doctor, and that’s what doctors do. Today after this, I’m scheduled to save the lives of seven people.”

Stephen wouldn’t compromise his philosophy even when dealing with a child, but he did kneel to put himself at eye level with the boy.

“I’ll say it again: I don’t claim that nothing good comes of revenge. Someday, when I’m no longer a doctor, if you still have that gun, come find me again. You can shoot me down after I’ve saved all the lives I can.”

After a brief silence, the boy swiped away his tears and ran away.

“Stephen,” Siesta called to his white-coated back. “The wish you wanted to use the Akashic records to make come true. Was it—?”

“Daydream.” Stephen cut her off, turning around. “As the former Inventor, there is one piece of information I should give you. Come back here tomorrow morning. After I’ve finished those seven surgeries.”

Stephen gave us a rare, faint grin, his lab coat flaring behind him.

That was the last time we ever saw his smile.

Tuner Slayer

The next morning, when Siesta and I visited Stephen’s clinic as promised, the first thing we saw was the shattered glass of the front door. Exchanging a look, we leveled our guns.

Moving cautiously but quickly, we headed to the exam room we’d been in yesterday. We nodded to each other, and the moment I opened the door, Siesta pointed her gun into the room—but unusually, she froze up as if startled. I hurried into the exam room as well.

“Stephen…!”

The Inventor was there, sitting against the wall with his arms and legs splayed out. He was covered in blood, his head slumped over. A ferocious slash ran from his chest down to his abdomen, leaving his white lab coat dyed dark red with blood. Even from a distance, it didn’t look as if he could possibly be alive.

“Who on earth could have done this?”

The first possibility that came to mind was the boy who’d shown up with a pistol the day before.

I really couldn’t see a kid like that being able to create such a horrific scene, though. And most importantly, Stephen’s wound wasn’t from a bullet.

“Assistant,” Siesta called. She’d run over to Stephen right away. “He’s still breathing.”

“—Seriously?!”

I went closer, careful not to step into the pooled blood. Siesta checked Stephen’s pulse, then gave a small nod. He was alive.

“Of course, it’s dangerous to leave him like this, though. We have to get him treated, fast.”

“Yeah, let’s rush him to a hospital…”

That said, this was a hospital. The genius doctor we could always rely on at times like this was lying on the floor right in front of us. What could we do…?

“Assistant, shh.” Siesta put a finger to her lips.

Straining my ears, I heard faint footsteps. I turned around warily to see a row of men in dark suits.

“The Men in Black, huh…?”

There was probably a system in place that made sure they’d come running automatically if something happened to Stephen. Bruno had had a similar sort of insurance.

“I guess we’ll just have to leave him to these guys.”

“Yes. They must have an agreed-upon place to take him at a time like this.”

I stood up, and Siesta quickly followed suit.

However, just before we left the exam room, she gazed at the top of the messy desk for a few seconds. Among the papers was a sketch that looked like the plan for a city.

“Siesta?”

“It’s nothing. Let’s go.”

She gave a slight shake of the head, and we left the room with heavy footsteps.

After leaving the clinic, Siesta and I returned to the hotel where we’d spent the night and settled down in the practically empty lounge to discuss the incident.

“…How could we ever have imagined something like that would happen?” Sinking deep into the chair, I let my head hang back and gazed up at the ceiling.

Would Stephen be all right? Was there anyone out there who could treat him in the first place? If I was remembering right, Stephen had mechanized certain parts of his body. They probably hadn’t taken him to a regular hospital.

“Siesta, what do you think of this incident?”

Who had attacked Stephen? What had led to him almost getting killed?

“There are no security cameras, so all we can do is figure this out through deduction,” Siesta said, thinking back to the scene we’d just left. “It rained last night. There were many different footprints at the crime scene, but it should be easy to identify the ones that belonged to visitors from yesterday evening.”

“So you think the crime happened last night? That would mean the Men in Black got there awfully late.”

Stephen must have made arrangements that let him contact the Men in Black immediately if his life was threatened. Yet Siesta and I had arrived before they did.

“That does seem odd, yes. In terms of possible causes, the Men in Black could have been dealing with a problem of their own.”

“It’s hard to think that would be a coincidence. What’s your profile of the criminal?”

“The clinic’s front entrance was violently destroyed, so the criminal mustn’t be someone he knew. Ordinarily, I’d suspect a robbery…but I really can’t imagine your average thief getting the better of Stephen.”

“Meaning…the criminal was skilled enough to fight a Tuner on equal terms or better. And you think killing Stephen was the true objective?”

What the heck was going on? In the half day that had passed since we’d left the clinic yesterday and returned this morning, someone had almost killed Stephen…

“Assistant, phone.”

It was only once Siesta said something that I noticed my smartphone on the table was ringing. Frankly, given the circumstances, I didn’t really feel like picking it up.

“It’s probably a girl.”

“Just who do you take me for?”

There was nothing else for it, so I picked up the phone. When I saw the name on the screen, I immediately hit the button to answer it. “Noel?”

Not because the caller was a cute girl. We’d asked Noel to connect with the government officials, and we’d been waiting to hear back from her for a long time now.

“I’m sorry to be so late in contacting you,” Noel apologized on the other end of the line. I heard her take a small breath. “And I have another apology to make. I’m actually calling about a separate matter. It’s an emergency.”

Her tone made it all too clear that it was bad news. I switched the phone to speaker mode and let Siesta listen in.

“Youkaki the Revolutionary and Full-Face the Hero were attacked last night.”

Siesta and I exchanged a look.

We didn’t need to say anything to each other. We knew it was the worst-case scenario.

“What’s their condition?”

“…Critical. That’s all they said.”

Meaning there was no telling whether they would recover. Just like Stephen.

“I see. Have you already been filled in on the situation over here?”

“Yes, just now. This means that someone has attempted to kill three Tuners.”

A “Tuner hunt” involving multiple simultaneous attacks. In formulating our deduction, we’d assumed that the culprit had been focused on killing Stephen, but this changed everything. We had to think of why all three of them would be targeted.

“In terms of what the victims have in common, the first thing that comes to mind is…they all defied the Federation Government.”

In that case, Fuubi Kase the Assassin would also fit the profile.

Some of the Men in Black would, too.

“Assistant. Be that as it may, it would be premature to assume the enemy is with the Federation Government.”

“Yeah, I know. And that doesn’t answer who specifically did it, either. Does the Federation Government really have assassins who can pressure three Tuners like this?”

“About that, Mr. Kimihiko…,” Noel cut in through the phone speaker. “There is actually a rumor that the Federation Government hires retired Tuners as guards. I may be a dignitary, but I’m only a figurehead, so I don’t know the details.”

…Ah. Tuners who’d remained heroes, without dying in the line of duty or becoming enemies of the world. If we were up against people like that…

“We can’t afford to let our guard down,” Siesta said, echoing my thoughts.

“Right. Let’s contact Mia and the others next.”

Any one of them could become the next target at any time.

For a little while, none of us spoke.

“Moving on, I do have a report about that other matter,” Noel said, changing the subject. That “other matter” was probably the meeting with the Federation Government dignitaries we’d originally asked her to set up.

“In truth, I myself haven’t seen the other officials since the Ritual of Sacred Return. I’m not certain, but I believe all the higher-ups may be in the Mizoev Federation. It was long said to be a fictional nation, but I’ve heard that recently they’ve been rapidly developing it.”

“…Hold up. A ‘fictional nation’? What’s this about?”

I’d suddenly been hit with a phrase that I felt I couldn’t afford to let slide.

“Assistant, the conversation won’t get anywhere if you focus on that, so let’s circle back to it.”

“So I’m the only one getting left behind again?”

That was weird. And just when this sort of thing had been happening less lately…

“Noel, could we go to the Mizoev Federation? From what I’ve heard, it isn’t possible to enter the country unless you’re very well-connected.”

“…I’ll try. Actually, I heard that a passenger ship passed through the waters near there just the other day. I don’t know whether it called in at port or not, but it may be worthwhile for us to file a petition. We could give investigating these incidents as our reason.”

“Right. If they reject it, the Federation Government will practically be telling us they’ve got something to hide.”

This was a threat of sorts. There was a good possibility these were seasoned professionals we were going up against, but they probably couldn’t afford to care about keeping up appearances at this point.

“We’re causing trouble for you, too, Noel. Sorry about that.”

“…No. I really can’t do much at all.” Noel’s voice grew quieter. “Not compared to Grandfather.”

“I seriously doubt Bruno wanted his precious granddaughter overworking herself to catch up to him in a single leap.” I wasn’t trying to cheer Noelle up, just telling her about the Bruno Belmondo I’d known. “I’m sure he would’ve told you that what you try to learn from now on is more important than what you already know. It’s your will that matters most.”

On the other end of the line, there was a brief pause, as if Noel had swallowed a lump in her throat.

Cinderella, who wishes the night would never end

After that, Siesta really did leave me and go off somewhere by herself.

That was how we’d always been, though. Putting a positive spin on it, it was proof that we trusted each other. While Siesta was away, I did the jobs that fell upon me to carry out. First and foremost, I had to let the people around me know about the Tuner hunt.

I managed to get in touch with Mia, Rill, and Saikawa straight away. Mia’s powers as the Oracle still hadn’t returned, and she felt guilty that she hadn’t managed to predict this crisis, while Rill apologized for not being able to help, having essentially retired as the Magical Girl. At this point, Saikawa had put some distance between herself and underworld situations like this and was focused on her work as an idol. None of them were directly opposing the Federation Government, and I didn’t want to think they’d be in danger after everything that had happened.

Still, Mia and Rill offered to help in any way they could, and Saikawa confidently declared that she’d protect our ordinary days so we could return to them at any time. She also delivered a message from Noches, who was currently working as a maid at the Saikawa residence. For some reason, Noches gave me the harshest scolding of anyone, saying that she wouldn’t forgive me if I lost while holding a detective’s hand in each of mine.

My calls went pretty much like that with all our companions, and I hashed out our plan of action with Noel while waiting for Siesta to come back.

About half a day later, Siesta contacted me to say she’d finished her errand. I told her I was in the bar of our hotel, then had some low-alcohol drinks at the counter while I waited for her.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.”

When the detective arrived, she was all dressed up. She was wearing a dress that showed off a little skin, along with earrings and a necklace, which she never usually wore. Her hair also seemed floatier and bouncier than normal, and her makeup was more sharply defined, making her look more like a woman than a young girl.

Asking her why she looked like that seemed a bit tactless, so instead, I asked who she’d been to see.

“Drachma,” Siesta said offhandedly, taking a seat beside me. “I thought I’d ask him to perform Stephen’s surgery. I didn’t even have to go meet him, actually; he was already on his way here.”

Ah. So Drachma had also been contacted, not just the Men in Black. I’d heard that he’d been working under Stephen, and apparently, that hadn’t changed.

“It sounds like it’s going to be a long operation.”

“So only a back-alley doctor could save another back-alley doctor?”

Drachma had originally been a scientist working as a researcher for SPES. I had mixed feelings about him, but some lives only he could save.

“…Still, why’d you have to get all dressed up to go see Drachma?”

Considering the sort of things the guy had done to Siesta and Nagisa in the lab a long time ago, Siesta couldn’t have been eager to see him.

“That’s exactly why I did it.” Siesta gave a faint smile. “To say, ‘I didn’t lose to you. I’ve grown up and look how beautiful I am now.’ I wanted to pick a fight with…not Drachma, really, but something much bigger than him. Maybe that was childish of me.” Siesta laughed, her blue eyes turning my way.

“No, not at all,” I said, gazing at her face. “You are beautiful.”

If nothing else, I thought I should put that properly into words.

Siesta’s eyes widened as if I’d surprised her a little, then she smiled softly. “Maybe I’ll have something to drink, too.”

“Something nonalcoholic.”

“I know already. Geez.” She ordered a drink, sounding a little disgruntled.

“So we won’t know the truth about what happened unless Stephen wakes up,” I said, bringing the conversation back to the Tuner hunt. If the Revolutionary and the Hero were also unconscious, they wouldn’t be able to tell us what happened, either.

“Yes. What concerns me is the fact that Stephen was trying to tell us something the day before the attack. It might have had something to do with this.”

That’s right. As we were leaving, he’d said there was something he needed to tell us, as the former Inventor. Had someone done this to make sure he couldn’t…?

“There was a plan for a town on his desk this morning, wasn’t there?” Siesta asked, raising her glass to her lips.

“Actually, yeah, I did see something like that. What about it?”

“I don’t have a specific ‘what’ for you yet, but that town was floating in the ocean.”

“Well…maybe it’s an island rather than a town.”

“…I guess. That might be one way to put it. But…” Siesta sunk into her thoughts, gazing at the rim of her glass. Was something still nagging at her? The answer seemed to be slow in coming, though. She gave up and raised the glass to her lips.

“Noel sent word a little while ago. Apparently, we’re cleared to go to the Mizoev Federation.”

While we were on the subject, I had her explain what she’d meant calling it a “fictional nation.” …Honestly, it wasn’t easy to process. It was a fact of the world I’d had no idea about. That said, the timing couldn’t have been better. I’d get to see the truth for myself.

“Also, it sounds like that’s where Nagisa and Ookami are headed. It seems like the signal’s bad out there, though. They’re taking a while to respond.”

“Really? In that case, maybe Charlie’s there as well.”

“Yeah. We might be able to settle everything there, including this incident.”

Even the Great Cataclysm, which had been going on for over a year now. Finally.

I knocked back the rest of my drink in one gulp.

“You always warn me about my tolerance for alcohol, Kimi, but you’re not much better.”

“It just looks like that. Sure, my face gets red, but I don’t actually get drunk.”

“Oh, really? But sometimes when you drink too much, your eyes go all soft and dreamy, and you keep calling out my name.”

…Had that really happened? Probably. Actually, it happened kind of a lot. In that case, was I the one who most needed to be banned from drinking?

Smiling, Siesta sipped her virgin cocktail. Her pale throat worked as she swallowed, and I caught myself staring at it.

“You sure have grown up, huh?”

“So have you, Kimi.”

Almost seven years had passed since Siesta first offered me her hand, up above the clouds.

“Though I guess we’ve still only known each other a third of our lives.”

“So far, maybe.”

“So far?”

“Someday it may be half, then two-thirds, then almost all of it.”

My heart leaped. Maybe I really had had too much to drink. “Siesta,” I said, smiling wryly on the inside. “When this case…or rather, when this whole thing is settled, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

“That sounds like a huge death flag,” she retorted immediately.

We exchanged looks, then grinned.

“Just so I know, is it something important?”

“Probably important enough that I won’t be able to sleep the night before I bring it up.”

“I see,” Siesta said, tucking her hair behind her ear. She smiled, gazing at my face. “I look forward to it.”

The promised ark

“We finally meet, Federation Government.”

We’d eventually found the government dignitaries in a building that could have been described as an ice palace.

At the back of a large hall, a dozen officials were sitting in a row of chairs on a platform. One chair in the center, which looked like a throne, was empty.

“We have been waiting for you,” one of the masked dignitaries said.

Ice Doll. The government official we had the most history with.

“If you didn’t want to wait, you could have contacted us sooner,” Siesta said sarcastically, exhaling a white breath.

We’d continued to contact them through Noel and finally arrived today. It had taken us over an entire day by plane and ship to reach this fictional icy nation created by the Akashic records—the Mizoev Federation.

“I do regret that. We also have a lot on our plates at the moment, you see.”

“I don’t mean just recently.” Siesta narrowed her eyes, giving Ice Doll a piercing look. “I’ve been getting invitations to meet for seven years now.”

Ice Doll was silent. Tension rippled through the room.

“Siesta, what are you talking about?” I asked.

During the trip, we’d come up with a basic game plan for how we’d handle things here, but she’d never mentioned this.

“Hm? Oh, you don’t have to worry about it, Kimi.”

“Don’t just suddenly go off script, all right? I’ll start to panic.”

“You’ve got to be a little cooler and more flexible if you want to be the protagonist.”

We let off some steam with our usual banter, when—

“The stage has been set. You’re going to answer all our questions, aren’t you?” I asked Ice Doll. Or all the dignitaries, really.

We were inside, but it was still really cold. One step outside would put us in a world of ice. I’d been told there was a town in the opposite direction that made the place look a little more convincing as a fictional country, but this whole area was still just undeveloped plains of ice. I wanted to get down to business as soon as possible.

“It seems you two have also remembered everything,” Ice Doll said, speaking for the group as she usually did.

“Yeah. The fight with the Phantom Thief, what the Akashic records really are, and the day of the Great Cataclysm. But how much had you people already remembered?”

Had the Federation Government remembered everything before we had?

“We didn’t entirely escape the effects of the Akashic records’ forced reboot, either. However, we had a tool that allowed us to recover the bare minimum of our memories, so it was clear what we needed to do.”

A tool that recovered memories. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but it was probably something like the Sacred Relics we’d used. The White Tengu, the leader of Pandemonium, had told us that several tools like that lay dormant all across the world.

“Then you were aware that the world is in the process of being destroyed?”

“Yes. The world will end soon. Unfortunately, the destruction of the System shortened the lifespan of the Earth. The method chosen was Yggdrasil…which is rather ironic.” Ice Doll’s voice held no emotion.

“So it was our fault?”

Because we’d chosen to discard the Akashic records that day? In which case, it was my fault for surrendering the power of the Singularity to Abel before that.

“We have no intention of blaming you.” Unexpectedly, Ice Doll took our side. “In fact, had you not destroyed the System then, there is no doubt that Abel Arsene Schoenberg would have become the world’s administrator. Had he done so, the Earth might have met its end even sooner.”

Something about that explanation felt unnatural to me. That said, it made sense logically and even made me feel a little less guilty.

Was that really the sort of thing Ice Doll would say, though? On the day of the Great Cataclysm, she’d pointed out the danger in the choice I was making. So why was she accepting the fact that the world had plunged into a crisis now?

“You have some sort of insurance, don’t you?”

In other words, the Federation Government had already come up with a way to get through this disaster. That was why they were so composed. Having managed to hold on to some of their memories after the world’s reboot, there was no way they’d spend a year just sitting around.

“An ark,” Siesta murmured. “Saddened by how many wicked people there were in the world, one day, God decided to send a great flood and destroy the human race. However, gambling on the faint hope that there were also humans with justice in their hearts in the world, he had a handful of people and animals board a ship.”

It was an old story everyone had heard at least once.

The ship had been named after the person who built it: Noah’s Ark. The people and animals who’d been lucky enough to board it survived the great flood that lasted for forty days and became the progenitors of a new world.

“Ice Doll. You’re all trying to make that myth a reality here and now, aren’t you? So that you alone can escape the disaster.”

Why had the Federation Government done nothing when they knew the world was bound for destruction? Why did it look as though they were doing nothing now? Because they—or maybe the people they’d hand-picked—were planning to escape this Great Cataclysm by themselves. They must have used this blank, seemingly peaceful year to prepare. That was the conclusion Siesta had reached.

“But someone who might have gotten in the way of your plan appeared: the Information Broker, Bruno Belmondo. Even in the world after the reboot, he kept pursuing the truth. You used the Ritual of Sacred Return to smoke out him and other people who might have been a threat, right?”

The government had wanted to make the Tuners retire at that ceremony, which had been held in celebration of world peace. They’d wanted them to completely discard the powers bestowed upon them by their wills so they wouldn’t get in the way of their plan. They’d known the world’s destruction was already inevitable.

“…………”

It wasn’t just Ice Doll; all the dignitaries had gone silent. However, at this point, silence was as good as an admission.

“Where’s Charlie?”

If that was how things stood, there was no way the Federation Government hadn’t been involved in Charlie’s disappearance as well.

“Charlotte Arisaka Anderson’s father is a Federation Government official. He has the right to put his blood relatives on the Ark.”

Ice Doll had finally used that word: Ark. The idea was exactly as Siesta had said. However, there was a reason the detective had come up with that deduction in the first place.

“I see. So Charlie’s here,” Siesta said, pointing at the floor. “In the giant Ark known as the Mizoev Federation.”

The Mizoev Federation—this country we were standing on, a section of the continent of ice—was itself an enormous oceangoing ark.

“Stephen left something behind by chance. A blueprint for part of this country.”

At a glance, it had looked like the sketch of a town, with parks and theaters and blocks of apartment buildings. However, the fact that the town was floating on the ocean had bothered Siesta. Some of the buildings in town had looked like towers, which the detective had thought looked like the masts of a ship.

Why had Stephen had that blueprint? Had he been involved somehow as the Inventor? Either way, we’d gotten the message.

“We’re on Noah’s Ark right now.”

A brief silence fell.

“Yes, that’s right.”

The detective’s deduction had been correct.

“We members of the Federation Government and leading figures of the public political world; titans of industry, aristocrats, those from special bloodlines—we’re taking our time and selecting those who will be passengers.”

“…Aristocrats. Is the Lupwise family on that list?”

That was why Noel de Lupwise had been given a nominal position as a government dignitary.

“We must select the seeds and determine who will live on in the world after it collapses.”

I knew it. Their goal wasn’t to stop the Great Cataclysm—but to escape it. They had no intention of saving the world.

“Is that why you tried to kill Stephen?”

And the Revolutionary, and the Hero? Because they’d come close to revealing this plan?

“No. We had nothing to do with that matter.”

“Liar,” I said, drawing my gun. I’d ended up doing that just a little ahead of schedule, but it was probably fine. “You people have more than enough of a motive to kill Stephen.”

What were they trying to pull by pretending they didn’t know about the Tuner hunt, after confessing about this joke of an Ark project and Charlotte’s kidnapping?

“Wait, Assistant.” Unexpectedly, Siesta put a hand out in front of me. “That’s the one incident I’m not completely sure about yet.”

“You’re kidding me. Look, I already pulled my gun. I can’t back down now.”

“That’s not my problem. Think about it, though: If the Federation Government had really been behind that attack, don’t you think they would have retrieved the blueprint Stephen left on his desk after attacking him?”

That…was a good point, actually. So we couldn’t conclusively say the Federation Government had been involved in the Tuner hunt?

“Besides, there’s another thing I don’t understand.” Siesta grimaced slightly. “Say you do board this Ark of yours. Will you really be able to escape the destruction of the Great Cataclysm? Where is this ship bound for?”

They hadn’t just randomly decided to choose that name based on the myth. What grounds did they have for believing that this gigantic Mizoev Federation ship could escape the end of the Earth’s lifespan and Yggdrasil’s invasion?

“If you wish to know that, you’ll have to agree to our proposal first.” Finally, Ice Doll revealed why they’d allowed this meeting. “If you swear obedience to us, we’ll officially invite you aboard the Ark as well.”

Several images were projected onto the walls of the great hall, and I saw some familiar faces.

“Mia, Rill…!”

“Yui and Noches are there, too…”

Siesta and I stared at the images. They were back in their respective hometowns, and a masked dignitary stood in front of each pair of girls, barring their path. I was pretty sure I’d seen those two officials before. Their code names were Doberman and Odin.

“…! Is this a threat?”

“If you accept our terms, we’ll save them as well.”

Ordinarily, this would have been a chance we couldn’t even dream of. The world was doomed, but if I didn’t resist and went quietly, I’d be given a place on the ship created by God. Not only that, but I could also bring my friends. I might never get an amazing deal like this again. —And yet.

“Sorry, but I can’t agree to that.”

Siesta pointed her musket straight up and fired at the ceiling. It was a shot that shook me out of my sweet dreams.

“After all, it’s my job to save the world.”

That was what she’d vowed on that salt plain.

The girl or the world? In order to ensure that the choice I’d made ended up being the right one, the girl was choosing to save the whole world, not just her friends.

“We’re not giving up on the planet.”

Siesta took off running, holding her gun in both hands.

There was no way defenseless Federation Government dignitaries could beat the Ace Detective. In the blink of an eye, Siesta was right in front of Ice Doll.

“—Take care of this for us, Enforcer.”

There was a harsh metallic clang. Siesta had swung her musket, and it had been deflected by a huge sickle. The man wielding the sickle wore a dark suit and had his hair combed back.

“Ookami.”

The Enforcer Ookami, former detective’s assistant and current member of the Security Police, was blocking Siesta’s path. So this was why we hadn’t been able to contact him?

“They’ve taken Nagisa hostage, then?”

“……Forgive me.”

Ookami’s face twisted. It was clear that he was being forced to fight.

“What do we do, Siesta?” I asked the detective, who’d fallen back to join me. “Do we fight Ookami or go save Charlie and Nagisa?”

“Why don’t we split up? Which do you want to be in charge of?”

“Personally, I’m pretty pissed off at Ookami. Thrash him good for me.”

“Oh, I’m the one doing the thrashing? …Well, all right then.” Siesta smiled.

I turned my back to Ookami, leaving Siesta to deal with him.

“I’ll be back soon.”

“By the time you’re back, Kimi, it’ll all be over.”

Heroes exist to save the world

After leaving Siesta, I started searching the palace on my own.

I ran down long corridors, checking every room…but a lot of them were locked, so I didn’t feel like I was managing to do a very thorough search.

“…Nagisa, Charlie.”

Where were they? Were they locked up somewhere? I ran up one set of stairs after the next, and when I finally opened a door at the end of them, I found myself on a connecting passageway that led to the neighboring building.

“……! Brrr!”

It wasn’t really a covered walkway, though, so much as an actual bridge.

The bridge ran straight across to the next building, a few dozen meters away. It was night, and snow was falling quietly, piling into drifts. Visibility wasn’t great, but I had to cross. I started across the bridge, using my smartphone to illuminate the ground at my feet.

After a little while, I heard heavy, creaking footsteps from the other end of the bridge and looked up. A figure stood a few meters ahead of me. It was a masked man in a white robe—a Federation Government dignitary.

“Who are you?”

There was no real point asking for his code name, but I’d done it on reflex anyway. Maybe I’d had some sort of vague premonition.

“You can call me Lot.”

I’d heard that name once a while back. He was the government official who’d directed Charlie to the control tower where the Akashic records had slept. Putting that with what Ice Doll had said earlier, I managed to connect the dots.

“You’re Charlie’s father?”

The official stripped off his mask and tossed it aside. Emerald eyes gleamed in the darkness. There was no mistake: This was the missing soldier Charlotte Arisaka Anderson had been searching for.

“Could you move, please? I’m here to save your daughter.”

Lot narrowed his deep-set eyes, as if he were sizing me up, then finally spoke in a low voice. “That won’t be necessary. You don’t have to do anything for her to be saved. She’ll be on the Ark.”

So that really is where he stands on the matter, huh? Just as Ice Doll had said, Lot was trying to keep his daughter Charlie from being caught up in the Great Cataclysm.

“And what does Charlie say about that?”

“That she’ll board the Ark, of course. That’s why she severed all contact with you.”

“Yeah, that’s a lie.” I leveled my gun at him. “She’ll just save herself? That’s the sort of spoiled dream she hates the most.”

Charlotte Arisaka Anderson kept fighting in search of the light that shone on the other side of suffering. I knew that’s who she was as an agent.

“Try it,” the man said. “Go ahead and shoot.”

For a moment, it felt like Lot’s eyes had glowed with a black light.

Then a gunshot rang out—and I realized I’d pulled the trigger. I hadn’t meant to. Lot’s murderous hostility had gotten to me, and my body had moved on its own.

However—and I probably should’ve expected it—the bullet didn’t hit him. It was a narrow bridge, so Lot couldn’t retreat, but he’d still managed to evade the sudden gunshot with the least amount of effort required.

“I’m her father. I know her best.”

“You’re telling me not to put words in your daughter’s mouth? Frankly, I’d rather not be doing this, either.”

Charlie and I got along terribly. All we did when we were together was cuss each other out. I’d never imagined I’d pick up on what someone like that really wanted and use it as ammunition against her blood relative.

“Still, this is a good opportunity,” I said. “I want to hear your thoughts on the matter.”

This man had neglected all his family’s problems. He hadn’t done a thing to help Kozue Arisaka. Had Lot been watching Charlotte overcome that all by herself?

“What do you think your daughter…what children are?”

I gripped my gun tighter remembering the familiar face of a guy I missed, who’d once protected children even when it meant risking his own life. I knew I couldn’t get through to him. Even so, I kept my weapon trained on Lot, putting all the hostility I could manage into the gesture.

“I see. I suppose you wouldn’t know, since you have no family.”

My finger squeezed a couple of millimeters in on the trigger.

“Your life must have been filled with hardship. Though that’s just the fate of people like us.” Unexpectedly, Lot lowered his voice as if he genuinely sympathized with me. “Those like the Tuners and the Singularity, people involved with the core of the world, are born burdened by karma.”

“Karma?”

“Yes. People who bear special roles like those are born cut off from ties and fate. Either that, or when they decide to become heroes later on, the ties they originally possessed are severed.”

What was he saying? But Lot went on before I could ask.

“Haven’t you ever thought it was unusual? You’ve been alone in the world since birth, yet strangely enough, you’re now surrounded by heroes whose circumstances are similar.”

Those words brought to mind a number of faces:

Two detectives who’d been raised in an orphanage. A girl whose parents had died before she became the Oracle. An assassin whose father had fallen in the line of duty. A vampire whose tribe had been eradicated. An information broker who’d lived more than a hundred years but had no relatives. A magical girl who’d lost a friend that was closer to her than family…

“It’s no coincidence.”

It was snowing harder now, and I felt frozen all the way through.

Lot went on. “People whose mission is to save the world are fated to lose anything that might weigh them down, to prevent them from misreading the balance of the scales. To keep them from trying to save the wrong thing.”

“……! You’re saying that Tuners are fated to lose everything else, so they’ll save the world?”

“The same is true of those who are only candidates to become heroes. Those men and women are cut loose from any related fate, so that they’ll be able to offer themselves up for the sake of the world at any time. All of this is preordained by the System.”

—No way. Was that why Saikawa had lost her parents, too? Why Charlie’s little brother had died? Had it all been due to that oppressive force protecting the world? Because heroes had to continue to choose the world instead of their neighbor?

“I grew tired of that world,” Lot said, his face contorting with what looked like loneliness.

“I see. So you’re…”

Was he trying to choose his neighbor instead of the world?

Had Lot discarded his mission as a hero to try to put his daughter on the Ark, even if that meant 99 percent of the world’s population would be killed? Was he just trying to protect his family?

“Singularity, no doubt you understand. You chose the detective instead of the world.”

Yeah, he was right. Like him, I’d chosen my neighbor. I’d ended up picking the girl.

I’d given up the Singularity’s true role to save both detectives. I had no right to tell Lot he was wrong.

The snow silently continued to fall.

We didn’t have a reason to fight each other. I’d already lowered my gun. Now Lot was just quietly waiting for me to retreat of my own accord.

“That’s exactly why I entrusted it to her.”

The words had left my lips before I realized, and Lot gave me a confused look.

“I didn’t choose the world. I saved the detectives, then begged them for help instead. I told them I wanted them to help me save the world and entrusted them with my will.”

When people’s lives end, they entrust their last will to others. But in reality, there’s more to it than that. When you lose your way, when you can’t choose the option you know you should, when a hopeless fate leaves you feeling drained—at times like that, we don’t entrust our “last will” to others, but our will.

“Lot, isn’t that what you did, too?”

Over a year ago now, it was Lot who’d shown Charlie the way to the control tower where the Akashic records slept. The rest of the Federation Government dignitaries hadn’t wanted to touch that Pandora’s box, but Lot had pointed his daughter toward it.

“Even you wanted someone to walk the path you weren’t able to choose, didn’t you?”

Hadn’t he wanted to seek his ideals, to struggle, to find new possibilities through suffering? Hadn’t he tried to entrust that complicated, messy wish to his daughter?

“You were more aware of Charlotte’s strength than anybody else.”

That was why he’d left it in her hands. Just as I’d left my wish to Siesta.

When something precious slipped from my limited grasp, I’d have the person who was walking beside me pick it up. Even if I couldn’t call it beautiful, I had a will that would continue unbroken.

“I’m pretty sure that’s the only way we can live.”

The cold snow had soaked through to my back. There was a long silence. This freezing cold, at least, was something we had no choice but to accept.

“You’re right,” Lot said finally. “It was like that.”

He’d phrased that in the past tense. Lot had reached the same conclusion I had once—and now he regretted it. In which case, there was only one thing he’d do next.

“……!”

Suddenly, the sound of an explosion echoed from below and the ground shook violently beneath me.

There was a second explosion, then a third, and the bridge began to break apart. It was a trap to get rid of anyone who was in the way, not just the Singularity.

It had to be more than thirty meters from here to the ground. If I fell, I wouldn’t have a chance. That was true of Lot, too, though. In an ordinary fight, he would have been able to kill me instantly, but he’d chosen to do it this way. Which meant—

“You’re prepared to go down with me?”

He didn’t think he was right, so he was taking responsibility for it. He’d throw himself into the void and leave the rest to fate.

“Dammit…!”

I felt a strange, floating sensation, as if my insides were weightless—then the stone under my feet crumbled away, and I was suddenly in free fall.

“Grab on!”

Someone had yelled out to me. It was dark, and the figure approached rapidly before I could make it out clearly. As I fell, I managed to reach out toward it—

“Hgeh!”

I slammed into the figure face-first, letting out a weird cry. An arm closed around me, and our bodies swung precariously. It was like a bungee jump or a slingshot ride at an amusement park. I clung to the figure as the wind kept whipping around us.

“Hey, how long are you going to stay like that?” a voice whispered in my ear when the motion finally slowed. I couldn’t see. That wasn’t because it was dark, though, but because my face was pressed up against somebody’s torso.

“Sorry,” I apologized. Slowly raising my head, I found myself looking at Charlotte Arisaka Anderson, who gave a disgruntled sigh. She was holding on to a sturdy wire, apparently having caught me in midair like a trapeze artist.

“You’re okay…!”

“You totally failed to come rescue me, so I came to rescue you instead,” Charlie said with a grin. Her face was red; she’d probably caught a cold with how freezing it was.

Even so, I had been sure the agent had kept on fighting. Desperately fighting against idyllic dreams as she waited for the detective and I to show up.

“…Sorry I was late.”

“Never mind that—just hold on tight.” Operating the machine she’d used to shoot the wire, Charlie pulled us up. Since the bridge had collapsed, it would have been dangerous to go down.

“I didn’t tell you to hold on that tightly.”

“I’m scared of heights.”

Since, you know, I had no choice, I put my cheek next to Charlie’s, leaning into her. “What happened to Lot?”

Debris from the collapsed bridge lay below us. However, when I strained my eyes, I saw a big flower blooming among the rubble. The vague outline of a white figure lay in its center, as if protected by the petals.

“Apparently, Yggdrasil is fostering life even here, in this icy land.”

…Oh. So that’s what had saved Lot? But would Yggdrasil really protect him at such a convenient time?

The sanctuary ten billion light-years away

“After all that, I guess I basically just did a U-turn.” I laughed to myself as I ran down the long stairway.

There hadn’t been anything I could do there. My attempt at persuading Lot hadn’t worked. Saying “I knew it wouldn’t all along” seemed like taking the easy way out, but in the end, I’d had no choice but to entrust the situation to Charlie’s will—and maybe her stubbornness.

However, if worse came to worst, Nagisa was there, too. The most important thing to do right now was tell Siesta and Ookami about this. They thought Nagisa was being held hostage, but she wasn’t, so Ookami didn’t need to listen to Ice Doll and fight anymore.

“Well, Ookami probably knew that all along.”

Under the watchful eyes of the dignitaries, he likely hadn’t had any other choice. In that case, he and Siesta likely weren’t genuinely trying to kill each other.

“We’ve bought enough time.”

All that was left was the government officials. If we couldn’t talk them around, we’d have to use force. No matter what their reasons were, we couldn’t just let them flee on the Ark by themselves. We couldn’t let them abandon the world.

And anyway, how were they planning to escape the Great Cataclysm on the Ark? Would this country really be safe when nowhere else was? We had to find out how that was supposed to work. With Ookami and Siesta’s powers, we should be able to make that happen.

Once I’d run to the end of the long corridor, I was finally back to where I’d started. I planted my hands on my knees for a few seconds, catching my breath, then pushed open the large, heavy door.

“__________________Ah!”

It couldn’t really be called a cry of surprise, just my voice catching in my throat.

Siesta was standing on the platform at the back sof the great hall with a sword thrust through her stomach. As I watched, the sword was pulled out, and she slowly toppled over backward.

“Siesta…!”

I hadn’t made it in time. Siesta’s limp body tumbled down the stairs, spattering blood as it went.

I desperately moved my feet, trying not to trip as I started to sprint toward her. But just then, a figure—the same person who’d run Siesta through—leaped lightly down from the platform and blocked my path.

“Did you really think that all I did was give orders from my throne, never standing on the front line?”

It was Ice Doll.

She planted her blue, icelike sword in the floor, wordlessly forbidding me from going any closer.

There were no other dignitaries there. It was just me, Ice Doll, and the fallen Siesta. When I strained my eyes, I saw one other figure: a man lying face down on the platform, covered in blood.

“Ookami, too…”

…Come to think of it, Noel had said something the other day. She’d mentioned a rumor that the Federation Government employed retired Tuners as guards. However, from the look of this situation, guards hadn’t had anything to do with this. It had been Ice Doll herself.

“I don’t intend to harm you.” I’d involuntarily braced myself for a fight, but the icy official spoke to me in the same tone she always used. “The System may not function as well as it used to, but the Singularity is still special. I can’t kill you.”

“…That’s rich. Another dignitary just tried to blow me up.”

“And yet you survived. In the end, that is the nature of the Singularity.”

“You’re saying you’re not going to kill me because you can’t anyway?”

“I told you so quite a long time ago: I am a moderate, and I have always been in favor of keeping you alive.”

The Singularity. Ice Doll was calling me by the name of my role.

“Board the Ark, please. That is my reason for keeping you alive.”

“I don’t get it. You can’t possibly need a potential threat like me around.”

That was what Lot had thought, at least. That was why he’d tried to kill me: to ensure the Ark was complete.

“Yes. Until the Ark is finished, that’s quite true. After that, however, the day will come when we need your strength. Let me begin by giving you a proper explanation.”

Then Ice Doll answered the question that had been nagging at me all this time.

“After boarding this ship, we will make for Another Eden.”

That was a name I hadn’t heard in a while. The first time had been from Bruno, right before the Ritual of Sacred Return. The “unexplored sanctuary.” People called it an undiscovered nation or continent, an unobserved satellite, and a sanctuary that even the Federation Government couldn’t touch.

“So where is this sanctuary of yours?”

Was it a place you couldn’t get to without using a cheat, like the control tower that housed the Akashic records?

“The System that would stop me no longer exists. I’ll tell you a secret.” And with that, Ice Doll revealed the final secret of the world.

“Another Eden is a second Earth, entirely separate from this one.”

I almost let out a laugh that was somewhere between surprise and exasperation. But there was no way Ice Doll would be spouting nonsense at a time like this.

“A ‘second Earth’ isn’t entirely accurate. Let us say it is one of countless parallel Earths.”

Ice Doll continued her explanation. She said that the world we lived in was only one Earth in a multiverse. Some of the other Earths had histories that were almost identical to ours, while others had developed entirely different civilizations.

However, the one thing all the worlds had in common was that Earth was managed by a “brain” in the form of the Akashic records. When the literal System of the world collapsed, that Earth came to an end. In that multitude of universes, this was the equivalent of losing the battle for survival. As a failed example, it fell victim to disasters and became cosmic dust.

The way Ice Doll put it was in more scientific, geological, and astronomical terms. It would have been simple to say she was lying and dismiss it out of hand—which also would’ve been a lot easier on me. However, this icy figure was holding a sword right now because it wasn’t a lie. And she’d cut down Siesta. It wasn’t the sort of argument I could deny based on sentimentality.

“…Is this the other secret Abel mentioned all that time ago?”

He’d told us that the world held another big secret in addition to the Akashic records. In the end, we’d never managed to find it.

“As such,” Ice Doll said, coming full circle, “we will board the Ark and depart for Another Eden.”

That was the only way people living on this planet could escape disaster.

“Specifically, though, how are you planning to get there?” I asked. They couldn’t possibly intend to fly the whole continent there like a giant spaceship.

“The basic concept is similar to the ‘door’ you yourself have used, but there’s no need to get into all the details right now.”

“One more question, then. Wouldn’t it be possible for the whole planet…or rather, the whole human race, to jump worlds? Why do you need to base this on a myth and select certain bloodlines?”

“Moving the Ark will consume all the energy that remains in the System. It isn’t nearly enough to manipulate the programs of eight billion humans. —Besides, the world for which this ship is bound has different civilizations. That will make us an invasive species. No doubt you understand what that means.”

“…A battle for survival, huh?”

Even if we got through the disaster and found another planet, we’d only be borrowing space there. We were bound to start a war if we tried to control it. In order to avoid that, we’d have to know our place in the world. That was why they were selecting certain people to save—and culling their comrades with their own hands. So they would be able to live in secret, huddled together in a corner of the new world.

“That is why we need you. Not the Ace Detective, whose very premise is to die in the line of duty, but you, the Singularity.”

I involuntarily reached for the gun at my hip.

“On this new planet, we want to avoid conflict with the original inhabitants as much as we can. In the event that it becomes inevitable, the Singularity will be our weapon. You can be used as a negotiation tactic. After all, you are a weapon that can be detonated at any time, under any conditions.”

“…So basically, you’re telling me to be a human sacrifice?”

Was that why Ice Doll had kept the Singularity alive all this time? So they could use me as a shield for the human race when they ventured to Another Eden?

“Do I have a choice?”

“No. If you refuse, the number of companions to join you onboard the Ark will dwindle by the day.”

That was by no means an empty threat.

She wouldn’t just take out Siesta; Nagisa or Charlie would be next. She could also dispatch other government officials, though, so maybe it would be Saikawa, Noches, Mia, or Rill.

“Now, Singularity. Board the Ark to save our world.”

“To save…the world?”

“Yes. Your choice will create a future for this planet.”

…Oh. In other words, if the Earth was going to be destroyed whether I was on the Ark or not, then saving the world would mean helping to preserve the seeds of the human race. And if I was the only one who could carry out that role…

“It’s all right.”

At the sound of Ice Doll’s voice, I looked up.

“I promise you that we will inherit the last wills of those who are not selected.”

The moment I heard those words, I knew what my answer would be.

“I refuse. That’s not something the survivors can say.”

Only those who were entrusting their last wills to others could express a wish like that. If a person died and someone left behind claimed that they were inheriting their last will, that was just an empty excuse meant to pacify their survivor’s guilt. There was nothing survivors could do for the deceased.

That wasn’t just true of last wills but of living wills. We gave everything we had for the sake of our wishes, stoked our passions, and struggled frantically before finally entrusting all of that to someone else. It was only then that you had the right to pass it on. You couldn’t just inherit a will with words. If a person really existed who could do that, it would be someone whose mission was ensuring that wills—both living and dead—continued unbroken.

“Do you people have the resolution to back that up?”

However, that question applied to me, too. I didn’t know whether I was really qualified to entrust my will to others at this point. When I talked to Lot earlier, I’d made it sound as if it were already a fact, but maybe that was all the more reason to make sure of it now. I hadn’t chosen the world back then, so maybe I should ask the neighbor I’d entrusted my will to in my place.

“I swear. A position whose ‘very premise is to die in the line of duty’? That’s just rude.”

A familiar voice echoed through the great hall, and an instant later, a gunshot rang out. Ice Doll fell to her knees. The bullet had pierced her right leg.

“—How?” Although the dignitary didn’t turn around, she realized who her enemy was and was stunned.

“You want to know how? Isn’t it obvious? A wound like that would easily heal in five minutes,” I answered in her place.

The bloodstains that had covered the floor earlier weren’t there now; it was as if that blood had been absorbed back into her body. The girl standing on the platform was unscathed.

“After all, Siesta’s the Vampire.”

Which takes us back to over a year ago.

The unknown tale of the sleeping beauty

On the day of the Great Cataclysm, while Abel had been rampaging after hijacking the System, I’d spoken with Ice Doll in the abbey and gotten her approval to abandon the Akashic records. After that, I’d found Siesta asleep in a bed.

I’d taken the organ that housed Siesta’s will back from Abel, and now I needed to return it to her. To do that, I needed to shake free her memories as the Ace Detective—her will for justice.

However, Ice Doll had told me that only one Ace Detective could exist in the world at a time. That meant I had to choose whether to let Nagisa Natsunagi or Siesta live as the Ace Detective.

“Siesta. I—”

And this was my answer.

“Forgive me, Siesta. I’m making Nagisa the Ace Detective.”

Nagisa was fighting at this very moment, trapped inside one of Abel’s codes. What would happen to her if she lost the position of Ace Detective while that was going on? Tuner positions weren’t just empty titles; there was a good possibility that the title of Ace Detective and the powerful status it conferred were protecting Nagisa from the attacks of Abel’s code.

More than anything, Siesta wouldn’t forgive anyone for taking the title of Ace Detective away from Nagisa. She knew better than anyone that Nagisa wasn’t just a stand-in. That was why I’d decided, here and now, that Nagisa Natsunagi was the Ace Detective.

“But I won’t give up on you, either,” I murmured to the sleeping Siesta.

I couldn’t make her the Ace Detective again—but I could make her one of the Tuners of justice again. Say, for example…

“As the Vampire.”

That was my unauthorized plan that I hadn’t told Ice Doll about. If I’d sounded her out about it, she probably would have just given a contemptuous snort and told me the System would never allow it.

Yet it was Ice Doll who’d told me how the Tuners were chosen. The candidate had to have mastered the power of their will or performed heroic feats. In other words, they needed to be living a life that made them a suitable Tuner. She’d said the System made its decisions from that perspective.

Having heard that, I thought there might be a way to make Siesta a Tuner other than the Ace Detective. Siesta had been the Ace Detective for years and had a number of achievements under her belt, and even when evil had struck her down, her last will hadn’t died.

If she reawakened, Siesta was bound to keep saving people with a will that was stronger than anyone else’s. In which case, the System was bound to accept her as a Tuner again. That meant the only issue was whether she would be acknowledged as a different Tuner—and the aim was for her to become the Vampire, the only position that was currently empty.

During the Vampire Rebellion six months earlier, Scarlet and the rest of the vampire race had been annihilated. Since they posed a threat to the world’s stability, the Federation Government had wiped every last one of them from the face of the Earth…or so they’d thought.

But I knew differently. I knew of a girl who’d inherited the blood of Scarlet, the king of the vampires. In an attempt to eventually erase the boundary between vampires and humans, Scarlet had poured his blood into her, intending to make her his temporary bride. And that girl was…

“Siesta, I hope you forgive me.”

I apologized to the one girl who was qualified to become the Vampire.

“I’m sorry. I can’t wake you up as the detective.”

Besides, you might have lost your former personality and your memories when you wake up, just like Stephen warned us. You might not even remember me. It would be only natural for you to lash out and ask who’d listen to anything a guy like me says.

Still, I believed in her. Even if she wasn’t the Ace Detective anymore, no matter what she forgot or what position she found herself in, Siesta was the type of person who would always fight for justice.

“That’s why, please fight as a Tuner one more time.”

I bit my lip slightly, making it bleed.

“……!”

I honestly didn’t know if there was any meaning in doing this or if it was the right move.

The only thing I did know was that I had to give Siesta her will back, along with the invisible organ that housed it.

A long time ago, Scarlet had told me that as long as he had a bone, a single strand of hair, or even just some of their DNA, he could resurrect the dead with their strongest instinct intact. Simply put, a person’s will was constantly circulating through every cell of their body.

That being the case, I believed that at least a little of Siesta’s will would be mixed in with the blood I’d just shed. That had to be why Stephen had left everything to me.

“If you don’t want this, dodge it, all right? Cuss me out or hit me, but fight it somehow.”

As long as she woke up, I didn’t care how it happened.

“It’s about time you woke up, Siesta.”

Kneeling beside the bed, I gently kissed the sleeping beauty’s lips.

It felt like an eternity passed.

Either that or maybe our lips really did meet for that long. Siesta didn’t respond. I pulled back slightly, gazing down at her. The eyes in that pretty face remained closed.

“…I guess that wasn’t how you do it.”

A sense of helplessness and a little embarrassment made me look away. If that hadn’t worked, what was I supposed to do? I got to my feet and pitifully raked my fingers through my hair.

“Are you stupid, Kimi?”

I turned around even before my thoughts had time to catch up.

On the bed, the girl was gazing up at me, looking a little put out. Then, as if she couldn’t help it, she broke into a grin.

For the first time in a year and three months, Siesta was awake.

“……!”

I couldn’t find the words. I couldn’t even say her name.

I just ran to her and tightly wrapped my arms around her slim body. Siesta put her arms around me, too. Feeling her steady warmth, I asked one question after another.

“Do you know who you are?”

“Code name, Siesta.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“Boy K, who has a talent for getting dragged into trouble. Kimihiko Kimizuka.”

“Do you remember what I am to you?”

“You’re my most precious—my beloved partner.”

Siesta remembered everything.

Was it because she’d safely retaken the organ that housed her will? Or because Nagisa and I and everybody else had talked to her the whole time she was asleep? Had all the cells in her body remembered, even if her heart had been replaced?

The heroic legend that slumbers in emptiness

Back in the present.

“So the Siesta that’s here right now is the Vampire.”

Having used her vampiric powers of regeneration to stop the bleeding, Siesta leaped down lightly from the platform.

“…So you purposely didn’t restore that history?” Ice Doll was still kneeling, her leg shot. There was an uncharacteristic note of irritation in her voice.

I’d retaken the records of the Great Cataclysm a little while ago, but there was a part of them that I hadn’t told anyone about: how Siesta had awakened. By keeping quiet, I’d intentionally created an empty record. I’d hidden the fact that Siesta was a vampire, setting up a single-use cheat.

“Yeah. In order to someday pull one over on ignorant politicians who thought they knew everything.”

The Federation Government dignitaries had lost their memories in the reboot as well. They’d had no way to know that, on that day, Siesta had awoken as the Vampire.

“Naturally, I noticed, seeing as it’s my body.” Siesta slowly walked over to Ice Doll. “However, I understood that my assistant was hiding it. I realized there must be a reason he couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t speak a single word about it or write it down, because the moment I did, that empty record would be restored and you people would know about it as well.”

Right. That meant the only other person who could have picked up on it had been Abel. He might’ve known, having seen that winged goddess—no, vampire form during that during the final battle.

“It looks like the tables have turned.”

Standing in front of Ice Doll, Siesta trained her musket on the other woman.

“So you’re standing in our way again, Vampire?”

Ice Doll sounded stunned. She was probably remembering a certain white demon.

Meanwhile, I’d run to the platform, where Ookami had fallen. He had a number of deep gashes in his body, which probably hadn’t come from his fight with Siesta, but from Ice Doll.

“Are you okay?!” I gently checked his breathing and his pulse, taking care not to jostle him. While I was looking him over, Ookami let out a quiet groan. He was conscious. Shortly after, he slowly opened his eyes.

“…I’d thought I’d trained enough, but…”

When he realized that I was the one there, the corners of his lips turned up in his usual smile.

“Don’t worry; Nagisa’s safe.”

“So I did buy enough time…”

Yes, he’d done enough. As I was starting to perform first aid, Ookami stopped me. “I won’t die. I also…have a mission. I won’t die in a place like this. What’s more important”—his gaze shifted—“is that you protect the detective.”

While I’d been checking on Ookami, Ice Doll had risen to her feet and drawn a blue sword that gleamed like ice.

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

It was already a battlefield over there. From the way Ice Doll moved, you’d never have known she’d been shot in the leg. She lunged at Siesta like the wind; a small, silver, cube-shaped object floated above her head.

“Did she extract a piece of the System?”

Her leg was bleeding; we’d definitely hurt her. The way she still managed to get back up and fight reminded me of the former Magical Girl. So Ice Doll really was…

“…It’s safe to assume she’s a former Tuner. It looks as if she’s planning to convert what little power remains in the System into will and use it up.”

“So the longer this fight goes on, the sooner the world ends? Dammit, she’s got her priorities backward.”

I had always thought she was just a doll.

I’d assumed they were all nothing more than masked dolls who didn’t understand human emotions and left all the important decisions to the heroes. That that was what it meant to be a Federation Government dignitary controlling the world from the shadows.

Although Ice Doll kept her real face hidden behind her mask, it was clear from her voice and height that she was an older woman. But right now, the way she was wielding her sword wasn’t just a match for Siesta—she clearly had the upper hand. Her physical age didn’t seem to make any difference. She was so strong, it almost seemed like she was possessed by something.

“I’m borrowing this, Ookami.”

Running down from the platform, I raced toward the battle.

Just as Ice Doll’s sword sent Siesta’s musket flying, I darted in between the two of them, armed with the sickle I’d swiped from Ookami.

“…………”

Ice Doll fell back. Apparently, she really didn’t want to kill the Singularity.

“That was pretty reckless. Good work, though,” Siesta said with a smile.

“What now, Siesta? I don’t think she’ll fall for any more tricks.”

“The enemy won’t take your life, Assistant. Why don’t you be my human shield, and I’ll provide cover fire from behind you?”

“Did your IQ drop to zero the second you stopped being the Ace Detective? You’re a vampire, so you’re pretty close to immortal. You be the vanguard.”

“Look, we’ve been over this before: I’m not actually immortal. If she lops off an arm at the shoulder or something, I won’t be able to recover it. I’m not that much of a vampire.”

Even if she’d inherited Scarlet’s blood, Siesta hadn’t become a real vampire. That did mean she wasn’t bound by the vampires’ limited lifespan, though, so it wasn’t all bad.

“Assistant!”

The tip of the sword skimmed right past my eyes. Ice Doll had charged right up to me before I’d noticed. I’d only escaped thanks to Siesta, who’d picked me up and leaped back, trying to get some breathing room.

“—Geez, she’s fast.”

But Ice Doll was right beside us again, as if she’d moved at the same time. Her cloak hid her feet, making it almost look like she was floating.

“Sorry, she’s catching up.” With no other option, Siesta set me down.

Ice Doll’s sword closed in on us, skimming the floor. I defended myself with the giant sickle, but she knocked it out of my hands. In almost the same moment, the second attack came: Ice Doll had been holding a second sword at the ready in her left hand.

Siesta shoved me out of the way. Ice Doll’s sword cut into Siesta’s right shoulder, creating a spray of bright blood. Yet our opponent already knew the wound wouldn’t be fatal. She swung her second blade horizontally, intending to cut off Siesta’s head.

“—Siesta!”

But something blocked the sword’s path.

Out of nowhere, what looked like tentacles had sprouted from beneath the floor.

“Assistant, we’re retreating.”

Once again, Siesta picked me up and put some distance between us and Ice Doll. Just as she did, rubble cascaded down right where we’d been standing. I looked up at the ceiling to see more tentacles—or rather, the roots of an enormous plant. There were so many of them, and they were all lashing out as if they had wills of their own.

“Nagisa saved us… Or not?”

It seemed less like Yggdrasil was being controlled and more that it had gone on a rampage. No… Had something happened to Nagisa? Had she ended up fighting Lot…?

“Ice Doll. What are you?” Siesta said, eyes narrowing.

It was going to take a little longer for her wounded shoulder to recover. Ordinarily, Ice Doll wouldn’t have let that opportunity escape her, but the plants that had thrown the battlefield into chaos were beginning to bloom.

“Ice Doll, if you’re a former Tuner, what was your position? Those sword skills… I heard there used to be positions like Master Swordsman until not too long ago. When did you stop being a Tuner?”

“I was not the Master Swordsman, nor is there any need for me to tell you at this stage. I doubt anyone even remembers the position anymore.”

Yggdrasil attacked Ice Doll from the ceiling like a horde of stabbing spears. However, white wings instantly grew from her back and protected her, likely as a result of the System’s power.

“After all, it’s been more than four hundred years since I stood on the battlefield as a Tuner.”

Spreading those white wings, the masked warrior set her two swords together, then thrust them into the floor. The elderly doll was nowhere to be seen now. In her place stood a proud swordswoman with long white hair flowing down her back. But—

“Four hundred years? What do you mean?” I didn’t understand. Even Bruno had only lived a few decades past a hundred. Ice Doll had been alive for even longer…?

“It’s the effect of a powerful drug that was created by the Inventor at the time,” Ice Doll said, cutting through the plant as it attacked her. “It made me and a handful of other Tuners stop aging entirely. The Federal Charter forbids the manufacture of that drug now, but at the time, people weren’t so concerned about human rights.”

In the next moment, the world around us changed. The great hall and the rampaging plant were gone. Instead, people in armor brandished weapons, fighting one another on a barren field.

“—An imagined landscape,” Siesta murmured. She could use a similar ability, but the one who’d done this was…

“Undying. Unaging. We Tuners worked ourselves to the bone, racing across countless battlefields.”

On that desolate field was one warrior who clearly stood out from the rest: a proud swordswoman on horseback, her face hidden by an iron mask, long hair streaming behind her. She didn’t belong to either army but was a hero without equal who’d come to put an end to the war.

The scenery shifted. A man dressed like a priest, armed with a book and a staff, was fighting a grotesque monster. After that, we saw a thin man in a robe frantically writing down some sort of technique on parchment. These were the Tuners from the distant past, four centuries ago.

“We were happy like that. Our sacrifices saved people. We saved the world. We swore we would fight until our bodies were no more. —But we were too exceptional to be heroes.”

Ice Doll’s voice sounded even colder than usual.

“At the time, most of the members of the Federation Government were aristocrats from a number of specific bloodlines. They stripped our band of undying heroes of our Tuner positions. Or, I should say, the System pulled strings and made them decide to do so.”

“…Why? You were amazing Tuners, weren’t you?”

“Yes, and it was that exact reason. Their logic was that real heroes could fight even without the title of Tuner.”

For a moment, I didn’t understand what she was saying. What benefit was there in intentionally removing them from the Tuners? However, Siesta picked up on the meaning right away.

“The number of Tuners is strictly limited to twelve. To further stabilize the world, they needed heroes—handymen—who’d work for them even without filling one of those twelve positions… Is that what you mean?”

“It was particularly true back then, when we were in the midst of a global crisis so great we didn’t have enough people to deal with it. That worked against us as well. At any rate, the government prioritized having more heroes.”

…So that was why they’d been targeted? Ice Doll and the other nameless allies of justice, who would work for centuries for them for free.

“When we immortal heroes lost our positions as Tuners, the protection we received from the System waned as well. All we had left were our unaging bodies and our mission to fight.”

The scene changed again. The three heroes we’d seen earlier each stood on their own battlefield, saving their own small world and the people who lived there. But those worlds were quickly destroyed by new ones.

The fighting never ended, no matter how many people they saved. The human race harbored the Original Sin, and its members fought one another their entire lives—just as Abel Arsene Schoenberg had told us.

“We kept fighting these endless wars until at last, four centuries later, we were given amnesty.”

I wanted to ask why they hadn’t stopped fighting before then, but I couldn’t. It didn’t feel right to ask something like that to a hero who had seriously kept fighting for four hundred years. So instead, I said, “Who gave you that amnesty?”

“During those four hundred years, the aristocratic blood in the Federation Government had been diluted, while more former Tuners had joined. Although they hadn’t been there for as long as us, many of those Tuners had worked there for several decades or more. They gave us amnesty, and we ended our roles as heroes at last and became government dignitaries.”

There was a self-deprecating tone to Ice Doll’s voice.

“It was only recently that we acquired aging bodies from the Inventor. However, after all this time, nobody remembers the positions we once held. Not even us.”

The imagined landscape vanished, and the great hall reappeared around us.

This was what had happened to people who’d exhausted themselves saving others. Even if they hadn’t become enemies of the world, those tragic heroes had been trapped in an eternal war. This was a future that the allies of justice might find themselves facing someday—the truth of the nameless dolls known as Federal Government officials.

“I will only ask you once.” Ice Doll’s mask turned toward Siesta and me. The reason why she’d stopped attacking and shown us that imaginary landscape must be to ask us this question.

“If you both refuse to board the Ark, you will end up facing the Great Cataclysm without the power of your wills. That cataclysm will continue until this planet is destroyed. It won’t just be you; all the Tuners yet to come will be trapped by that fate. Do you truly think that is the right choice?”

Ice Doll knew the pain of having to stand on a battlefield without being able to make full use of her will. She knew the tragedy of being trapped in a never-ending disaster until she didn’t even know who she was.

How long would they have to keep fighting? How long would they be forced to take the short end of the stick? How long would they be praised as heroes and continue to answer the voices of the people, only to be sacrificed for the sake of the world? As Lot had said, why was it always the heroes, the allies of justice, who had everything precious taken from them?

I’d always thought so, too, somewhere deep down. Why was Siesta always the only one who had things stolen from her? Why was Nagisa the only one who suffered such loss? Why was the detective the only one who was right—and who had to be hurt because she was right? Justice shouldn’t mean sacrifice, and yet…

“So you people were the same.”

The government dignitaries hadn’t been looking down on the Tuners from atop their thrones; all this time, they’d been gazing at their past selves from behind those masks.

“That’s why you were jealous of the old me.” Siesta watched Ice Doll with a sad look on her face.

“You were jealous of the Ace Detective, who could die in the line of duty.”

They wanted to hurry up and die.

Now, they wanted that to happen after they’d fulfilled this last important role: preserving the seeds of the human race.

“…………”

Silence. Ice Doll waited for Siesta’s answer. She wanted to know if Siesta was prepared to throw herself into a never-ending war, even if doing so meant she’d stop being anyone at all. She was asking if she was prepared to live as a false hero now that she no longer held the position of Ace Detective.

Silence. Siesta didn’t answer. It wasn’t because she didn’t know how to reply; I was sure she did. That was why she was standing on this battlefield, trying to stop Ice Doll. Even so, she wasn’t saying anything…because not denying Ice Doll was the one gesture of respect she could show her. Respect for the nameless hero who, for four hundred years, had kept fighting a battle no one would remember.

The palace rocked again. Yggdrasil, probably. Ice Doll, who was standing a few meters in front of us, slowly began to move. “Unless something is done about Nagisa Natsunagi, she may destroy the Ark. Let’s put an end to this.”

Giving up on getting an answer from Siesta, Ice Doll held her swords low, preparing to carry out her last remaining mission. The end of the battle was moments away.

“Siesta,” I called out.

She shook her head. She wasn’t holding up her weapon. In that case… I stepped up so that I could at least stand beside her. Beside the former Ace Detective, who’d resolved to accept everything.

“I lost my position and my name, but this sword alone—”

The next moment, Ice Doll disappeared. I hadn’t meant to blink. She immediately reappeared right in front of me, her great ice sword arcing toward Siesta.

“…………”

The blade stopped.

Siesta’s blue eyes gazed at it, the tip of the ice sword refusing to go any farther.

“That, Ice Doll, is your will.”

Ice Doll herself had stopped her sword. Not to be fooled by her words, the dregs of the System that remained in a corner of the world had picked up on her will. On the fact that she didn’t really think she should kill Siesta here.

“Ice Doll, we won’t stop trying to reach our ideal.”

The icy official thrust her swords into the floor and knelt.

“Not even if we lose our names or forget our titles. Even if there comes a day when we don’t remember what we’re fighting for.”

Taking my hand, Siesta spoke to the hero whose fight had come to an end.

“We’ll run through that battered and bruised light, believing that someone’s sure to remember. That we’ll have a companion to pass it on.”

Yggdrasil had demolished the door to the great hall, and the morning sunlight streamed in through the wreckage. Since the palace stood on a continent of ice, the reflected light was so dazzling it made me want to cover my eyes.

That was probably the pain that was waiting for us up ahead. We’d step out of the comfortable darkness into a light that would test our resolve, becoming nameless heroes. Sacrifices for the world.

It was okay, though. I was sure everything would be all right. After all, we had someone beside us who would remember it. Someone who would hold our hand and run through the blinding light with us.

“The times have changed.”

Ice Doll’s voice followed us as we turned around and began to walk out the door.

“We’ll entrust it to you.”

Rebirth of the world

When Siesta and I left Ice Doll and walked out of the palace, we found ourselves on a continent of ice—which was currently a battlefield.

Long, thick roots covered in ice were thrashing around as if they had a will of their own. They looked almost like big snakes or dragons. These were what had attacked the palace we’d just left.

“That’s Charlie and…”

Looking into the distance, Siesta narrowed her eyes. There were two figures fighting the aggressive ice roots. One was the blond-haired agent, and not too far from her was…

“Lot. Charlie’s dad.”

I didn’t know what had happened between the two of them after I’d left, but they were fighting Yggdrasil together now, their military swords cutting down roots one after the other. The father and daughter hadn’t seen each other in ten years, yet they still trusted the other person to look after their back and could fight together without having to exchange a word. That was a skill that was only possible because they had both kept slashing down naive ideals and remained standing on the battlefield.

“Nagisa’s gotten strong, too.”

There was one other person. A figure ran across the roof of the enormous palace, fighting dynamically with a red saber. She leaped from roof to roof, luring ice roots that stretched like whips, then turning back and slashing them all down in a single attack.

“I bet that’s not just Nagisa on her own, though.”

She was probably getting help from the remnants of her other personality. It was something that was only possible on this battlefield, where the enemy was Yggdrasil.

It wasn’t long before Nagisa noticed Siesta and me and ran down to us, using broken ice roots as footholds.

“Nagisa, what’s the situation?”

“It’s anybody’s guess, really. Frankly, there doesn’t seem to be an end to it. No matter how many roots we chop away, they grow back.”

Even as Nagisa spoke, the plant she’d just cut through started to regenerate. It was a battle of attrition, plain and simple—and at this rate, we’d get steamrollered.

“I was able to control it at first, but then it got like this… It doesn’t matter how much I cut away or how I try to coax it, nothing works.”

Was Seed’s will driving Yggdrasil’s rampage, or was it being cleverly manipulated by this doomed world? They’d said the Ark was the one place that was supposed to be safe…

As I was thinking, my smartphone rang. It was almost impossible to get a signal here, but luckily, the call had come through. Mia’s name was on the screen.

“Oh, finally! You picked up! Hello, Kimihiko?”

“…Is that you, Rill?”

The anxious voice on the other end of the line belonged to the Magical Girl, not the Oracle.

Right, those two were together at the moment. A Federation Government dignitary had been threatening them. However, that situation should have been cleared up as soon as we talked Ice Doll down, so was this about something else?

“It’s really bad. Damage from Yggdrasil has suddenly started spreading all over the world… Mia got a vision, and she’s relaying evacuation instructions to the relevant locations now.”

“No way… Yggdrasil’s really destroying the world…?” Had the System worn down sooner than we’d predicted? In that case, we didn’t have a moment to lose. “Are you and Mia both in England? Are things okay there?”

“…Barely, to be honest.” Rill’s tone grew dark. “The view from the clock tower has a lot more green in it now. There’s no telling when this place will fall.”

“Rill, what’s it like in Japan?!” Nagisa asked, leaning closer to the phone.

“Actually, there was a prophecy about that just a minute ago. Um…apparently the dome where the idol girl is giving her concert will be swallowed up by Yggdrasil in another thirty to forty minutes.”

“Yui…! Have you given them the order to evacuate?”

“It’s a show meant to be broadcast live around the world, and there’s no audience. They should have only had to evacuate the staff and the performers, but…”

The call switched to a video chat. The picture was grainy, but we could still see Rill, along with the screen of a computer right beside her. The computer showed an idol singing alone on stage.

“It can’t be— Is this the live broadcast? Yui hasn’t evacuated?”

“No. She’s sent all but one staff member home, and she’s still singing. She said it was her duty to protect everyone’s ordinary days. That her job was to create a place everyone could feel safe coming home to.”

I see. She was doing this because the world was panicking right now. The one staff member who’d stayed was probably Noches. If things got genuinely dangerous, Noches was bound to protect Saikawa.

“Just one thing, Kimihiko,” Rill said from a corner of the screen. “Global crises seem to strike unfairly, but a careful look at history shows that the cause is always lurking somewhere. Make sure you don’t miss it.”

Rill’s current job was compiling a record of past global crises and the activity of the Tuners who’d resolved them. That would definitely give her a unique perspective on all this.

“Rill has a vague idea of your current situation. Please be safe.”

“Yeah. We’ll meet again, I promise.”

Thanking Rill, I ended the call.

“So there’s a reason for disasters, huh?”

Why had Yggdrasil suddenly been given the role of destroying the world?

“Is it a coincidence?”

There was no way. That word hadn’t contributed anything to our story, not even once. Either that or there had been a detective who wouldn’t allow anybody to use it to tidy everything away.

That meant there had to be a reason for this situation, as Rill said. There was a cause lurking somewhere. Where had the countdown to the end of the world originally started and why?

“Abel has to be the trigger, right?”

That meant the story I needed to remember was his. —Where was it? Where was the link between Abel and the Yggdrasil crisis?

“At some point, we started calling the enemy Abel.”

Siesta had gone to fight the rampaging ice roots while I was taking that call, but now she was back again.

“What about it? Isn’t that his name?”

“Yes, it is. His real identity is Abel Arsene Schoenberg, the world’s most heinous criminal. We didn’t call him that at first, though. Just before I went to sleep for a year and three months, when we first faced off against him—we called him Arsene the Phantom Thief.”

Now that I thought about it, she was right. Somewhere in there, we’d stopped calling him Arsene and started calling him Abel. However, a big part of the reason was that, at the time, the Federation Government wouldn’t acknowledge that Abel was actually the Phantom Thief. We’d had to call him Abel as a matter of convenience.

“But when you get right down to it, he’s the Phantom Thief. We’ve had a tendency to forget that lately.”

“…His true nature is the Phantom Thief, and his job is to steal things.”

So what had the Phantom Thief stolen?

The Akashic records. In stealing those, he’d broken the world.

“Wait, Kimihiko. Didn’t the System take those back?” Nagisa asked.

“Yeah, along with Abel’s body.”

However, now that I really thought about it, that was weird.

“If it retook everything he stole, then why is the System still not functioning properly?”

Because of that, the Tuners couldn’t make full use of the power of their wills, and the world was heading toward destruction as a punishment for having lost the Akashic records.

“Has Abel not returned everything he stole yet?”

Had he hidden it in a place where the System couldn’t find it?

“There’s one other thing the Phantom Thief stole,” Siesta said, a finger against her chin as she thought. “The sacred text. Mia and I made a fake sacred text to trick Seed, which Abel stole. In other words, those two great evils met back then.”

She was right. Their destinies had intersected. Abel and Seed, our two most formidable enemies, had once joined forces. Now Yggdrasil—the tree where Seed slept—was rampaging, set off by the disaster Abel had triggered.

“It’s connected.”

It was all connected. It had been for more than four years.

Back then, the seeds known as “codes” had already been sown.

“Abel hid the stolen Akashic records inside Yggdrasil.”

He’d planted the codes for that inside Seed.

“When the Phantom Thief steals something, the people he’s stolen from don’t even register that it’s gone. He tricked the System, the mechanism behind the world—even though what it lost has been in eye-catching places all over the world, all this time.” Siesta was gazing at the ice roots, which were thrashing about like dragons. We’d gotten the wrong idea about why it was rampaging. Yggdrasil didn’t want to destroy the world; it was just trying to put what had been placed in its care back where it belonged.

“Seed.” Nagisa set off toward a huge tree, coated with ice, which resembled the original Yggdrasil. “Come to think of it, I left you to that girl. We parted without ever talking.”

Frozen vegetation crawled toward Nagisa’s feet, trying to climb up her ankles. I went to run after her, but Siesta stopped me.

“I don’t have any particular attachment to you,” Nagisa said. “In fact, all I’ve got is resentment. We were enemies from start to finish, and that’s what we’ll always be. I won’t sympathize with you. It’s a fantasy to think that we can resolve everything through talking, and I don’t plan to force it on to you. However…” Reaching the foot of the great tree of ice, Nagisa put her hand against its bark. “Just for now, I’m sure we’re thinking the same thing. We have the same wish. So, Seed, I’ll give your will an order for you. A really strong one. I’ll give you a word-soul to make that wish come true. I’ll believe in your survival instinct for you.”

Nagisa Natsunagi’s red eyes shone.

“If you don’t want to lose this planet, return the Akashic records to the world.”

White flowers bloomed from the ice roots all across the land. Their centers gave off shining orange motes, which began to drift through the atmosphere.

“It’s pollen.”

It wasn’t like the pollen that had once stolen my memories, though. Yggdrasil’s original role was to be a medium for memories. This pollen was a recovery program to help the world retake its lost records.

The same sight was probably playing out all around the world right now: at the clock tower in London, in the streets of New York City, in the deserts of Cairo, and at Yggdrasil’s main body in Japan. The white flowers that had bloomed from the great tree released particles of light, and everything returned—to Mother Earth.

“Assistant,” Siesta called out, staring at something behind us.

“That’s…”

It was a human figure, but only the rough outline of one, and it didn’t belong to anyone in particular.

However, I had a vague premonition about its identity. Returning everything Yggdrasil had been entrusted with meant that even the memories of the person who’d done it would return. He’d said it himself: He was only a program.

Siesta leveled her gun, but the shadow only turned and walked off. Was he going to hide himself for now and attempt to control the new world by some other method later? Or would he give up on this planet and go searching for an unknown sanctuary in some other universe?

“Professor Moriya.”

Abel? Arsene? I wasn’t sure what to call him, so in the end, I’d used the name that seemed most at home in that white lab coat.

The shadow grew smaller, gradually disappearing. Carrying the sins of the human race, he’d searched for an ideal new world, yet he would remain forever evil. And so…

“Let’s stay on the side of justice until our very last moment,” Siesta said. She was seeing the same future I was.

“They’re dying.”

The ice roots that had grown so thickly and the flowers in full bloom quickly shriveled up and returned to the icy ground. Yggdrasil had fulfilled its role. The plants that had been invading the rest of the world were likely beginning to retreat as well.

Siesta and I walked over to Nagisa. She was sitting down, gently holding her palm out toward a thin, withered tree.

“Nagisa.”

When I called to her, she got to her feet, a satisfied smile on her face. Then finally, she spoke to the remains of Yggdrasil.

“Rest well this time, Father.”