ALL NOVEL A safe house among T-party.
Yurizono Seiya sat up in bed, staring blankly at the ceiling.
A single question rippled through her consciousness.
Is this real, or just another prophetic dream?
Having wandered in prophetic dreams for so long, Seiya found it hard to be sure of even the basics. It must be unavoidable.
For that reason, Seiya slowly, very slowly began to piece together the contents of her last prophetic dream. Accordingly, the fog that had been clouding her mind began to lift, scene by scene.
Mika Terror. Color. Parallel world. Mika. Teacher.
Enumerating thoughts that were all important in her mind, Seiya turned her gaze. Her eyes landed on the window of the hospital room.
The red sky visible beyond the window, and the storm that had begun to swirl. A scene she had seen countless times in her prophetic dreams.
That means the Color has arrived on this land. The invasion of Color had officially begun…
‘Wait a minute…’
Seiya’s hazy eyes suddenly became clear. And from there, anxiety began to ripple.
“U-Um, Seiya…?”
But peculiarly enough… as if the Rescue Knights knew Seiya would wake up, a student belonging to them stepped into her room. She was a girl Seiya was somewhat familiar with.
She looked wide-eyed and hesitant, not expecting Seiya to be awake. But Seiya didn’t mind and quickly shot a question.
“Do you have any idea when that sky outside changed?”
“Ah, that… I think it’s been about five minutes. I was ordered to check on you and prepare to move you elsewhere in case of emergency…”
The girl replied hesitantly to Seiya’s question. Regardless of their prior acquaintance, Seiya had been mostly asleep for the past few days. Therefore, from the girl’s perspective, Seiya wasn’t the easiest person to approach.
“I see…”
Seiya sighed in relief and got up. Luckily, it seemed like she had woken just as the invasion of Color was about to begin.
Seiya truly felt relieved at the thought of possibly having woken up late. It would have been better if she had woken before the Color descended, but she was undeniably grateful it was not too late.
Quickly recalling what she needed to do, Seiya reached for the cellphone on the table beside the bed.
She intended to contact Mika right away but furrowed her brows. Not only was the phone off, but it wouldn’t even turn on.
What a disaster. Ordinarily, this would be a trivial mistake, but the situation was anything but ordinary.
Setting the phone down, Seiya looked to the fidgeting girl.
Borrowing a phone to contact Mika or Nagisa required already knowing the contacts. Nowadays, people hardly bothered to remember phone numbers or Momotalk IDs.
“Could you give a heads up to T-party?”
“Y-Yes, of course!”
“Then I’ll leave that to you. I’ll change my clothes and step out, so please wait a moment.”
Seiya felt thankful in many ways.
As long as she took action in time, everything would be okay.
With that in mind, it didn’t take long for her face to harden after she changed clothes.
“U-Um… Since the signal’s down, it might take some time to restore the network. It may be faster for us to move to T-party.”
That wasn’t reassuring at all.
*
Upon arriving at the T-party building, Seiya was greeted with surprising, yet known news.
“Mika has joined the Student Council…”
Initially, Mika’s change in affiliation was obvious through her outfit in the prophetic dream, so it wasn’t too shocking. What struck Seiya as odd was that Mika, who hated work, voluntarily took on the role of Student Council President.
“Yes, it just happened like that. With the current situation being so dire, she probably stepped up to take responsibility. I imagine there’s a bit of guilt in playing her part too.”
“Indeed… Mika. So, the cause of this incident is releasing the Mika from the parallel world. It makes sense.”
“…How do you know that, Seiya?”
“I saw it with these very eyes, even if from a distance.”
Observing through dreams has its distance, one could say.
Seiya thought to herself, tapping the table.
The communications network that had been down quickly restored, but Mika had been on the line since earlier. Thus, it seemed it would take a little longer for Seiya to reach her.
Moreover, it dawned on Seiya that Mika likely didn’t know she had been the teacher from the parallel world. At least, Seiya’s prophetic dreams pointed in that direction.
Therefore, her immediate course of action became clear.
“Nagisa. I have something to say about the Mika we know.”
“Eh…? Is there something you’ve figured out?”
“I’m saying this since you seem to know that Color-tinged Mika is a being from the parallel world, but there was also a teacher in her Kivotos. It’s only natural. However, no one could have anticipated who that really was.”
“…Wait a minute. I-I mean, Seiya, just to clarify… That parallel world’s teacher isn’t…”
At first, Nagisa didn’t grasp what Seiya was trying to say, but as the conversation progressed, her eyes filled with horror.
What Seiya was implying hinted at a very tragic tale.
Seiya nodded, affirming Nagisa’s thoughts.
The teacher existing in the parallel world where the Color-tinged Mika resided. It wasn’t hard to imagine the tragic fate that awaited, and understanding that her beloved Mika went through a heartbreaking tragedy made Nagisa bite her lips.
Shortly afterward, a question struck her mind. A question that was perfectly reasonable.
“Wait. Mika is someone who came from the world outside Kivotos. And I know her story inside and out. In other words, Seiya’s claim completely contradicts that—”
“That part is deeply connected to what I wanted to say.”
“…Huh?”
“Mika doesn’t have memories from her time as a teacher, that’s my hypothesis. And that is also not good news for us.”
“…Hang on. That means…”
Nagisa’s eyes widened.
“According to the future you saw, a moment will arise when Mika will need the memories of her time as a teacher…?”
With that swift conclusion, Seiya nodded in agreement.
“I don’t know which came first. But all I know is that Mika acted as a teacher in the parallel world differently. She has zero information about the outside world of Kivotos. Yet one thing is certain…”
Seiya paused in her speech. Noticing her discomfort, Nagisa understood that Seiya still wasn’t in great shape.
But now wasn’t the time to worry about Seiya. Cold as it was, that was the reality.
Wasting time under the pretense of caring might seriously worsen Seiya’s condition.
“Well. One thing’s certain… The moment we’ll need help from the Mika of the parallel world will come. At that moment, what we need is precisely Mika’s memories. They truly cherished each other.”
“…Does that mean they were in a romantic relationship?”
Suppressing her personal feelings as best as she could, the jealousy seeped into Nagisa’s voice.
She now understood Mika’s oddly narcissistic side.
“That’s probably not the case. They were in a student-teacher relationship, so expressing feelings openly wouldn’t have been easy. Perhaps in their final moments, they broke free from those roles… Ahem. Let’s leave that there and get to the point.”
Seeing Nagisa’s expression darken, Seiya cleared her throat lightly and changed the subject. It was understandable, given the hint that the love of her life had crossed into this world from a parallel one because of death.
“We must help Mika regain her memories. Just as Mika has her role, we too have ours.”
“…A way to help her regain her memories?”
Nagisa gnawed at her lips again, halting momentarily.
When Mika disliked her pretty lips getting chapped, she had tried hard to correct that habit, but it seemed to slip out now.
‘Memories…’
Could there truly be a way to restore them? While pondering internally, Nagisa concluded that this was a matter that wouldn’t easily yield answers for either of them.
Unless praying endlessly to the primordial gods for a miracle, they would need someone’s help.
“…Ah.”
Finally, she recalled someone who could help.
Two out of the three geniuses that Mika endlessly praised—Akeboshi Himari, and…
‘Tsukatsuki Rion…’
Nagisa swallowed a sigh at the thought of that haughty face she found so repulsive.
Excluding her personal feelings, the two geniuses from Millennium were indeed worth trusting.
In chess terms, they would be the knights and bishops, or maybe even two rooks.
So even if she didn’t like Rion, Nagisa had no choice but to rely on them.
“It’s hard to say for sure, but… there are people who might be able to find the solution.”
“Is that really true?”
“Yes… The Student Council President of Millennium Seminar and the Leader of Veritas. If those two can’t find a way, I’d say we’ve got no shot. So even though I can’t stand it, let’s just trust them this once.”
Fortunately, T-party had several direct hotlines to the student council of a relatively large academy.
Naturally, half of those were Mika’s work.
The seminar was also included in that support.
It didn’t take long for them to reach out to Rion.
[A way to restore memories…? Perhaps, there might be one.]
Good cause brings good results.
Mika’s networking never failed to yield bountiful harvests.