The Asterisk War, Vol. 9: Whispers of a Long Farewell

by Yuu Miyazaki

  “…Oh? What makes you think that?”

  “Just my intuition.”

  Saya’s answer was incredibly straightforward, but Julis knew better than to take it lightly. “Hmm…”

  At that moment, however, the training room doors slid open, and Ayato, dressed in his workout clothes, his forehead beaded with sweat, strode in.

  “Sorry. Am I late…? I was doing some solo conditioning and lost track of time.”

  His breathing was rough, meaning he had probably run all the way to the training room.

  “Good morning, Ayato,” Saya beamed, running up to greet him.

  “…! …Ah, Saya. Good morning,” Ayato replied with the same gentle greeting as usual.

  Julis, however, couldn’t fail to take note of a brief flash of nervousness darting through his eyes.

  “It’s okay—we’re not all here yet,” Saya said. “Here, Ayato.” She handed him a towel.

  Perhaps it was just her imagination, but Julis couldn’t help thinking Saya was acting more intimately with Ayato than normal. They might have been childhood friends, so close as to be almost family, but there seemed to be something different in the way she was acting.

  “…Right, thanks.” Ayato, on the other hand, seemed only a little awkward as he accepted the towel.

  He was probably conscious of Saya’s change in behavior as well. It was clear that their relationship wasn’t moving in a bad direction.

  “Uh, I’ll get it back to you once I’ve washed it…”

  “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’ll wash it.”

  “…I said it’s okay.” Saya pouted, trying to wrest it from him, her body coming awfully close to his.

  “Ah…” Saya, seemingly having realized the situation, suddenly pulled away from him. Her expression remained unchanged, but she cast her eyes to the ground, her cheeks turning slightly pink.

  That was not the kind of reaction she would have had in the past.

  Julis and Kirin watched on from a distance.

  “…Wh-what is it, Kirin?” Saya asked, turning toward her. “If you want to ask Ayato something, just say it.”

  “What?! I—I—I don’t…” Kirin shrank with fear, her eyes brimming with tears, before she turned toward Julis. “J-Julis, um, d-do you…?”

  “M-me?! Ah, right, um… N-no, nothing!”

  “Oh… I—I see… Sorry…”

  “I-I’m not angry or anything, look,” Julis said hastily, trying to console her. She let out a deep breath in an attempt to calm her nerves, though it didn’t do much good. “…She does have courage, though. We ought to applaud her for that.”

  “…Yes.”

  What she was aiming for was different, but Julis knew all too well how terrifying it could be to take the first step toward bringing about change.

  Saya’s determination was worthy of respect.

  “You said we’re not all here yet… But it’s already time, right?” Ayato asked, checking his mobile and glancing around the training room.

  They were supposed to be having a strategy meeting to discuss tomorrow’s semifinal match. Their opponents, Team Yellow Dragon, would easily be the strongest team they had faced thus far.

  Xiaohui Wu, alias the Celestial Warrior, Hagun Seikun, would be particularly difficult. His martial art abilities would make defeat all but inevitable without an adequate counterstrategy. All his skills, in particular his spearmanship and seisenjutsu, that he had demonstrated in the second round were alarming in and of themselves, but taken as a whole, they made him truly terrifying.

  “Right, the president isn’t here yet…,” Kirin said.

  “She isn’t normally late,” Julis observed.

  In fact, as far as Julis could remember, Claudia had never been late to a meeting.

  “Ah, looks like I’ve got a call. Maybe it’s… Huh?” She broke into a frown. The number on her mobile was unregistered.

  She couldn’t help but feel a wave of uncertainty as she opened a blacked-out air-window.

  It was a voice-only call.

  “…! Ah! Thank God! You picked up!”

  There was a lot of distortion and noise, but Julis recognized the voice.

  “…Laetitia?”

  They might have been acquaintances, of a sort, but they certainly weren’t close enough to call each other directly.

  “Yes, it’s me. We don’t have much time, so let me get right to the point. Is Claudia there?”

  “What’s this about…? Anyway, she isn’t here yet.”

  “No, it can’t be…!” The voice on the other side of the air-window was filled with despair.

  “What’s going on? If you’ve got something to say to Claudia, why don’t you just call her yourself?”

  “I’m calling you because I can’t reach her! Anyway, you need to go look for her now and make sure she’s safe!”

  “Safe…? Wait, what does that mean?! What are you talking about?!” Julis could tell from the urgency in Laetitia’s voice that whatever it was, it was no trivial matter.

  Ayato, Kirin, and Saya, listening on beside her in silence, were each wearing serious expressions.

  “We don’t have time! I’ve only got another thirty seconds before Sinodomius traces this line! Galaxy is making their move!”

  That was enough for them to understand the gravity of the situation. “Got it. I don’t know the details, but thanks.”

  “One more thing—I need to talk to Ayato Amagiri!”

  “To Ayato…?” Julis repeated, glancing toward him.

  Ayato stepped forward with a slight nod. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s—”

  It had been some time since Claudia had gone to watch the Lindvolus.

  “Claudia. I have a present for you,” Isabella said as she offered her a large case.

  Claudia glanced toward it in surprise. She couldn’t remember her mother ever having given her a present before.

  Even as a child, she had had access to practically inexhaustible wealth, and so whatever she wanted, she had it bought for her. It was far different than the act of gift giving.

  “To what do I owe this surprise?” she asked with an artificial smile.

  “Your birthday is coming up soon, right?” Isabella answered gently.

  “That may be so, but still…”

  “Come now, have a look,” Isabella said to her perplexed daughter, before putting the case on the drawing room table and releasing the lock.

  “That’s…” Claudia caught her breath as she saw what lay inside.

  “Indeed. The Pan-Dora.”

  An Orga Lux, like a pair of unborn children in deep sleep. Staring at their activators before her, she felt a shudder run through her body, just as she had felt during the Lindvolus.

  Watching Claudia rise up from her chair and pull away, Isabella narrowed her eyes in a sweet smile. “Dear me, Claudia. What is it?”

  “…Nothing.”

  “Is it what you felt during the Lindvolus? Excellent. That means it has chosen you as its user.” Isabella spread her hands wide as if to indicate that it was a wonderful turn of events.

  Claudia caught her breath, trying to pull herself together. “But how were you able to remove an Orga Lux? I thought they were dealt with rather strictly…”

  Even if her mother was an executive at its IEF, taking one of the school’s Orga Luxes to give to her own daughter seemed like it would fall foul of far too many regulations.

  “Heh-heh. Just who do you think I am?” Isabella asked with a laugh. “As it happens, after what occurred during the Lindvolus, the Pan-Dora was to be sealed away. As such, once it had arrived at Galaxy’s research facilities, I explained the situation, and they allowed me to borrow it. Our researchers are hoping to garner more data from it themselves, so they were more than happy to oblige.”

  “It’s an honor to be given such a dangerous item,” Claudia said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

  Isabella’s, however, rema
ined unwavering. “Of course, if you don’t want it, I’ll take it back. There’s no need to force yourself. But just so you know, it’s quite rare to be chosen by an Orga Lux, and as far as abilities go, this one is particularly powerful. I thought, perhaps, that it might one day be of some use to you…”

  “…”

  Isabella might have been her mother, but Claudia found her remarkably difficult to read.

  Looking at it analytically, she seemed to want to use her daughter to gather data on the Pan-Dora, which had remarkably few compatible users. That would certainly be of use to Seidoukan Academy, under Galaxy’s management.

  And yet, it would be of little use to Galaxy itself, and it didn’t make much sense for someone with her mother’s position to take any special interest in it.

  In that case, was it simply a present for her daughter, as she claimed? If it truly did confer upon its user the power of precognition, it would be an Orga Lux beyond compare, so much so that it might even serve to give Claudia, who had yet to decide which path to take in life, some direction.

  However, just as Claudia had remarked, it was also an incredibly dangerous item, and almost certainly an unsuitable present to give to one’s daughter. Yet, Isabella might have judged her mature and wise enough to handle it. She had to admit, her achievements certainly might warrant such an assessment.

  …Maybe it’s all those reasons combined.

  Her thoughts having taken her this far, she made her decision.

  Whether it had to do with people or objects, whenever something happened, it tended to be due to multiple competing forces. All the more so for people like Isabella.

  Which was why Claudia chose to accept it for the simplest of reasons—because she was happy to receive a present from her mother.

  “I understand. I’ll gratefully accept it.”

  “Very good. I’m so happy to hear that.” Isabella laughed, before clapping her hands together and calling the servant, as if suddenly remembering something. “Speaking of which, another present has arrived for you as well.”

  “Another one?”

  Judging by the way she had said it, it didn’t sound like it was from her.

  Claudia opened the box the servant brought in and discovered a stuffed toy bear around five inches tall, along with a small card.

  “My, it’s so cute.”

  “…Who is it from?”

  Both the fabric and the stitching were of the finest quality—perfectly matching her tastes—so it only took a glance to realize it was a high-quality item.

  She opened the card, completely in the dark as to who could have sent it, only to find an unexpected name written inside.

  “Laetitia…?”

  “Ah, that young lady from the Blanchard family?” Isabella nodded. “You two get along quite well, don’t you?”

  “Not particularly…”

  The card contained a message: I’ll defeat you next time, so be ready.

  “But you should make sure your father doesn’t see it.”

  “…Yes.”

  The Enfield family and Blanchard family had seemed to be joined by fate for several hundred years now, ever since the War of the Grand Alliance, and Nicholas, as a direct descendant of the Enfield line, had an innate prejudice against the Blanchards.

  And yet, while Claudia wasn’t particularly fond of stuffed toys, she couldn’t bring herself to throw away a present that someone had gone to all the trouble to give her.

  “I’ll have to give her something in return. Her birthday was in…February, wasn’t it?”

  Given that it was June now, there was still quite a while to go.

  “In that case, the Opernball in Vienna is around that time. How about you give it to her then?”

  The Opernball had been a treasured tradition of the upper classes for centuries, but it had changed in nature somewhat during the Reconstruction following the Invertia. Perhaps most notably, the age of debutantes had been greatly reduced, no doubt so that the European noble houses could search for suitable partners of superior blood at a younger age.

  Today, even the great houses couldn’t survive without associating with the IEFs. As such, bringing people with outstanding abilities into one’s family was simply a matter of necessity.

  “…Well, it isn’t for a while, so I suppose I have time to find something suitable for her,” she murmured, glancing back and forth between the stuffed toy and the Pan-Dora. She found herself unable to hold back a smile at just how surreal the difference between the two was.

  Her choice to accept the Pan-Dora, however, would end up changing her life completely.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

  The next morning, before the sun had even completely risen, a shrill cry echoed throughout the mansion.

  The servants rushed into her room, only to find Claudia breathing raggedly, her eyes wide open, her fingers gripping the edge of her bedsheets so tightly that they had turned a pallid white.

  The dream was already vanishing like fog in the morning, fading away into oblivion.

  Claudia had tasted the cost demanded by the Pan-Dora, the unendurable suffering and overwhelming fear of experiencing one’s own death. The shock was enough to shatter her naive indifference and bring her precocious and slanted sense of self crashing down.

  “Oh dear… It looks like it is intense.” Isabella, having appeared beside her almost instantaneously, looked down at her daughter with pity.

  Claudia, her mother’s figure in the center of her vision, tried desperately to bring her breathing under control.

  “Well then, Claudia, do you still want to hold on to the Pan-Dora?” she asked. Her mother spoke as if she knew this would happen, and yet, there was a touch of disappointment in her voice.

  Claudia, however, weakly shook her head.

  “Oh?” Isabella raised an eyebrow, as though slightly surprised.

  That decision, too, had been for the simplest of reasons—because she refused to give in.

  She herself was startled to find that she harbored such childish feelings.

  Mustering her strength, she sat up in her bed. “…It was a present. I’ll hold on to it for a while longer,” she said.

  Claudia had managed to maintain that mind-set for close to a month.

  When one considered that the Pan-Dora’s previous users hadn’t even been able to hold out for three days, her tenacity pointed to an astounding strength of will.

  The nightmares, however, had continued mercilessly, night after night, without end, eating away at her heart, steadily breaking her spirit.

  Then, one night, when she could no longer clearly distinguish between the waking world and her nightmares, and she had begun to feel as if she was reaching her limit…

  It was then that she met Ayato for the first time.

  “Claudia! Are you in there, Claudia?!” Julis called out, banging against her door.

  There was no response.

  They had wasted no time after speaking to Laetitia, heading straight for Claudia’s room in Seidoukan Academy’s girls’ dormitory.

  The door, however, was locked, and with no indication that Claudia was inside, Julis found herself grinding her teeth in worry.

  “Damn it! How could I have been so careless?”

  She hadn’t expected Galaxy to act so soon.

  Or rather, she hadn’t given Claudia’s warning the weight it had deserved.

  Making an enemy of Galaxy… When Claudia had told them that that would be the likely outcome of her actions, Julis had prepared herself for the worst, but things had been uneventful since the opening of the Gryps, with everything moving along smoothly.

  It wasn’t as if she had let down her guard, but she couldn’t deny that she had spent her time focusing on the matches in front of her, rather than considering what Galaxy might do next.

  It was all due to Claudia’s strategizing, and yet, Galaxy, it seemed, hadn’t relaxed its efforts to stop her.

  “…Julis, step out of the way,
” Saya said, activating one of her huge Luxes.

  “Wha—?! W-wait, Saya! You can’t use that in here…!” Kirin, alarmed, tried to talk her out of it.

  Julis, however, found herself in agreement with Saya for once. “Do it!”

  “…Boom.”

  A blinding projectile burst out from the weapon with a roar, blasting the door out of its frame.

  Other students began to come out into the corridor from the nearby rooms to see what was going on, but Julis paid them no heed, barging inside the room.

  “What happened here…?”

  Julis glanced around, taken aback by the disastrous scene that lay before her. Inside Claudia’s quarters, everything, living room and bedroom alike, appeared to have been completely ransacked.

  For a brief instant, she wondered whether it was due to Saya’s attack on the door, but the damage was far too extensive for that. The sofa lay on its side, the bedsheets torn into shreds, the walls and carpet damaged and broken almost everywhere.

  And on top of that…

  “…There’s been a fight here, with weapons,” Kirin said sternly as she examined the floor. “I can’t make out any footprints, but there must have been a lot of people… And there’s a bloodstain here.”

  “Ngh…!” Julis bit her lip in concern.

  Saya tapped her on the shoulder. “It might not belong to Enfield. She could have struck back at her attackers.”

  “Maybe…”

  But if that was so, why was Claudia missing?

  “There isn’t a lot of blood, though. And…I think the president must have escaped, once they came for her,” Kirin, still investigating the floor, said gravely.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “It’s only a guess…but if Galaxy’s people had succeeded, they wouldn’t have left the room like this. They might have free rein to do what they want here in Seidoukan, but at the very least, they would try to cover it up. But here…”

  Perhaps it was because her uncle worked at Galaxy, but Kirin had an unexpectedly well-informed idea of how the integrated enterprise foundation did things.

  “Right! So they mustn’t have had time to clean up after themselves…”