by Yuu Miyazaki
“Good work, everyone,” she said in greeting.
“—! Sylvia…!”
The group standing at attention in front of her was Rusalka, who had just managed to make it through to the quarterfinals.
“What is it, Petra? Not another lecture?” Sylvia quipped.
The woman—Petra Kivilehto, the executive chairwoman of Queenvale Academy for Young Ladies—merely pursed her lips.
Petra was herself a Strega who’d participated in the Festa as a student at Queenvale, and she had since risen to the ranks of an executive position in Queenvale’s governing IEF, W&W. On top of that, she was both Sylvia’s and Rusalka’s producer. In short, she was a particularly colorful and talented woman—and highly entrenched in their lives.
“Yes, but I was also congratulating them for their performance today,” Petra replied. The black visor covering her eyes made it all but impossible to gauge her mood.
“I see. So the lecture was about yesterday, I take it?”
“Ugh…”
At these words, the expressions of the five girls underwent a sudden and drastic change.
As student council president, Sylvia had already heard about what had happened, and Ayato had given her his account of events, too.
“Trying to pick a fight with another team right in the middle of the Festa—and then brawling with another one… And not only that, but one of you went missing afterward. I guess there’s no avoiding a lecture after all that.”
“…Yes,” the five replied in unison, their faces downcast.
“…But I suppose I should thank you.”
“Huh?” Miluše glanced up at her, puzzled.
“You were upset with Ayato because you were worried about me, weren’t you?”
“N-no, we…,” Miluše began before falling silent, her eyes dashing to and fro.
Sylvia shrugged. “What did you think of him? Did Ayato Amagiri seem like the kind of person to go around tricking people?”
“…No.” The initial one to respond was, much to Sylvia’s surprise, Tuulia, who was usually the first to start picking fights.
The others all nodded in agreement.
“I see. That’s good to hear.” Sylvia smiled back at them.
Miluše, however, was unable to keep holding herself back. “B-but tomorrow’s different! We’re not going to go easy on him during the match! We’ll crush him!”
“I would expect nothing less. You are representing Queenvale, after all. You should put everything you have into it. But, you know, Ayato—all of Team Enfield for that matter—is quite strong. Will you be okay?” Sylvia asked jokingly.
“Of course! We’re aiming for the championship!” Miluše cried out in all earnest before pointing toward Sylvia zealously. “And then, one day, we’ll overtake you as the world’s top artist!”
“…Exactly.”
“Yep!”
“You said it, Miluše!”
The other members nodded in agreement as they followed Miluše out of the room. Mahulena, however, glancing first at her teammates and then at Sylvia and Petra in turn, kept apologizing to them both, over and over.
“You should stop teasing them like that, Sylvie,” Petra grumbled after waiting for the door to close behind them. “They’re already unstable thanks to the Lyre-Poros.”
The Orga Lux used by Rusalka, the Lyre-Poros, had an urm-manadite core so overwhelming in power that it could only be controlled by dividing it into five pieces. The cost of using it was generally referred to as mental corrosion. It was said that before it had been divided into five separate pieces, it had corrupted the minds of every single one of its users, plunging them straight into the depths of madness.
Even in its current form, the higher their compatibility rating, the more impulsive and unable to keep their emotions in check its users seemed to become. That was no doubt why Mahulena, who had the lowest compatibility rating among the five, could maintain a comparatively normal state of mind.
However…
“They were like that even before they were selected to use it, though, right?”
“…” Petra merely cleared her throat before changing the topic. “Have you realized that they initially wanted to use your relationship with Ayato Amagiri to bring you down?”
“Ha-ha-ha, well, that is the kind of thing they would do.” Sylvia couldn’t keep a grin from curling her lips.
The fact that they had then managed to convince themselves that Ayato was deceiving her—and ended up taking the exact opposite course of action—was, to her way of thinking, indescribably adorable.
“Is it true? You can’t really be serious about him, are you?”
“And if I am?”
Petra let out a long sigh, raising a hand to her forehead. “You, those girls, Chloe… Why does everyone I set my eyes on end up like this…?”
“Goodness, I thought you’d be more upset about it.”
“I might be, if I thought it would do any good.” With that, she rose to her feet, her lips pursed into a faint smile. “Very well. I’ll overlook it, at least to some extent. Because I trust you.”
That’s not true, Sylvia thought, mentally sticking out her tongue.
Petra Kivilehto was by nature a cold and calculating individual. However, there was no mistaking that she also loved the students of her academy in her role as chairwoman. Her way of compensating for that discrepancy was by never allowing herself to trust others.
“And please do show some care with regard to that other matter.”
“What do you mean?”
By other matter, she was referring, no doubt, to Sylvia’s quest to find Ursula’s whereabouts.
“Have you ever heard about an organization called the Golden Bough Alliance?” she continued.
“Hmm… No, I don’t think so.”
“Neither had I.”
“…What are you trying to say?” Sylvia eyed her suspiciously.
Petra placed her hands on the desk, leaning forward slightly. “Don’t you understand? I’m saying that I, an executive at an IEF, have never heard of them.”
Sylvia said nothing.
“Recently, however, our intelligence networks have caught wind of it. And only after you began to dig deeper into all of this.”
Meaning after she had begun to look into Orga Luxes, too.
“We don’t have any details on them, and, of course, I haven’t had any direct interaction with them…but they’re dangerous. I’m sure of it.”
“So this is just your intuition?”
“Do you disagree?”
Petra truly was outstanding. Her conclusions this time were undoubtedly right on the mark, as always.
But even so, Sylvia wasn’t the kind of person who could accept a warning so easily.
To begin with, she and Petra were practically equal in position, and so there was no need for her to simply accept whatever orders the woman handed down to her. Sylvia used Petra, and Petra used Sylvia. That relationship had remained unchanged ever since the producer had first reached out to her and contracted her to become a songstress.
“I understand. I’ll limit my inquiries. And I’ll be more cautious, too.”
That was the best compromise she could offer.
“…Very well,” Petra said finally, after a long silence.
“—!”
When Claudia returned to her quarters, she startled at the sight of a woman with an overly perfect smile relaxing on the sofa in the middle of the dimly lit room.
“It’s been too long, Claudia.”
“…Mother. It has been a long time.”
She had been taken by surprise for a moment but soon stared back at her mother—Isabella Enfield—with the same flawless smile.
There was no need to ask her how she had entered the room.
After all, as one of the highest executives at Galaxy, the parent body of Seidoukan Academy, Isabella had free reign to go wherever she pleased.
Moreover, if she—or more precisely, she a
nd the other executives—were to seriously consider eliminating her, they would have no difficulty doing so.
It would be trivial, for instance, to force her to drop out of Seidoukan, or imprison her, or even take her life if they so decided. The reason they hadn’t taken such a course of action was due to the meddling of the other foundations, just as Claudia had planned with her announcement—and perhaps more significantly, because moving forward with such a course of action would be all too easy.
No, there were countless ways of dealing with her, but from Galaxy’s perspective, it would be deleterious to give their competitors an opening that could be taken advantage of. They would want to avoid that at all costs, and so they would put off making a real decision until the very last moment.
In fact, Claudia was counting on that.
“And what business do you have with me today?”
“Is it so strange for a mother to want to visit her daughter?”
“Unfortunately, I have no memory of you ever showing any motherly concern for my well-being,” Claudia, her smile unwavering, all but spat out. “But don’t misunderstand me. I still love you, in spite of all that. Father, too.”
“How fortunate. I feel the same way.”
They were both telling the truth. As the top executive of an integrated enterprise foundation, her mother had undergone several series of mental adjustment programs, but she still wasn’t a machine.
There would be no point in even having human executives if they functioned no differently from machines.
As such, Claudia had no doubt that Isabella did indeed love her. That love, however, paled in comparison to what she felt toward Galaxy.
“You didn’t come here to ask me to give up, did you?”
“Of course not. You and I are very similar in that respect. I understand all too well how meaningless that would be.”
At this, Claudia couldn’t help but frown.
Claudia had hated hearing that ever since she had been a young child, but she understood that the woman in front of her was simply incompatible, at a deep, fundamental level, with her own way of being. Isabella was the kind of person who had devoted everything she had to something greater than she was—her foundation—while Claudia was the kind of person who lived only for herself.
“In that case, what did you want with me?” she asked again.
“I came here to ask you something.”
“Did you now?”
“I wanted to ask you for myself just what it is that’s driven you to this folly—your motive, if you will… We don’t understand, so our only option is to speak with you directly.”
“And you expect me to give you an honest answer?”
Isabella seemed unconcerned by the obvious diversion. “Of course. You need to, don’t you, in order to achieve your goal?”
“…”
Claudia remained silent, reminded of just how difficult her mother could be to deal with. Isabella had always been able to see through the actions of others.
“We don’t know what you hope to achieve. However, we do know that you have been trying to force us into taking certain actions, to keep us from making others, and to direct us down a certain path. In order to do that, you will have to give us some more information. So why don’t you tell me now?”
“…Very well.”
It was happening sooner than Claudia had hoped, but that had been her intention.
In any event, she did have to take a few more steps to prepare for the final act. She might as well get it over and done with now.
“I can’t tell you my motive, or my goal, but I am willing to show you some of my cards. Let’s see… How about I start with why you and the rest of Galaxy have to stop me at any cost?”
“…Go on,” Isabella replied, her eyebrow twitching.
“You’re currently detaining the person with whom I want to meet, Professor Ladislav Bartošik. You’re holding him because he was the spiritual leader of the Jade Twilight Incident, and it would be a huge scandal if people were to find out that the person who instigated that incident once belonged to Seidoukan. The reputation of the Academy, not to mention Galaxy itself, would be irreparably spoiled. Which is why you made significant concessions to the other integrated enterprise foundations so they would agree to suspend his trial… Or at least, that’s what everyone believes.” She paused there, taking a seat on the sofa across from Isabella. “However, what you really wanted to bury wasn’t the professor himself, but an Orga Lux he created half by chance—the Varda-Vaos, an Orga Lux with a clear sense of self-awareness and the power to control its own abilities. Or am I mistaken?”
“…And how do you know all this?” Isabella asked, her expression betraying not the slightest hint of surprise or discomposure.
However, Claudia couldn’t mistake the presence of a slight tremor in her voice.
Her mother was human, after all—not a machine.
“The Jade Twilight Incident was caused by students influenced by the Varda-Vaos’s eugenic ideology regarding Genestella. That, more than the possibility of the professor having been involved with it, if handled poorly, could prove to be a far more damaging—perhaps even fatal—revelation. After all, you haven’t even been able to pin down the whereabouts of the Orga Lux, have you? With its ability to brainwash people at large into committing terrorist attacks, who knows, perhaps it might have been involved in any or all of these many incidents taking place throughout the world? And if, after all, it was created by someone at Galaxy, who can say how much responsibility for that will fall onto your shoulders? At the very least, the other integrated enterprise foundations wouldn’t pass up the opportunities offered by such a revelation.”
“…”
Isabella merely stared at her daughter in silence for a long moment.
“Allow me to answer the questions that you’re thinking. How do I know all this? How do I know these things that only Galaxy’s highest executives have access to? It’s simple, I’m afraid. I know because you told me.”
“…I told you?” At this, Isabella’s eyes widened in surprise.
It was an expression Claudia had never before seen on her in her life.
A meaningless, unnecessary sense of joy rose up in her heart before quickly dissipating.
“Or more accurately, I know because you gave me this one when I was little,” Claudia corrected herself, taking the Pan-Dora from its holder at her waist.
“…! No, that’s…”
But her mother, it seemed, had connected the dots.
She truly was outstanding.
“The cost that the Pan-Dora demands of its user is that they continuously experience their own death in their dreams. The dreams fade away and disappear when I wake up—but I can still pick up information from them, even if only in fragments. Of course, the future is always changing, so no matter how many fragments I put together, there’s no way to get an accurate image of things to come. However, it is possible to put together an image of the past.”
“…I see.” Isabella let out a long, deep sigh before rising to her feet. “I understand. It looks like you are far more dangerous than we had imagined.”
“Hee-hee, oh, so you’ve finally realized?” Claudia said with a soft laugh.
For a brief moment, their gazes met with a violent clash, but they both quickly looked away.
“I hope Galaxy will come to the right conclusion,” Claudia said as Isabella headed for the door.
“For my part, I hope you lose tomorrow,” her mother responded without looking back, before leaving the room.
“Hee-hee, hee-hee-hee…! I’m afraid that won’t happen, Mother. I’ve come this far. There’s no room for mistakes now,” Claudia muttered to herself as she tried to suppress the quiet laughter building up in her throat.
In the dimly lit workshop of the Society for the Study of Meteoric Engineering, the silence was disturbed only by the sounds of Saya working at an old, physical keyboard and the hum of countless machines in operatio
n.
“…Hey, Saya. We do have a match tomorrow, you know?” Ayato, sitting on a chair a short distance away from her, said with exasperation.
Saya continued to stare into the air-window in front of her. “That’s why I’m in such a hurry.”
“That’s not what I meant…,” he began, but then he fell silent as he realized there would be little point debating it with her.
The night was already late. Their fifth-round match began at two o’clock the following afternoon, and if they didn’t get any rest now, it would take a toll on them when they needed to be at their best.
Even so, Saya showed no sign of meaning to take a break from her work customizing her Lux. She seemed to have reached the final stage of the process and had put its activator onto a stand from which extended countless electronic cables.
“…It’s my fault it wasn’t ready in time for the main tournament. I don’t want to cause any more problems for the team, so I need to have it ready for the next one.”
“I think not getting enough sleep will be more likely to cause a problem…”
The incident with Team Hellion had taken up a large amount of her time, throwing her planned schedule into disarray, but there was nothing they could have done about that. Claudia and the others understood and would never blame her for something that was out of her control.
Ayato, however, could see that that wasn’t what she was worried about.
“You should get some rest yourself, Ayato.”
“I’m fine. I’ve already taken a short nap… But if I’m distracting you, I’ll go.”
“…No, that’s okay.” Saya put down what she was doing for a moment to shake out her hands.
Silence descended on them yet again, broken only by the sound of her fingers hitting the keyboard as she resumed her work—and of the endless hum of the machines.
Ayato remained silent, simply watching her from behind.
“…Ayato,” she began at last, her hands still working away.
“Yeah?”
“Have you thought about what you’ll do next?”
“About the future, you mean?”
“What you’ll do after we win, and Haru wakes up.”