“It’s true that I represent destiny right now, in a way,” said Makina. “Killing me would solve most of the problems you’re facing right now. But how will you do it? It might be interesting if you could, but you’re surely not so naive as to think I’m going to leave this room, are you?” She gazed at Yuichi from inside the tower.
If he left the corridor, he would die. That meant he couldn’t enter the tower.
And yet, dragging one leg behind him, Yuichi started walking towards her. His right leg was nearly useless, but it could just support his weight. His left arm was in a bad way, too.
“I thought I didn’t have to worry about you,” Yuichi said determinedly. “I thought that whatever you were doing, it was none of my business. Someone’s dying right now, somewhere in the world. Whether through an accident, premeditation, or simple malice, I thought, ‘These things happen.’”
He steadied his breathing. It was fine to be angry, he reminded himself, but he mustn’t let that swallow him up.
“But you people are different, aren’t you? Just because you’re bored and have time to kill... you use people like pieces on a board, toy with them, and erase them, claiming they’re just ‘stories.’ You set yourselves up as gods and play with people’s destinies. You put them up on a low-rent stage, then jeer when they don’t amuse you.”
His every movement was a reminder of the pain his body was in. He was in awful shape. Yet he was confident that he could still call upon just enough power to pound her into the floor.
“Damn you people!” he snapped. “Who do you think you are? What do you think Orihara is? What people are? I’ve made a decision: I’m gonna crush each and every one of you! I’m gonna make it so you can never play your stupid games again!”
“That’s a nice head of steam you’ve got going, but it’s comical in the extreme,” said Makina. “Have you forgotten the situation you’re in? So blinded by your rage, you can’t see that all the realities of the world are standing in your way. Or do you think your anger will awaken something? Some convenient power to burst through the situation? If so, then by all means, try it... That would be interesting, in its own way.”
Makina continued to watch Yuichi from her position inside the tower. There was a faint smile on her lips. She must be quite interested in seeing what Yuichi had planned.
“I’m not going to awaken anything. I already have the power to crush you. Right here, right now.” Yuichi focused his power into his right arm. He was just going to walk up to her and punch her. That was the only thought in his mind.
“Now, wait just a minute, here...” Makina stared at Yuichi in disbelief. “Are you actually so stupid you’re just going to charge me, blindly? I thought that you’d grasped the scope of my abilities.”
“I made up my mind that I’m going to slug you,” he answered. He could only do that if he was standing next to her; therefore, he had to walk up to her.
“It just seems such a boring way to die...” Makina said.
Yuichi set his left leg into the tower. If he left the corridor, he would die. Yuichi didn’t care. He pulled his dragging right leg into the tower, too.
That instant, Yuichi’s heart stopped.
✽✽✽✽✽
Makina watched it all happen, dumbfounded.
At first, she couldn’t tell exactly what had just happened. She had to sort out the order of events in her mind.
Yuichi had entered the tower, and his heart had stopped. Then he had pounded his right fist into his chest.
“Uh?” Makina grunted now, slack-jawed, in a voice she almost didn’t recognize as her own.
“I was wondering how it would come. Is that all it is?” Yuichi continued walking towards Makina, completely unfazed.
“How did you...”
“You think a person dies just because their heart stops beating?” Yuichi asked. “Give me a break.”
“What are you talking about?!” she exclaimed.
If someone’s heart stopped, they died. They just stopped moving. She considered that a fundamental law of the universe. The idea of something happening to contradict that had never entered her mind.
“With proper training, you can keep moving for a little while even after your heart stops,” Yuichi said. “And if you can move, you can get your heart started again. It’s pretty simple.”
Yuichi stated this so matter-of-factly, Makina actually began to find it plausible. But... no, surely it wasn’t possible. There was no way a person could restart their own heart.
“Yuichi Sakaki! If you move from that spot, you will die!” she commanded, setting a new rule for her closed space.
In a typical death game thriller, ridiculous rules were enforced onto the participants, but they were neutral and impartial. The story wouldn’t work if they weren’t; there was nothing interesting about a story where the rules kept changing on the fly.
But in Makina’s case, such principles were self-imposed. She only employed them for her own amusement, which meant that if she felt like it, she could always change the rules at any time.
Makina waited for the power of her words to activate. But Yuichi kept walking forward.
This time, he didn’t even act like his heart had stopped. He just kept walking towards Makina.
“Impossible...” she whispered. Why hadn’t it worked?
Yuichi answered, as if he’d read her mind. “The same move won’t work twice.”
“Ah...” How could he claim that? Yet, Makina realized, there might be worldviews where such rules were in place. Yuichi Sakaki seemed to believe it as a fundamental law of the universe. For him, it went without saying. He didn’t have a moment’s doubt.
“Yuichi Sakaki cannot get within five meters of Makina Shikitani!” she shouted.
“To hell with your damn rules!” Yuichi barked, his voice loud enough to shake the tower.
Then, without a pause, he stepped within a five meter radius of Makina.
Makina was dumbstruck. She had no idea what was happening.
“I don’t have to follow any stupid rules you set on a whim,” said Yuichi. “What gives you the right to do that, anyway? Because you’re an Outer? You have the power to control destiny? To hell with that! I don’t have to go along with anything you say!”
What was playing out before Makina’s eyes flipped her understanding of the world completely on its head. She had lived for a long time, and she had acquired enormous knowledge in that time, through experience. Yet nothing she had seen would have ever suggested that a person could nullify her powers solely with willpower and determination.
Yuichi arrived in front of Makina. He was within arm’s reach now; close enough to strike.
“Do you really want to challenge me in hand-to-hand combat?” Makina demanded. “You saw me take out that student, didn’t you?”
Yet Makina regretted the words even as she said them. Why did she have to speak so highly of herself?
“You really think master-level martial arts is enough to go toe-to-toe with me?” Yuichi replied, as if seeing right through her.
Right on the money. Makina had no faith that her meager martial arts skill could mount a challenge against Yuichi. He was a high school student with an injured left arm and a right leg that he was dragging behind him. Yet she was the one who didn’t stand a chance.
“I-I’ll take the girls behind you as hostages...” Her voice cracked. How long had it been since she’d felt this emotion? Long enough that she couldn’t actually remember the last time.
“Go ahead and try,” Yuichi said.
The girls behind him showed no sign of moving. They had put their faith entirely in Yuichi.
Makina couldn’t use her ability to kill someone who wasn’t moving. She couldn’t set rules that resulted in unavoidable death.
Yuichi’s eyes seemed tranquil as they rested on Makina, but he couldn’t fully hide the fire burning behind them.
Makina was like a deer in the headlights. Yet, she remembered, she still
had one final sanctuary.
Inviolable Domain, her protective barrier. Yuichi had already acknowledged its existence, so he shouldn’t be able to break through it now.
Makina’s confidence returned. This series of irregular events had almost caused her to lose her cool. But Makina was an Outer, a being who existed outside of destiny. She was not bound by a natural lifespan; if there was ever any chance for her to survive, no matter how slight, she would.
“You think you can’t die?” Yuichi asked, reading her mind once again.
The way he kept doing that sent a chill up her spine. But once again, she reminded herself that it didn’t matter. No matter what he said, he was still powerless against an immortal like her.
“I’m going to hit you with my ultimate strike,” Yuichi said. “You can’t dodge it. You can’t block it. It’s going to hit, and you’re going to die. Which means you’re at the end of your rope.”
Surely, it’s a bluff, Makina told herself. There was no move that powerful. No such technique existed within her vast storehouse of knowledge, especially since Yuichi had shown no sign of being able to defy her defensive rule.
Yuichi just stood there. He wasn’t even in a fighting stance.
It snapped into place. If there was really an “ultimate strike,” then naturally, it wouldn’t have any special stance.
Fear.
She suddenly remembered the name of the feeling that had been monopolizing her heart all this time: the fear of death. That emotion she had forgotten for so long had now taken her as its prisoner.
Makina was terrified.
Yuichi Sakaki was just standing there, with arms at his sides, yet this terrified her from the bottom of her heart. Once she remembered the name of that feeling, it was like plunging backwards into an abyss.
Her legs trembled. Her heart pounded an alarm. Her breath grew short. Her eyes darted about.
It felt as if time had stopped.
Her entire body was on high alert, her every sense focused on detecting some sign of what Yuichi was about to do.
“Plea—” Even she wasn’t sure what she was trying to say, yet the instant she opened her mouth, the words were cut off.
Yuichi’s right fist was buried in her torso.
An invisible strike. He had not telegraphed it in any way, nor had she perceived the movement itself. It had pierced through her defensive membrane, eliminated any chance of dodging, broken her ribs, and buried itself deep in her trunk.
There was not a fragment of waste in the application of power. It was a direction of force almost bizarre in its straightforwardness, produced for no purpose but to deal a fatal blow.
A blow sufficient to take the life of Makina, of an Outer.
She couldn’t escape.
Any possible chance of survival seemed to fly from her.
That lone strike would send Makina plummeting into the ravine of death.
✽✽✽✽✽
“That was a bluff, by the way!” Mutsuko said offhandedly.
“Huh? What?” Aiko and Mutsuko had been watching the battle since arriving at Kanako’s side.
“He called it ultimate, but it’s not, not really,” Mutsuko explained. “It’s not even close to complete, and he needs a lot more training! But see, the buildup declaration is part of the move. It puts the opponent on high alert. Then, when they’re tense all over, you strike!”
“Um, what about her defensive membrane thing? Shouldn’t it have bounced off of that?” Aiko asked as she tried to touch Mutsuko, finding she was able to do so without resistance. Makina’s defeat had loosened her power’s grip upon them.
“It seemed to be a force deflection field, so you just have to use a punch so straightforward that the force can’t be redirected,” said Mutsuko. “Well, that’s part of the ‘ultimate strike’ thing. It’s sort of like hitting a sphere at its very center!”
Aiko decided there was no point in acting shocked anymore, so she decided to ask about another point that had puzzled her. It was about Yuichi’s statement that you could move even after your heart stopped.
“I mean... wouldn’t having your heart stop kill you?” Aiko asked. That’s what her common sense told her, and it was likely that anyone would agree.
“You can keep moving for quite a while, even after your heart stops,” said Mutsuko. “I hear brown bears can keep moving around and attacking people after they’re shot in the heart, and a lion shot at 200 meters can still have enough force to pounce on a hunter!”
“Right, but... Sakaki is a human being...” Aiko faltered. To be frank, she was starting to doubt whether that were true.
“Even a human can move for about ten seconds, y’know?” said Mutsuko. “It’s just it’s hard to move properly unless you train for it. Without a flow of blood to the brain, you black out really quickly. Your body starts to stiffen and turns heavy, like you’re all tied up with weights. Your breathing turns shallow and it’s hard to fill your lungs, like you just ran the hundred meters while holding your breath, and when you finally try to breathe in, you don’t have the strength.”
“You make it sound like you’ve experienced it yourself...” Aiko could hardly believe her ears, but she had a sneaking suspicion that Mutsuko’s words had the weight of experience behind them.
“That’s woman power!” Mutsuko declared. “I’ve tried it a bunch of times! Hey, you want to have a near-death experience sometime too, Noro?”
“No, thank you. I’ll pass,” Aiko demurred forcefully. So her sneaking suspicion had been right.
“Human limits are a lot higher than you think!” Mutsuko proclaimed. “The key is just getting used to them! Training can let you move to some degree even after your heart stops, and there’s a huge difference in what you can do when you’re having your heart stopped for the first time, and after you’ve had a ton of experience with it!”
“Oh, okay. So it’s just a thing you have to get used to, huh?” Aiko deadpanned.
“He also has to train for how to stop his opponent’s heart, and that’s hard to get the hang of unless you train on yourself!” Mutsuko added excitedly. “It’s really useful practice for moving your body to its utmost limits, too! Hey, I bet Yu could get into the Guinness Book of World Records for number of times his heart stopped!”
It seemed to Aiko that Yuichi would probably not want to have that memorialized.
“Anyway, should we really be standing here talking about this?” Aiko asked. “Sakaki was acting so scary... do you think he really killed her?” She had no idea what had happened to Makina after he’d hit her.
“Well, it’s no skin off my nose if she dies, personally,” said Mutsuko. “But Yu’s a big softie, so he probably didn’t go that far! The stuff about killing was all part of the bluff!”
“Really?” Aiko asked, feeling relieved. Even from this distance, she could tell just how angry he had been. The thought that he might kill her hadn’t seemed implausible.
“Um, so what should we do? Should we go in there?” Aiko asked, pointing to the Black Tower. It seemed like they should check on how they were doing.
“I think it’s okay,” Mutsuko said. “Look, Yu’s back!”
Yuichi walked towards them, holding Natsuki in one arm. He gently laid her down next to the girls. His leg was feeling better, so he wasn’t dragging it anymore.
“Is it okay to assume the situation is resolved?” Yuichi checked with Mutsuko.
“Good question!” she answered. “It looks like Makina’s ability has lost effect, but what about this castle? It’s Orihara’s...”
Mutsuko trailed off as she looked up at the ceiling. Dust and small pebbles were starting to rain down on them.
“Orihara, do you know what’s going on?” Yuichi asked, nervously. If this castle was the product of Kanako’s imagination, she should have some idea.
“Um... I feel like it’s slipped out of my hands... I don’t feel like I can use magic anymore...” Kanako said, apologetically. The label above her head
had returned to “Isekai Fanatic.”
The corridor let out a creak. The floor began to undulate, as if the hall were twisting around them. One of the pillars fell, letting out a leaden sound, and larger pieces of rubble began to fall.
“Ah, how to put it... I feel like we’ve been through this before?” Aiko said, and they all traded a look.
“It’s breaking down! What a cliché!” Mutsuko cried, with a strange note of delight in her voice.
“Sis, take Takeuchi and go on ahead!” Yuichi shouted.
“Hey! What are you gonna do, Yu?”
“I’m going to get Shikitani,” he said. “She might be a creep, but I couldn’t sleep at night knowing I’d left her to die.”
“What about the damage you took?” Mutsuko asked.
“As long as I’m not dead, I can keep going. I’ll be fine. You know that much, right?” Yuichi said, smiling confidently.
“Yeah! I know that best of all, even if you don’t tell me! So, let’s go! I’ll carry Takeuchi!” Mutsuko hefted Natsuki onto her back and began to stride towards the White Tower without looking back. Aiko started to follow her, then noticed that Kanako wasn’t next to her anymore.
“Orihara?” Aiko turned back.
Kanako had run past Yuichi, and for some reason, she was heading for the Black Tower.
“Noro! Let Yu handle her! Let’s go!” Mutsuko called.
“O-Okay!” Despite her hesitance, Aiko seemed to decide to trust Yuichi, and she hurried along her way.
Yuichi pursued Kanako in a panic.
He wasn’t at his best right now, and moving around took a lot of effort. He could probably move all right if he wrung out the last of his power, but this didn’t seem like the time for that yet.
As he arrived inside the Black Tower, he could see the gray walls and ceiling beginning to crumble. He could see the school building, inverted, through the cracks in the walls.
Kanako was standing next to Makina, holding her staff aloft.
It would be easy for him to jump out and stop her. But he didn’t. She wouldn’t die from one hit with a staff. And in his opinion, given what Makina had done to her, Kanako had the right to strike her.
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