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Chapter 41: Chapter 4.4

"You just wanted love. You wanted someone to see and accept you. That\'s all."

"No!"

Hel\'s pupils had dilated; she adjusted her grip on the hilt of her military sword and raised it high. The blade closed in on Siesta\'s throat—but Siesta dodged it lightly, and the tip sliced through empty air. Hel\'s attacks didn\'t seem as spirited as they had earlier. Siesta\'s theory had been right on the money.

"Then why are you so upset?"

I fired at Hel\'s feet to keep her at bay.

"...!" Hel scowled a little, retreating temporarily.

"Let me rephrase that. Why did you switch personalities with Alicia back there?" Siesta asked a second question as she kept her gun trained on Hel. "Because you actually hoped I wouldn\'t aim at anything vital if you did? ... No. You just wanted to hurt her."

"...Well, I won\'t deny that. After all, I was born just to take on the pain of the dominant personality. Maybe I had some desire for revenge."

"Yes. Yes, that\'s right. You have emotions. You aren\'t a plant...and you\'re certainly not a monster," Siesta said. "However...you\'re still lying."

"...Lying..."

"The real reason you\'re forcing Alicia to take that pain isn\'t a thirst for revenge. It\'s jealousy."

"—! Silence!"

Hel flew into a rage. By the time I realized what was happening, she\'d leveled her sword and locked blades with Siesta.

"You were jealous of Alicia. She\'d caused you all that suffering, and yet she\'d found companions in myself and my assistant. You hated her so, so much...and you envied her."

"No... No, no!"

"I\'m not wrong. You just wanted to be loved. You wanted friends." "Silence!" Hel\'s red eyes glowed.

"You are going to kill yourself, here and now...!"

The next moment, Siesta had drawn her handgun from its holster and set it against her own temple.

Hel had used her ability, that power to interfere with human consciousness and control actions.

However—

"Siesta, you\'re not going to die."

When I spoke, Siesta promptly released the gun.

"Wh-why...?" Hel stared at us, confused, and Siesta explained.

"It\'s simple. I trust my assistant more than anyone else—even myself." Siesta glanced at me, then spoke to the ultimate enemy who dominated the field in front of her. "Even if my mind tries to embrace its own death, if he firmly denies it, then I\'ll believe him without a second thought. That\'s all it is."

"...! Then..." Hel\'s eyes turned to me. At that— "Assistant, you won\'t die, either," Siesta said to me. It was the spell that held our odd partnership together.

We both trusted each other more than we trusted ourselves. That was all it was.

Really, that was all.

This one minor thing, unconsciously cultivated over those three years, made us invincible.

And that was the one and only way to cancel out the brainwashing inflicted by those red eyes.

She could say whatever she wanted to try to take control of my mind, but if someone I trusted more spoke to me, I would be free again.

To me, that "someone" was Siesta—and to Siesta, it was me.

If you say that\'s a deus ex machina development, well, at least call it the power of our bond, all right? It had taken three years to develop, too disgustingly stubborn for us to break even if we wanted to.

"—! A bond? That\'s just— That\'s not...!"

She didn\'t want to admit it, but she couldn\'t summon the words to deny it, either.

Hel dropped her sword, holding her head. This was probably the plan Siesta had come up with.

If we were going to save Alicia, of course we couldn\'t kill her body. We\'d have to remove Hel\'s personality—and so Siesta had struck at Hel\'s psychological contradiction, trying to destabilize her emotionally.

"That\'s right, Hel. You don\'t have to obey that sacred text. You don\'t have to kill anyone else. You can have friends without those things. You\'ll create bonds, too."

I could see what Siesta was trying to do. "You don\'t have to force yourself to listen to what that Seed guy says..."

But before I could continue—

"I can\'t afford to lose." Hel retrieved the red-hilted military sword. When she raised her head, her eyes were blazing red.

"Hel, you\'re..."

"I admit it." As Hel turned to face Siesta, she wasn\'t wavering the tiniest bit. "I wanted to be loved. I wanted to be needed. I wanted someone to say that my birth had meaning... But nobody would have done it. It isn\'t that I wanted companions, no matter who they were. I just wanted Father to love me. I wanted him to accept me."

Hel pointed the tip of her blade at Siesta.

"And I\'ll live, fight, and destroy the world for it. That is my survival instinct."

It was something completely unbreakable, an enormous evil—a conviction. "That\'s fine."

The only one who could confront this enemy of the world was the ace detective. With her gun at the ready, Siesta accepted the declaration of war.

"We\'ve killed the plants. We\'ve rendered your red eyes useless. All you

have left is that sword. Let\'s settle this, shall we?" "Getting cocky because this is gun versus blade?" "No. It\'s because this is me versus you."

"You\'re really irritating."

"No matter how we met, I\'m sure we never would have gotten along." "You\'ve got that right. So let\'s end it here." Hel lowered her center of

gravity, poised to draw her sword.

With lightning speed, she slashed at Siesta—and just then... "...! An earthquake...?"

Out of nowhere, the ground bulged upward; with a roar, it began to crack.

Did we miss some of the roots? I wondered, and I\'d braced myself, when— "Assistant! Look out!" Siesta shoved me hard, sending me flying.

The next instant, the ground jolted up dramatically. A large rift opened between me and Siesta—and something emerged from the ground.

It looked like a huge reptile, and its grotesque coloring seemed familiar. However, it was much larger than it had been before, a full ten meters long now. As the earth rumbled, it bellowed—and then it spotted its target.

"Siesta...!"

The biological weapon had been revived: Betelgeuse. Its eyeless head was turned toward Siesta and Hel. "—Over here, monster...!"

I squeezed the trigger of my Magnum until I was out of bullets...but Betelgeuse didn\'t seem to care. It faced the others, ribbons of drool trickling from its enormous lower jaw.

"Is it...hungry...?"

Betelgeuse was a monster that ate human hearts.

There were two people on the other side—and a hungry monster was bound to prioritize numbers over anything else.

"Siesta!"

Beyond the huge monster, I caught a glimpse of a girl with pale silver hair. Immediately afterward, there was a howl like a whale\'s moan—and then a large burst of red like a flower.

In that last instant, my eyes met the girl\'s, and she seemed to be smiling.

To the most......person in the world

"Bitten by my own hound."

After the dust cleared, what I saw—was Betelgeuse\'s enormous body. Even after its vicious rampage, it was lying on the ground, with Hel\'s foot planted on its head.

And— "Siesta..."

My partner was lying on her back. Red blood was dripping from the left side of her chest.

"They were keeping it isolated in the lab, but maybe the smell of food drew it here," Hel commented, then stabbed her sword into Betelgeuse\'s neck. The monster seemed to be dead already.

"Oh, I want you to stay where you are for a bit. Don\'t move."

Her red eyes glowed...and I stopped in my tracks. Before I even knew what I was doing, my feet were trying to run toward Siesta.

"I\'ve lost a little too much blood..."

Keeping me pinned with her ability, Hel walked right in front of me toward Siesta, her steps unsteady. Now that I was paying attention, I saw that the left side of Hel\'s chest was also deeply wounded, and dark red blood was streaming down her front.

"Now then." Hel reached down toward Siesta. "...! Don\'t you touch her!"

I tried to run toward Hel...but my body wouldn\'t move. It was like I\'d turned to stone. If I wanted to undo the brainwashing from those red eyes, someone I trusted from the bottom of my heart had to be there with me. And she was gone.

"My heart\'s been damaged again, you see. I need to trade it for a new one," Hel murmured.

Of course. In London, as Jack the Devil, she\'d stolen heart after heart. It had been trial and error, a search for the one that would be most compatible with her body. Now, since Betelgeuse had attacked her heart and damaged it, she was trying to get a new one again—from Siesta.

"...! Stop! If you want a heart, I\'ll give you mine! Just not her... Anyone but Siesta!"

"I told you earlier, remember?" Hel briefly stopped moving and glanced at me. "You\'re going to be my partner one day. That means you have to take care of your life...doesn\'t it?"

Hel narrowed her red eyes—then plunged her right arm into Siesta\'s bloodied chest.

"Stop...!"

But my body wouldn\'t move. I couldn\'t even blink as I watched the horrible scene play out.

"I\'ll take the ace detective\'s heart. Now I\'ll be unequaled." Hel drew her right hand out of Siesta\'s lifeless body. A pulsing heart rested on her palm.

"S-Siesta..."

All I could do was stare in a daze. As I watched, Hel reached into the hole in the left side of her own chest, took out her own heart, and casually crushed it in her hand, then pushed Siesta\'s heart against her chest. The heart slipped into her body, as if that was where it had always belonged.

And it was over.

In just a few motions, Hel had stolen Siesta\'s heart.

"Finally, I\'ve found a heart good enough for me. Now I\'m sure Father will...," Hel murmured with satisfaction. She didn\'t spare a glance for Siesta\'s corpse. She just looked at the sky behind her. A white moon was shining there.

"Siesta..."

Numb and drained, I stumbled over the broken ground to Siesta. Hel\'s work was done; I\'d been released. I tripped several times before I finally reached my partner\'s body.

"Siesta."

Kneeling, I pulled her bloodied corpse into my arms. Her body was small and thin. I didn\'t have to check her breathing to know she was dead. Her eyes were still open. I closed them with the palm of my hand, then wiped away the blood that had spattered her pale face with my fingers.

"Siesta." I called to her, one more time. There was no answer. Of course there wasn\'t. The detective was already dead.

"...—, ......—!"

I\'d thought I wouldn\'t cry. After all, she hadn\'t been my lover or my friend. We were only business partners with a common interest. Siesta wasn\'t special to me at all.

And yet no matter how many times I wiped them away, drops of water kept falling onto her face.

"...I\'m sorry."

With a trembling hand, I stroked her head, cradled in the crook of my arm. As before, Siesta still didn\'t answer.

"Give it back." Instead, I spoke to Hel.

Gently laying Siesta\'s body back down on the ground, I used what strength

I had left to stand up.

"Give it back? Give what back?" Hel turned around, apparently mystified. "That heart belongs to Siesta. You\'re going to give it back."

"That\'s out of the question. This is mine now." As Hel spoke, she set her hand over the left side of her chest.

And something inside me snapped. "Don\'t touch Siesta with that filthy hand!"

The next thing I knew, my feet were moving. Everything in me wanted that thing dead—my body, my bones, my flesh, my blood. I drew my knife and lunged at Hel.

"I don\'t understand." Knocking my knife aside with the guard of her sword, Hel frowned. "The first time we met, you told me you didn\'t trust anyone but yourself."

I swung my blade over and over...but before long, Hel gave me a look of disgust and slashed my right arm. The knife fell to the ground. Okay, then—, I thought, clenching my left hand into a fist.

"...So it\'s come to this, then. Your fist won\'t reach me." Hel\'s red eyes glowed, and my body froze up again. "But now, you\'re bleeding out and yet you refuse to relax your fist. As you try to strike me, your bloodshot eyes are even redder than mine. Why?" she asked. "Where is that anger coming from? Is it because of what you mentioned earlier? That bond?" She wasn\'t finished asking.

"What were you? What were you to her?"

My raised fist wouldn\'t move. Maybe because of the blood I\'d lost, my feet weren\'t steady, either. Still, I flogged my stalled brain and thought.

What had I been to Siesta?

I didn\'t need Hel to ask me that. I\'d been thinking about it myself, all this

time.

How had she seen me?

But it was too late to know now. The dead won\'t tell you a thing. I didn\'t know what Siesta had thought of me, and I\'d lost all hope of ever finding out.

Still...

I thought with my unsteady brain. What if I turned the question around? What had I thought of Siesta?

That day, we\'d met in midair at ten thousand meters, and we\'d traveled together for the past three years.

...Frankly speaking, I\'d been sick of it.

After all the crap I\'d been dragged into before, I\'d loved ordinary routine more than anybody, and I\'d wanted to stay in that tepid bath forever. But she\'d dragged me out of there—and that leap out of the window at the cultural festival had ultimately been a leap into the extraordinary.

I don\'t know how many times I\'d prayed to the gods, and to the ace detective, to give me a break.

Listen, do you have any idea how many times I almost died?

How many times did I get injured, or pulled into gunfights, or go for three days without food or water, or camp in bear-infested mountains, or chase murderers, or get kidnapped, or locked up, or fight pseudohumans and biological weapons, and get into unfair situations, and after all of it hear my partner say, "Are you stupid, Kimi?"—

Do you have any idea how many times I smiled?

Siesta acts cool most of the time, but did you know it\'s actually pretty easy to make her laugh? She doesn\'t like people seeing her be too genuine, so whenever she feels a laugh coming on, she always turns away from me, takes half a minute to get her face back to normal, and then gives me an "Are you stupid, Kimi?" I crack up watching her, and Siesta gets cranky, and that\'s the full routine.

She\'s more of a kid than you\'d think.

It\'s fine for her to tease other people, but she won\'t let anyone tease her. She\'s bad at lying. She\'s bad at being social, too. She can\'t wake up in the

mornings. She can\'t even wake up at noon. She sleeps a lot, eats a lot. When I buy two kinds of cake, she gets mad if I try to pick one first. And then she eats them both. And enjoys the hell out of it. Then, when she sees me watching her and laughing because she\'s completely unbelievable, she takes her fork, scoops off the bit with the strawberry on it, and holds it out to me.

That was what Siesta was like.

You think she was an ace detective who fought the world\'s enemies? That wasn\'t what she really was.

Yeah. I only stayed with Siesta because she was fun.

Yes, I\'d had way more than my fill of hardship and pain and bitterness over the past three years.

But in a thousand unfair cases, I\'d smiled ten thousand times. I\'d smiled with her.

"Just what kind of relationship did Siesta and I have, you ask? How did I feel about her?"

That\'s been completely obvious right from the start.

Strength flowed back into me—or maybe it was an adrenaline rush. My bones creaked; my muscles shook; my blood boiled. I didn\'t really care, though. This might just destroy my body, but it didn\'t matter. As long as I took out Siesta\'s enemy, that would be enough.

"You broke the mind control..." I saw Hel, her red eyes wide.

I raised my left arm, which was wet with blood, and yelled out my feelings for my partner, who would never hear them.

"She\'s the most precious person in the world to me!"

My clenched fist bore down on Hel; her face was right in front of me.

Just before I made contact—

"I\'m incredibly grateful for that love confession, but are you planning to scar up your beloved\'s face?"

I heard some rather familiar snark.

I\'ll come to see you, one more time

For a moment, I didn\'t know where the voice had come from. "...Huh?"

Hel didn\'t seem to know, either. She cocked her head, her face expressionless.

This was extremely weird.

The mystery voice I\'d just heard had been exactly the same as the voice of the person standing in front of me.

What the hell?

As my mind jammed with question marks, the girl in the military uniform suddenly dropped the saber she\'d been holding. Then she stared at the results of her own action in surprise. It was as if, for the past couple of minutes, another will had been controlling her movements and speech.

"What... Hmm? ...This...is..."

Hel\'s face spasmed.

Then, in the next instant, the color of her right eye changed from red to blue.

"Siesta, is it you?"

The left half of Hel\'s face was astounded. The other half was watching me steadily.

Now I was sure of it: Siesta was alive, inside Hel!

"No, that... That\'s—ridiculous..." Hel\'s red left eye glared at the blue one right beside it. "You won\'t...get away with this... Taking...over my body...

without...permission..."

"Be quiet. I\'m talking with him right now." The girl squeezed her eyes shut tightly. When she opened them again, both were blue.

"Siesta, you..."

"I went and made you cry, didn\'t I?" There was no mistake. It was her.

She was borrowing the body of Hel, her mortal enemy, but the one speaking to me was Siesta. That fact made my knees go weak, and my eyes grew hot again.

Siesta was still alive. "Siesta, I\'m..."

"Assistant, there\'s no time, so listen carefully." But Siesta didn\'t bask in the joy of our reunion. She just kept on talking to me. "The thing is, my heart is rather special. For example, by moving my own consciousness into it, I\'m able to hold on to my sense of self inside someone else\'s body."

"That\'s..."

Was it similar to the phenomenon of memory transference? There had been cases all over the world of organ transplant recipients inheriting the memories and preferences of their donors.

Since Hel had stolen Siesta\'s heart, Siesta\'s memories and awareness had also been partially transplanted into Hel. That was how Siesta was borrowing her body to speak—

"I came up with several different plans, but it really would have been difficult to defeat Hel in the truest sense of the word."

"...! Siesta, are you saying you—?!"

"Yes, this was the only way. I had to infiltrate Hel and repress her mind.

That was the only way to oppose her."

...! Meaning that back then, Siesta had intentionally... She\'d known she was going to die!

That wasn\'t— That was just ludicrous!

"I told you, didn\'t I? A real ace detective resolves the incident before it occurs. I\'d known for a long time that things would turn out like this."

"No... That\'s not fair... All along, you..."

So she\'d been able to see our destination right from the start?

In that case, why... Why?

"Because if I\'d told you, you would have stopped me." Siesta, wearing

Hel\'s form, gave a rather lonely smile. "I have a favor to ask you, Kimi." "...No way."

"Listen."

"No."

"Are you stupid, Kimi? This is no time to be stubborn and you know it," she said, putting out a hand and stroking my head. "I\'ll infiltrate this body and keep Hel\'s vicious personality in check. If I do, Alicia\'s personality should wake up again."

"...! She will?!"

"Yes. After all, this body has Cerberus\'s ability... You understand what that means, don\'t you?"

...Ah, I get it. The three heads of Hades\' guard dog. She was saying this body could house up to three people. Alicia and Hel had already been there, and now Siesta had joined them.

"She may have lost her memory again, but I want you to ask for her help— and someday, I want you to defeat SPES."

That had been Siesta\'s true secret plan.

The one and only stratagem to defeat Hel and let Alicia live.

"—! But then what happens to you? If Alicia\'s personality wakes up, then yours will disappear along with Hel, right?! Don\'t you dare... I won\'t let you!"

Sacrifice Siesta to save Alicia? If that was the solution, I didn\'t want it! It didn\'t matter what form she took. We could even be enemies.

As long as you, your mind, is still alive somewhere, that\'s enough for me.

So I won\'t let you do anything this selfish!

"I thought you\'d say that." Siesta gave another ghost of a smile. "It\'s going to be all right, though. Alicia has things I don\'t. I\'m sure you\'ll be able to get along well with her. Remember those two weeks," she told me gently.

"—I told you, don\'t act like this is decided! I haven\'t agreed to..." Just then, the ground rocked under my feet.

Had I lost too much blood? No, that wasn\'t it... I smelled something sweet. In one buoyant moment, a euphoric and fuzzy feeling swept over my mind.

Through dimming eyes, I saw that an enormous flower had bloomed from the corpse of the biological weapon.

It was pollen.

The sweet-smelling powder drifted to us on the wind.

"...Maybe this is fate as well. It\'s been three years since then." Siesta gave a troubled smile.

Three years... Oh. The Miss Hanako incident at the cultural festival, three years ago. This pollen was the drug that had rampaged through my middle school.

"So it came from a flower from this thing\'s body, huh...?"

I knew what these conditions meant, even though I desperately didn\'t want to.

"No... I don\'t want to...forget..."

The very first side effect of ingesting this pollen was memory trouble. Inhaling this much of it had to carry a substantial risk. I might forget these three years entirely, and all about Siesta, everything—

"It\'s all right."

Maybe Hel\'s body had an immunity to the pollen; Siesta was still standing firm. As I swayed, she let me lean on her shoulder.

"Well, you may forget a little. What happened here, for example, or the things I\'ve told you. Still." She smiled. "You won\'t forget me. You won\'t abandon your mission. You\'ll sigh and whine that it\'s not fair, and you\'ll keep working with Alicia for me."

"That\'s...not okay... I won\'t..."

By that point I couldn\'t even stand, and I sank down right where I was. Black was creeping in at the corners of my vision, and it was getting harder to hear.

"I\'m...your assistant... I won\'t...be...anybody else\'s...partner..." "...Ha-ha. That\'s a nice thing to hear, here at the end."

I was sitting down. Putting a hand on my shoulder, she smiled softly at me. Was this another side effect of the pollen? Was I hallucinating? Hel was our mortal enemy, but right now, I could only see the partner I\'d spent three

years with.

"I don\'t...want to forget... You\'ll... I\'ll...always..."

"I\'m telling you, it\'s all right. Remember what I said? This whole time, we\'ve trusted each other more than we trust ourselves."

"...So, I should...believe...what you say?" "Exactly. Have I ever been wrong?"

...No, she hadn\'t. Not once.

You were always right. Way too right.

Every once in a while—I wanted you to be wrong.

But my throat wouldn\'t let those words out.

"The next time you wake up, I\'m sure I won\'t be there anymore, but..."

Live. And thrive.

Was it my imagination? Siesta looked like she was crying. She wouldn\'t cry, though.

Was it because she was in a different body?

With large tears trickling down her cheeks, Siesta grabbed my shoulders and shouted.

"Listen to me!

I won\'t forget you, Kimi!

Even if a ruthless enemy hijacks my mind, even if I forget everything else, I\'ll remember you!

It may take a while! A week, maybe!

Or a month!

Or a year!

It may take a long time! Even so, I promise—!

This body will come to see you, one more time! I swear, I swear it will!"

After I heard all that, I slumped over onto the ground.

In the last glimpse I caught of Siesta, she was smiling through her tears.