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Chapter 49: Chapter 1.6

"I mean, if you hadn\'t, they would have killed me." "...!"

The reflection\'s expression slipped—more like shattered, really.

"Six years ago, we learned SPES\'s secret. Alicia wasn\'t able to take the seed, and she was killed. My body was too frail to be of use to SPES. They would have killed me too, before long. They should have. But then you appeared."

Natsunagi looked steadily at her other self in the mirror.

"Hel, by insisting that you could be useful to SPES, you kept them from

disposing of me. When you swore loyalty to Seed, you were trying to save my life. It was all for my sake. In order to protect me, you became a devil."

"...! You can\'t prove any of that. What proof do you have that I\'m that soft?" Hel was breathing roughly.

"You said it yourself. You let the facility\'s children get away." Natsunagi hadn\'t let a single word Hel said slip past her. She went on building her theory. "You said you intended to make yourself special to Seed, but that\'s not convincing. You have a heart. You can feel sympathy for others."

"A human heart? ...That\'s impossible. You know how many innocent people I killed in London."

"You\'re right. And it\'s not a minor crime. But you did that to save me, too."

"...!" Hel\'s red eyes widened.

"One year ago, in the fight with Siesta, you lost your heart. That meant my body would die."

It had happened right after the battle between the humanoid weapon and the biological weapon in London. Using her hand mirror, Siesta had turned Hel\'s red eyes against her, and Hel had run her own heart through with her sword. Not only had it been a life-or-death crisis for Hel, but it should have meant death for her master. "After Cerberus died, you made it look as if you were continuing his Jack the Devil killings...but you were actually searching for a compatible heart for me."

"...! But the ace detective didn\'t say a word about that last year. She thought I\'d just been running through hearts like batteries in an attempt to keep myself alive. Are you saying she was wrong, Master?" Hel pressed Natsunagi about her intentions, her eyes dark.

"No. Siesta herself is saying that she came to the wrong conclusion." "...Oh," I murmured. That was the mistake SIESTA had asked us to find, the

mistake Siesta had made a year ago.

Siesta had misread Hel\'s motives—misread her emotions.

"The ace detective said that? Don\'t make me laugh. When would she have

—" Before she could finish her sentence, Hel froze.

"You understand, don\'t you? You\'re me, after all," Natsunagi reasoned. "Siesta lives in me. Over this past year, she\'s been talking with your personality in my subconscious. During that time, she came to the conclusion I just stated. She realized that as far as you\'re concerned, I\'m actually the

most important thing in the world." "...!"

The eyes of the girl in the mirror wavered as if she felt unsettled.

"Hel. Most people would accuse you of being a devil who took innocent lives. I know, though. I\'m the only one who does. Even if you are a devil... you\'re definitely not a monster with no feelings." Natsunagi refused to accept Hel\'s mocking self-evaluation. "You said you wanted to be loved, and maybe that\'s true. But you didn\'t just want to be loved. You loved me. You were kind enough to love me."

"Stop...!" Hel\'s heartrending scream echoed in the quiet room, where only the flame of the lantern flickered.

Natsunagi didn\'t stop. "Your sins are mine. I know I\'ll pay for them someday."

"Stop it... I don\'t... I didn\'t want that..."

A single tear trickled down the face of the girl in the mirror. Was it Natsunagi\'s, or...?

As an outsider, I had no way of knowing. I had no right to make conjectures, either.

—Even so.

"No. I\'ll help you carry your sins. We\'ll spend our whole lives atoning for them. After all—" Natsunagi held her palm up to the mirror.

"There\'s no such thing as only taking, or only giving. No relationship is that one-sided. Am I wrong?"

This was a mirror. An infinity mirror bringing two girls to face each other. Everything went both ways—sins, love, tears, and even smiles.

If Natsunagi believed in Hel, then I was sure—

"I swear—you\'re such a fool, Master," the girl in the mirror whispered. In the next moment, I heard it. I saw it plainly.

The big mirror cracked loudly, and Hel leaped out of it. Natsunagi caught her and held her close.

"Thank you."

I\'m sure that was the moment Nagisa Natsunagi graduated from her past.

And so a new case file begins

"So? Exactly what kind of story was that?"

The conversation in front of the mirror was over, and SIESTA and I were talking in the living room.

Immediately after that, Natsunagi had passed out; SIESTA had said it was probably a reaction to suddenly regaining her memories. Right now, she was resting in the bedroom.

"What do you mean, \'what kind of story\'?" SIESTA asked, elegantly sipping her tea. Apparently, androids needed to rehydrate too.

"Don\'t play dumb. When you said you\'d summon Hel with an infinity mirror, you were lying, right?"

I know those urban legends about infinity mirrors—about how you could summon devils with them, or see the past and the future. We\'d summoned Natsunagi\'s alternate personality into the mirror and asked her about the past, but I just couldn\'t make it feel real.

"You\'re as hardheaded as ever, Kimihiko." She set her cup in its saucer. Her expression and posture were identical to the real detective\'s. "Although you\'re also correct."

"I am, huh?"

Then why did you call me names?

"That said, Nagisa actually was talking with Hel."

"You mean she was playing both roles in that conversation?"

No, "role" probably wasn\'t the right word here. It was more as if she\'d been talking with herself, through the mirror.

"I only prepared a place where that could occur easily. After that, Nagisa summoned Hel from her subconscious and had a talk with her."

"I see... So in a sense, Hel was actually there?" Two girls, separated by a mirror.

Natsunagi and Hel had definitely met there, confronted each other, and talked things out.

I was sure Natsunagi had regained all her memories now, in the truest sense. At this point, she\'d be able to accept their reality and move forward.

"By the way." I decided to ask about something that had been bothering me. "If Siesta realized she\'d made a mistake during the past year, how did she tell you about it?"

If SIESTA had asked us to find the error, Siesta must have told her about it somehow. However, Siesta had apparently noticed her mistake while talking with Hel inside Natsunagi\'s body.

Since Siesta\'s own body was gone, how had she passed the message on to SIESTA?

In response to these perfectly natural questions, SIESTA said, "It happened the one time Mistress Siesta borrowed Nagisa\'s body." She began to talk about last week\'s incident. "Immediately after your fight with Chameleon on that cruise ship, Mistress Siesta instructed me to contact your group."

"...Ah. It happened while I was out cold, then."

So that was when she\'d done it. After she\'d gotten all of her business out of the way, Siesta had gone back to sleep inside Natsunagi.

"Still, who\'d have thought Siesta would deduce wrong?"

I wasn\'t trying to criticize her. I was just genuinely startled.

"That may have been due to her missing memories as well." SIESTA\'s voice was quiet; she gazed into her cup. "Mistress Siesta had forgotten both Alicia and Nagisa. She didn\'t remember how Hel\'s personality had been created. However, if she\'d sensed something odd in the fact that a friend who\'d died six years ago had appeared in London...or if she\'d registered Hel\'s true feelings about Natsunagi... In either case, she might have found her way to the correct conclusion a year ago."

...I see. So Siesta had been just like me and Natsunagi.

We\'d all lost precious memories and made some misunderstanding, but now we were filling in the missing pieces one by one.

"So even Siesta gets things wrong," I said, although it really didn\'t need saying.

"Yes, she\'s human." SIESTA\'s response was casual. "...Unlike me," she added, a little lonely.

"Listen, SIESTA, you\'re..."

Just as I started to speak, it happened.

"Your phone\'s ringing," SIESTA pointed out, and I noticed that the smartphone I\'d set on the table was vibrating. The screen read Fuubi Kase. Phone calls from her almost never meant good news; I had a bad feeling about this one as I pressed the TALK button.

"I\'ve got bad news and bad news. Which do you want first?"

"That\'s not even a choice..." I hung my head. Just what I was afraid of.

On the other end of the line, I heard a long sigh, and I could imagine the smoke.

"Ms. Fuubi, when are you actually going to quit smoking?"

She\'d declared she was quitting at least twice already. I\'d been right there both times.

"Well, I always want to quit. The damn things just won\'t leave my lips alone."

"Why don\'t you find yourself a guy instead?" "I\'ll hang up on you."

...Uh, you\'re the one who called.

"So? What is this bad news?"

I\'d have preferred not to hear it, but since she\'d called me, it probably involved me. In that case, it was better to find out fast.

"Right. First off." Ms. Fuubi paused for a beat, then dropped a bomb: "— Seed and Bat have teamed up."

"So you really do know about Seed, Ms. Fuubi."

In the past I\'d forgotten, Ms. Fuubi had retrieved me from the island after Siesta\'s death. Apparently her ties to SPES ran deeper than I\'d thought.

"Yeah, I figured you\'d be finding out soon." As if doing me one better, Ms. Fuubi languidly exhaled her cigarette smoke. "Anyways, I dunno what the deal is, but apparently Seed helped Bat pull off a jailbreak. You kids keep a sharp eye out, too."

"Bat broke out of jail, and he\'s with Seed..." But Bat had rebelled against SPES four years ago. As punishment, he\'d been ordered to pull off that skyjack at ten thousand meters. Why would he team up with the leader of SPES now?

"And then, the other bad news is..."

Just as she was about to tell me the rest, my doorbell rang. "Visitor?" Ms. Fuubi\'s tone was suddenly grim.

At this point, I didn\'t even have to ask what she was worried about, but... "I\'m going to answer that."

"Hey, I\'m trying to tell you—"

"I know. I\'ve got some insurance, though."

In the unlikely event that the visitor was him, SIESTA was here. She and I exchanged glances, and I headed for the entryway.

"Besides, he\'s got no reason to come after me now."

Grumbling—and certain that Bat was standing right outside—I turned the knob. "Still, he\'s got pretty good manners if he\'s ringing the door...bell?"

When I opened the door and saw who was actually there, I was incredibly confused. "S-Saikawa?"

Those pink hair streaks, and the eye patch over her left eye. By now, there

was no way I could have mistaken her for anyone else. My visitor was the impudent Yui Saikawa, the world\'s cutest idol.

"Kimizuka, please be my producer!"

She was looking up at me. As usual, she completely failed to read the room.