Unfortunately for him, Kiritsugu had deliberately increased the yield on the hotel's first floor.
With an explosion at almost point-blank range—even Sakutsuki could not possibly emerge unscathed.
It was not like she was some electricity-shooting girl from Bilibili. (Heavy fog.)
Despite such a perfect opportunity presenting itself before him, Kiritsugu Emiya remained silent. He waited until the hotel guests had all evacuated before beginning the demolition.
Why wait?
Had he not already decided to make himself the scales, to make this Holy Grail War in Fuyuki City humanity's final bloodshed? By that logic, those guests should have been necessary sacrifices.
But...
—It was a perfectly reasonable tactic. Yes, that was how he convinced himself.
This act was meant to make Kayneth and Sakutsuki lower their guard and focus entirely on fighting one another, preventing them from noticing that another trap had been laid.
And the tactic had indeed worked. Those two magi had absolute confidence in their own abilities. In particular, Caster's Master knew something would happen tonight, yet still confidently went up to the thirty-second floor, never imagining that the entire floor would collapse beneath them and swallow them whole.
But was that really all he was thinking?
Could the sentimentality in his heart have unconsciously driven him to let those unrelated guests escape?
If that were true, then such fatal naïveté would surely cost him his life on the battlefield.
To calm the faint tremor in his heart, Kiritsugu lit another cigarette.
Then, the indistinct, faraway cry of a desk clerk reached him from the distance. Yet it pierced through his eardrums like an arrow and stabbed straight into his heart.
"Miss Illyasviel? Is Miss Illyasviel here?"
"Miss Illyasviel? Is Miss Illyasviel he—"
The clerk's call was interrupted by a deep, hurried voice.
"Give me the register."
"Ah, y-yes."
He used no magecraft, but the expression on that man's face was so terrifyingly hollow that the clerk's will was effortlessly crushed. Stunned, the clerk handed over the register.
Kiritsugu Emiya snatched it away and flipped through it rapidly, finally stopping at a name that was painfully familiar.
Illyasviel von Einzbern
Room 1986
1986... Kiritsugu Emiya's fingertips began to tremble.
He remembered. He remembered clearly. Illyasviel, his daughter, had been born on a freezing night in 1986.
But how could she possibly have come here? All the way from the distant Winter's Castle?
Returning the register to the clerk, Kiritsugu Emiya looked toward the Hyatt Hotel and closed his eyes, as though making up his mind.
Then he stepped forward.
If his daughter was also inside that deadly building, then as her father, he should rush in without regard for his own life and save her.
That was an obvious fact.
But this man was different. Before his love as a father, he still had something more important to bear—
On the path toward becoming a "father," the thorns of "ideals" made every step difficult.
His legs trembled. With every step the hollow-eyed man took toward the hotel, his heart wavered more violently, and the cracks in his impassive face deepened.
Every step seemed to betray his wish, his ideals.
"Norikata Emiya? Is Norikata Emiya here?" The clerk continued calling out. The voice seemed to come from some distant, unreal horizon, leaving Kiritsugu Emiya feeling weightless, as though he were walking among the clouds.
Heh, Father.
The father who had devoted himself to researching time magecraft and received a Sealing Designation.
The father who had developed Dead Apostle transformation drugs for magecraft research and used ordinary people as test subjects.
He still remembered the sensation of the dagger piercing that magus's body. That had also been the first time he picked up a gun and thoroughly ended that magus's life.
The scars of the past were ripped open. Yet that soul-rending pain instead supported Kiritsugu Emiya as he continued onward.
"Miss Shirley? Is Miss Shirley here?"
Shirley...
Dark red blood flowed from the wound in his scar.
"What do you want to be when you grow up?" The brown-skinned Southeast Asian girl smiled brilliantly, carrying Kiritsugu Emiya's first love within that smile.
But she was already dead. After taking the Dead Apostle transformation drug made by Norikata Emiya, she had been purged by the Holy Church and the Mage's Association.
The transformed girl had handed Kiritsugu Emiya a silver dagger and begged him to kill her.
But Kiritsugu Emiya had fled in shame.
Because he failed to kill the girl he loved, the entire village fell—and that disaster had nearly shaped the lifelong values of the Magus Killer known as Kiritsugu Emiya.
"Ms. Natalia? Is Ms. Natalia here?"
"Ah..."
This time, the man finally stopped walking.
The crack in his heart no longer bled. A gust of wind passed through it, producing a hollow echo.
Natalia, the bounty hunter who had taken him in after the transformed village was destroyed.
She had accompanied Kiritsugu Emiya through his youth, watching him grow from a brat into a gloomy, cold hunter with dry eyes.
On their final mission, to eliminate the Dead Apostle bees aboard the plane, Kiritsugu Emiya used a Blow Pipe portable surface-to-air missile and shot down that death flight before it could land.
Even though that plane carried the teacher he respected most, the woman who had been by his side for over a decade.
Only during countless sleepless nights afterward did Kiritsugu Emiya belatedly realize what he had lost.
—He had long regarded Natalia as his mother.
"Strange. Norikata Emiya, Shirley, Natalia... did none of them come out?"
Yes. I killed them all with my own hands.
The ghosts of the past reached for him, trying to drag him into an unfathomable abyss.
The thin man stood amid the crowd, looking so lonely and ready to collapse.
Fake. It was all fake. They were already dead, so how could they possibly be alive in this hotel?
Everything, every last bit of it, could only be someone's malicious mockery of him—or an arrangement intended to slow him down.
Yet despite knowing that, Kiritsugu Emiya could change nothing. He had made himself the scales that weighed good and evil, but one side kept receiving heavy weights while the other was held down desperately by the man himself.
And what was creaking was far more than the scales themselves.
One name after another became hidden hints, as though foretelling the ending of some tragedy.
Then the next one would be...
"Miss Irisviel? Is Miss Irisviel von Einzbern here?" Death flipped through the list and slowly read the next name.
Yes, even the wife he loved would be killed by his own hand...
"Yes, I'm here."
A melodious voice, sweet as a lark's, sounded behind Kiritsugu Emiya. Irisviel held her cheeks, her crimson eyes full of confusion.
"How strange. I didn't book a room at the Hyatt Hotel. But this is my name... Hmm, was there some mistake?"
Apparently noticing Kiritsugu's incredulous gaze, the beautiful woman stuck out her tongue and clasped her hands together apologetically. "Sorry, Kiritsugu. In the end, I still couldn't resist coming over."
Beside her, Saber, dressed in a suit, stepped forward. "This is not Irisviel's fault. I came of my own accord. The blame should be mine alone."
But Kiritsugu Emiya did not care about that right now. Looking at the woman he loved, a faint glimmer appeared in his deadened eyes.
Under Saber and Irisviel's astonished gazes, Kiritsugu Emiya stepped forward, opened his arms, and took his wife into his embrace—holding one of the few bonds he had in this cold, dusty world.
Only after a long while did a muffled voice sound.
"Thank you, Saber."
Artoria raised an eyebrow, and the ahoge atop her head swayed slightly.
This was the only time her Master had ever thanked her, yet Saber could not feel happy at all.
Her Instinct told her exactly what bitterness, blood, and tears lay within that gratitude.
What... had this man experienced in the past?
On the other side, Irisviel also noticed that something was wrong with Kiritsugu Emiya.
They had shared brief embraces before, but every time, her husband had restrained his emotions and stopped after only a taste, as though afraid that he would become addicted to something and be unable to pull himself free.
But this was the first time he had embraced her without restraint, leaning against her in her arms.
Kiritsugu was very fragile right now.
The unique sensitivity of an artificial human allowed Irisviel to quickly reach that conclusion.
This was different from the frailty he had shown when Illya was born, when he had said with a pained expression, "I have no right to hold this child." That frailty had been resolute; it was the pain of a man called Kiritsugu Emiya clearly knowing what he had to do in the future, knowing what would happen, yet being powerless to change it.
But this time, his weakness was empty and shattered, like the despair of having even his own meaning denied.
That was why it cut even deeper.
"If I decided to abandon everything and run away right now—Illy, would you come with me?"
After their brief tenderness, the man raised his head. His words left Irisviel frozen in place.
Why are there no comments? Ahhh! Your comments are my source of happiness, damn it!
Irisviel had never seen such an expression on her husband's face.
His desperate expression made him look like an injured, terrified child, as though he might burst into tears at any moment. The one standing there was not the highly skilled Magus Killer at all, but a weak and timid man.
"Kiritsugu, you—"
Irisviel could feel his chest trembling. Her husband's once strong, dependable hands now felt as weak as those of a child clinging tightly to a loving mother.
"If I—" Kiritsugu's arms squeezed Irisviel so tightly that they hurt. In a hoarse, feeble voice, he asked beside her ear, "If I decided to abandon everything and run away right now—Illy, would you come with me?"
This was probably the most impossible question Irisviel could imagine Kiritsugu Emiya ever asking.
"Illya... what about the child in Winter's Castle?"
"I'll go back and bring her out. If anyone gets in the way, I'll kill them." The man's answer was urgent and concise, proving the firmness of his resolve.
"From then on... I'll devote everything I have to us. I'm willing to spend the rest of my life protecting only you and Illya..."
"..."
At last, Irisviel understood just how far the man before her had been driven. Before they arrived, someone seemed to have used some mysterious method to completely crush the steadfast body and mind of this warrior.
He was no longer the Kiritsugu of nine years ago—not that hound-sharp, bullet-and-blade-like man who had honed himself to the limit, a merciless killing machine. He had changed far too much, becoming fragile and worrying.
Irisviel knew what had changed him—it was his wife and daughter, impurities that originally could never have entered Kiritsugu Emiya's life.
Before coming to Winter's Castle, Kiritsugu Emiya had nothing left to lose. Even the heart capable of feeling pain had ceased to exist, which was why he could be so ruthless and cold, decisively abandoning and sacrificing everything in pursuit of the distant dream of saving the world.
What Kiritsugu needed to do now was return to his past self. But turning back time made his soul howl. Ten years of change had been too profound; the existence of Irisviel and Illya had allowed Kiritsugu Emiya to find bonds in this world once more.
The killer who had once devoted everything to his ideals was gone. In his place stood a man with weaknesses, unable to remain cold.
Kiritsugu Emiya's rejection of Saber exposed his weakness. Simply maintaining himself now took all his strength. He had no energy left to accept Saber, nor any mind to consider how to reconcile his relationship with the Knight King.
Irisviel's chest felt stifled. The man she loved was suffering so much, yet she could not save him. Because the one tormenting Kiritsugu was no one else but himself.
If she agreed to Kiritsugu's request, then their future would surely head in a different direction, whether for better or worse.
Before you continue