Night was deep and quiet.
Fujou Kirie looked out the window. She had already given up on escaping this prison-like hospital room.
During the day, the boy who had invited her to join him had promised to come pick her up that night. Kirie was not worried that he was playing some trick on her. She was nothing more than a pitiful creature clinging to life in a hospital bed; deceiving her would bring him no benefit. So now, she waited.
The window opened, and the night wind blew in from outside, lifting Kirie's long hair.
"Yo! Kirie, good evening!"
Shirou sat on the windowsill and greeted Kirie, his left foot planted on the sill while his right leg dangled directly outside. He looked exactly like someone who had lost all hope and was about to jump.
"Good evening, Shirou!" Joy showed between Kirie's brows. Then Kirie's spirit form emerged through the wall as well.
Shirou glanced sideways. As expected of a spirit body—a thing that could make Newton roll over in his grave.
"Ah, I forgot when the hospital closed, so I just came through the window. No problem, right?"
"I have no family now. Even if I suddenly disappeared, no one would say anything. No one would notice."
"Oh! That's really tragic," Shirou said. "The moon is still high. Want to go for a flight?"
Physical Kirie and spirit Kirie exchanged a look, then spirit Kirie floated over.
"What? Just like that? I thought your physical body would come with me too! Even if the scenery is the same, having only your spirit body along really lowers the experience!"
"Mm... but Shirou, with that child's body of yours, carrying me while flying would be far too difficult."
"..."
What could Shirou say? That was reality. Fujou Kirie was already twenty-seven. Though she was somewhat underdeveloped, she was still a twenty-seven-year-old person.
Anyone who had moved a large cardboard box knew how troublesome those big boxes were to carry, even when they were empty.
It was not an issue that could be explained by weight or strength alone. Large cardboard boxes were hard to carry because they were large!
Likewise, it was not so simple for eleven-year-old Shirou to take twenty-seven-year-old Kirie for a flight. Note that it was merely not simple, not difficult or impossible. After all, the Arrancar were all monsters of physical strength.
After repeatedly failing to persuade her, Shirou simply gave up on taking Kirie flying.
Their first stop was Fujou Building. Night provided the best cover for the two of them. Shirou had not learned suggestion magecraft, and if someone spotted them, there would inevitably be news the next day about "a ghost haunting Fujou Building."
Shirou said he was still young and did not want to make the front page.
"What do you think of the view here?" Shirou asked Kirie as they hovered high in the air.
"It isn't as if I've never seen it before, but this time, it feels a little different from last time." Kirie smiled in a way that did not suit her age. It was a young girl's smile.
Although her body was already twenty-seven years old, because she had spent most of her time in a hospital room, Kirie's mental age was actually younger than her physical age.
"That's because you came here differently. Last time, you floated here. This time, you flew here," Shirou told Kirie.
At the same time, another person's story was officially beginning in the hospital.
Was Ori truly dead, Ryougi Shiki?
How could that be? Death was so lonely and insignificant; death was so dark and disgusting; death was more terrifying than anything else. I don't want it!
Ryougi Shiki struggled with all her strength to break free from the hands gripping her and cried out.
"The one thing I absolutely cannot endure is falling into that place!"
Shiki kicked away the corpse and struggled to keep it at bay. But how much strength could this body, which had not trained for more than two years, possibly exert? With her eyes covered as well, Shiki naturally fell into a disadvantage.
Supporting herself against the wall, Shiki quickly reached the window. At that moment, the corpse lunged at her too.
"Don't hesitate!"
Shiki shouted that, then nimbly sidestepped and tumbled out the window together with the corpse.
In midair, Shiki swiftly adjusted her body and forced the corpse beneath her.
The corpse crashed onto the warehouse roof with a bang. Using it as a springboard, Shiki bounced away and landed on the relatively soft grass, rolling to disperse the impact.
The entire sequence was as smooth as flowing water. Even Shiki herself did not know how she had managed it.
Shiki credited it all to her decisiveness and beast-like instincts. The slightest mistake in any of those movements would have been no different from jumping off a building. The fact that Shiki remained completely unharmed was nothing short of a miracle.
After a clattering noise came from the warehouse, white mist appeared. Presumably, the corpse had smashed into something like dry ice, liquid nitrogen, or liquid oxygen.
But Shiki did not care about that. Lying low in the grass, she panted and said, "I didn't expect it to be that simple."
"You really surprised me. Are you a cat?"
A voice belonging to someone Shiki found unpleasant entered her ears. "Touko Aozaki?"
Touko Aozaki stepped out from the shadows of the trees and stood beside Shiki.
"Although I set up a barrier around the hospital room again to prevent spirit bodies from entering, I didn't expect it to seize a body in order to break the barrier. Logically, they shouldn't have that level of intelligence. That was my mistake."
So, you absolutely could not trust that kind of theory. Such things existed only to be overturned.
In the time it took Touko Aozaki to speak, the corpse had already broken through the iron mesh gate and was walking toward Shiki and Touko Aozaki.
"Then hurry up and think of something!" Sensing that the situation was not good, Shiki said to Touko Aozaki.
"Got it!"
Touko Aozaki snapped her fingers and rapidly drew through the air with the still-burning cigarette in her hand. Mana lingered in the air, forming the shape of a letter.
Rune Magic. Aside from puppetcraft, it was what she had studied most during her time at the Clock Tower.
Blue flames ignited across the corpse. Touko Aozaki had used F(ansuz) among the runes, symbolizing fire, but its power was obviously insufficient. It burned nothing except the shroud wrapped around the corpse.
"Tch! The F(ansuz) I brought with me aren't powerful enough!" Touko Aozaki spat. This was clearly not a situation she wanted to see.
"Hey, you liar!" Shiki said unhappily.
"It can't be helped. This situation is rather troublesome. If it were alive, burning its heart would solve the problem, but the dead simply don't play by those rules.
Since it is already dead, losing its head or a hand doesn't matter. If we want to take it down, we'll need crematorium-level firepower, or a highly revered monk.
I do know someone who could blast it into ashes in one shot, but..."
"Stop bragging," Shiki interrupted Touko Aozaki. "In short, you can't do it."