Trap

Sitting in the student council office, Aoko suddenly heard a burst of commotion outside the window.

She stood up and looked outside, only to find a group of male students lurking in the shadows by the school gate, making the entrance far noisier than usual.

What were those monkeys up to? Aoko frowned as she thought this, then narrowed her eyes and looked closer, spotting the reason.

It was a girl standing in the middle of the road before the school gate.

She wore a black cape, and beneath it was an outfit that looked very much like a nun's habit.

Of course, Aoko recognized those clothes. They were the uniform of the famous elite girls' school, Reien Girls' Academy. Looking carefully, she realized—wasn't that Alice?

What was Alice doing at Misaki High now?

Naturally, the boys of Misaki were drawn to Alice as she was now. First, Reien's reputation as a school for young ladies was simply too great. Then there was the way Alice stood so pitifully in the middle of the road, so heartbreakingly endearing that she looked like someone who had stepped straight out of a painting.

"Those idiots," Aoko muttered as she stared toward the gate. "Tsukiji, Kumari, I'll leave the rest to you. I have something to do, so I'm heading out first."

Before the other student council members could react, Aoko grabbed her coat and motorcycle helmet and strode out of the office.

"Hey, hey, isn't that the student council president?!"

"She dyed her hair red. Scary... She isn't going to eat that girl, is she?"

"What do you mean, dyed it red? Hasn't her hair always been red?"

"Is she trying to drive that girl away? What a heartless person. That poor girl—"

Aoko glared at the boys by the gate, and they immediately scattered like birds and beasts. She then put on her helmet, wheeled her motorcycle over from the nearby parking shed, and stopped beside Alice.

"Get on." Aoko pointed her thumb at the seat behind her, signaling Alice to climb aboard.

Alice's Reien uniform made it impossible for her to sit astride the bike, so she could only sit side-saddle on the back of Aoko's motorcycle with all the poise of a witch, then wrap her slender arms around Aoko's waist.

"Wha—?!"

Seeing this, the boys let out a chorus of wails, as though something inside them had shattered.

Aoko Aozaki looked straight ahead, twisted the Interceptor's throttle, and released the clutch. The motorcycle shot forward at once, kicking up a cloud of dust as it sped away before the many students of Misaki.

"Damn it, Aoko Aozaki! Can't that woman leave even a little dream for our high school lives?!"

...That was how the boys wailed. Hearing them, Tsubame Tsukiji, who stood beside the office window, sighed, shut the glass window, and returned to his seat.

"...You're quite popular at school, Aoko," Alice said from the back seat of the motorcycle.

"How can you tell?" Aoko said. "I skip school all the time. How could I possibly be popular?"

"...Why didn't you kill that male student who came into contact with Touko?" Alice asked instead, coldly questioning Aoko.

"Who?" Aoko first pretended to think for a moment as though she had no idea, then replied, "You mean that unlucky guy I planted a suggestion in?"

"You aren't a novice anymore. Surely you understand the principle of a magus's secrecy?" Alice pressed on, and Aoko felt the pressure of Alice's arms around her abdomen.

"I already erased his related memories," Aoko said casually. "If you insist, I can control him and make him commit suicide right now, you know?"

The wind from the motorcycle speeding down the road blew both their hair into disarray. Alice raised one hand and gathered her hair back into place, without immediately responding to Aoko.

"...Do as you please," Alice said. "Just don't mention my name if you cause trouble."

Hearing Alice's answer, Aoko smiled beneath her motorcycle helmet as though she had heard something delightful.

"Let's go have a drink at Dawn, Alice," Aoko asked. "You found something, didn't you?"

"Yes," Alice admitted. "We'll discuss it properly in a little while."

Sitting in the café, Aoko and Alice each savored the coffee the waiter had just brought them.

Alice took a small sip of the espresso she had ordered. Beneath the rich, mellow taste of its thick crema lay an extract of faint bitterness.

She looked up at Aoko, who was still spooning sugar into her caramel macchiato one scoop after another. It was hard not to wonder whether this girl would fall ill from consuming too much sugar.

"You really like sweet things," Alice could not help remarking. "Are you a child?"

"Life is bitter, so I like sweet things."

Spouting some profound saying she had copied from who knew where, Aoko lifted her coffee and took a large gulp, then hummed in satisfaction.

"I found a trap," Alice said, placing her coffee on the table. "It looks like it was meant to lure us there."

"Huh?" Aoko looked surprised. "What kind of trap? Has Touko lost her mind? Does she think that'll be enough to fool us?"

"KistyLand," Alice said, naming the place in English. "Have you heard of it?"

"Ah, I know it," Aoko recalled after taking another sip of coffee. "Isn't that the amusement park that went bankrupt and was abandoned a few years ago because of poor management?"

"That's right." Alice nodded. "That place."

"You mean Touko set the trap there?" Aoko recalled doubtfully. In the memories of her "previous life," as long as she and Alice did not fall out over Soujuurou Shizuki, there was absolutely no reason for them to go there. "Is there anything special about it? I don't remember any leyline nodes or anything there."

Aoko and Alice's table had already been isolated by an intricate bounded field of suggestion magecraft, so no information about magecraft could leak out or be overheard by ordinary customers.

"...That place was my magecraft testing ground," Alice explained. "I once set up one of the exits of the Mirror of Noon Nap there, along with a PLOY to guard that mirror, but Touko has now hijacked them all."

Aoko understood. She knew why Alice considered that abandoned amusement park such a suitable location. Alice's fairy-tale magecraft was built upon all sorts of fairy tales born in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, while KistyLand was an artificial paradise created by human hands, then abandoned by humans—a fossil of fairy tales, so to speak.

Some of Alice's PLOYs could perform at two hundred percent in that place.

"It seems Touko wants to eliminate the combat strength around me first," Aoko said with a sigh. "Sorry, Alice. I dragged you into this."

"...It doesn't matter." Alice shook her head, not angered by it. "It seems Touko has forgotten what I'm capable of. This time, I need to make her remember properly."