Shirou Returned from the Fae Kingdom

Only then did Shirou get a clear look at her face.

Though still young, the girl already showed signs of growing into a beauty, but that was not the important part.

Beneath her thick, raven-black bangs were a pair of exotic eyes, like clear, gleaming sapphires.

Not Japanese... no, a Half-breed?

Shirou recalled the information he had obtained from Makiri.

She was Tokiomi Tohsaka's other daughter, Sakura's Sister, Rin Tohsaka.

"Are you here to see Sakura? Come in and play."

"!"

Rin Tohsaka's eyes widened in surprise.

Although she looked rather disheveled, she quickly regained her composure.

Rin Tohsaka folded her arms over her flat chest and said in a lofty tone, "You... you're the rumored Shirou Amamiya, aren't you?"

What the hell was that rumor?

"Are you not coming in?" Shirou urged.

The girl flushed bright red. "...There's no way I could go in!!"

Sakura Matou was no longer Rin Tohsaka's younger sister.

At this point, even if her former Sister appeared again, she would only ruin that child's mood and remind her of painful memories.

"I don't get it. Why worry about so much?"

"Ugh... I'm not as thoughtless as you."

Rin Tohsaka brushed back her hair and changed the subject. "Shirou Amamiya, I heard about you from Father."

Shirou asked curiously, "Oh? What did Tokiomi Tohsaka say?"

He had snapped at Tokiomi Tohsaka in front of the Matou Family before. That man probably did not have a very good impression of him.

"He said you... forget it. I'm not telling you."

For some reason, Rin Tohsaka puffed out her little lips and gave him a defiant look.

What a lively girl. She's sisters with Sakura, yet she's nothing like her, Shirou thought.

"Sakura... she's a good child."

Rin Tohsaka lowered her head and stared at her round-toed little leather shoes.

Shirou frowned. "What's that supposed to mean all of a sudden?"

Does she mean she hopes I'll become friends with Sakura?

That's unnecessary. I was planning to do that even without anyone asking.

"You'd make her happier if you said that to her face."

Rin Tohsaka gave Shirou a long look. "I'm leaving. Don't tell anyone I came here."

The girl turned and left.

Halfway down the path, she suddenly stopped, turned back, and made a face at him.

"What was that about?"

Muttering, Shirou returned to the residence.

A few days later, he saw Rin Tohsaka sneaking around nearby again. This time, she was even wearing an especially suspicious pair of sunglasses.

Ignore her.

That night, at the Matou Residence.

After finishing his homework, Shirou turned on the electronic device on the Guest Room desk—a computer.

He had bought this computer not long ago with the spending money Old Man Raiga had given him.

He had first come into contact with computers because Shinji Matou had one in his room, bought after he pestered his father for it.

Shirou had often gone to Shinji's room to watch him play, and over time, he learned how to use a computer himself.

Shirou vaguely sensed that Shinji had considerable talent with computers, but he had not mentioned it for now because Tsuruno Matou had paid him hush money.

"Sorry, Shinji. You should just focus on studying."

He turned on the computer, connected to the internet, and skillfully logged into an online chatroom.

Unlike Shinji Matou, Shirou was more interested in the internet, the technology that computers had spawned, than in computer games.

More precisely, he liked gathering information online and communicating with others.

Through a single cable, he could access books and materials from all over the world, or talk with friends thousands of miles away. None of it even required magic. Shirou found it incredibly fascinating and immensely interesting.

Though few people currently had access to the internet, he believed that before long, this technology would completely transform human life.

"Nameless entered the chatroom."

"Nameless: Good evening."

"Yao Bikuni: Ah, it's Mr. Nameless. Good evening~"

"Nameless: Is Miss Yao Bikuni the only one here tonight?"

"Yao Bikuni: It seems so, hehe."

Yao Bikuni was a friend Shirou had met online.

There were all kinds of oddballs on the internet, but she was one of the few people he got along with exceptionally well.

Judging from the way she spoke during their conversations, she was probably an adult woman. She had a rather steady personality, knew a great deal, and possessed an incredibly broad range of knowledge.

Of course, Shirou could not say for certain what the reality was.

After all, once it came to the internet, the Boundless Mage's Eye had difficulty being effective—

That was probably one of the reasons Shirou found the internet interesting.

"Yao Bikuni: By the way, Mr. Nameless, you always come online at this time every day."

"Yao Bikuni: Let me guess—you're still a High School Student, aren't you?"

"Sorry, wrong guess. I'm an elementary school student."

Shirou typed on the keyboard.

"Nameless: It's not very polite to pry into someone else's information, Miss Yao Bikuni."

"Yao Bikuni: How distant of you. I thought Mr. Nameless and I were friends who could talk about anything. Was that merely my wishful thinking? ('?ω?`)"

"Nameless: Of course not. I also consider Miss Yao Bikuni an irreplaceable friend, but please forgive me for being unable to disclose any personal information."

Was it foresight?

Or perhaps experience from the Fae Kingdom?

As early as 1993, Shirou had already placed great importance on protecting his privacy online. One could say he was several versions ahead of his time.

"Yao Bikuni: If we're friends, then tell me just a little? I'm really curious. ('?ω?`)"

"Nameless: Then let me ask you instead, Miss Yao Bikuni. Can you reveal your personal information to me?"

Less than two seconds after Shirou sent the message, a reply came.

"Yao Bikuni: No."

"Nameless: That was fast!"

"Yao Bikuni: Hehe."

"Nameless: Still, even if you don't tell me, I think I've roughly deduced some information about you, Miss Yao Bikuni."

"Yao Bikuni: Huh, really? (＊'д｀)?"

"Yao Bikuni: Tell me, tell me! What has Mr. Nameless deduced?"

After thinking for a moment, Shirou typed out a line.

"Nameless: My guess is that you're a patient who has been hospitalized in some facility for a long time?"

Somewhere in Japan, deep within the mountains.

The girl named Kiyoko Sesshoin lowered her hands from the keyboard, an astonished expression appearing on her face.

Wanting to Become Human

This time, the reply took a very, very long time.

Only after quite a while did new text appear in the online chatroom.

"Yao Bikuni: (°ロ°) !? It's extremely rude to call someone a bedridden patient, you know.

Why does Mr. Nameless think that? Please provide a reasonable explanation."

"Nameless: Because Miss Yao Bikuni is always online. No matter when I log in, you're almost always here."

"Yao Bikuni: That really is... impossible to refute. It seems I need to reflect on myself properly. ('?ω?`)"

"Nameless: There's also your schedule."

"Nameless: Miss Yao Bikuni, you've logged off at ten o'clock at night several times, right? I've also logged in after ten on a few occasions, and every time, you weren't there."

"Nameless: You're someone who spends nearly all your time online, yet you control your logout time with such precision. That made me wonder whether someone was regulating your schedule."

Shirou had lived in a children's welfare home until he was seven, so he had firsthand experience in that regard.

"..."

Kiyoko Sesshoin stared at the words continuously appearing on the computer screen, too astonished to say anything.

Nameless's deduction was not entirely correct, but it had struck at the heart of the matter.

After ten at night, Kiyoko Sesshoin was ordered to shut down her computer and prepare for bed.

It seemed that Mr. Nameless possessed extraordinary powers of observation.

But that wasn't the point. That wasn't why Kiyoko Sesshoin was surprised.

The real reason for her surprise was:

"In this illusory online world, could someone really care sincerely about an online friend they had never met?"

Kiyoko Sesshoin had been born into a religious family.

She was the daughter of the head of Eiten-ryu, a collateral branch of Shingon Mikkyo Tachikawa-ryu.

Few people might have heard of Eiten-ryu, but Tachikawa-ryu was a household name in Japan.

It was a branch of Japanese Shingon Buddhism that had emerged in the late Heian period.

Rather than Buddhist statues, this sect revered white bones and skeletons as its principal object of worship.

It later went even further, putting forth the era-defining theory that "men are the Vajra Realm, women are the Womb Realm, therefore sexual union between man and woman is the union of the two realms."

Today, people's impression of Japanese Buddhism was that monks had no taboos and could even marry, but this was actually the result of a modern nationalist movement led by the Japanese government to suppress Buddhism and exalt Shinto.

In other words, at a time when Buddhism strictly forbade relations with women, Tachikawa-ryu not only acknowledged them, but sought truth through sexual union between men and women.

Although it had been branded a heretical sect as early as the fourteenth century and physically "saved" by warrior monks sent from the Shingon sect's head temple, its harmful influence did not fade until the Edo period.

And it had not disappeared entirely—

The Sesshoin Family's Eiten-ryu was its inheritor. Its believers regarded the rite of bliss as a path to liberation through attaining Buddhahood in one's present body, upholding the doctrines of "innate purity," "the union of two," and "the summoning of transcendent power."

At only fourteen years old, Kiyoko Sesshoin did not yet understand the tenets of her family's religion, though she vaguely sensed that something about it was unusual.

But what did any of that have to do with her?

From the moment she was born, she had been diagnosed with an incurable illness and deemed unlikely to live past fourteen.

Her life thus far had been spent entirely in a hospital bed.