(All characters appearing are adults.)
(The characters have no actual blood relation.)
(Brain storage, meow.)
April, the Amasawa family's front gate.
The cherry blossoms had not yet completely fallen. A cool breeze swept past the bus stop, carrying a few pale pink petals with it.
The bus bound for Tokyo Metropolitan Advanced Nurturing School pulled in slowly. As the doors opened, the boy climbed aboard with both hands in his pockets, his posture straight.
Black hair, pale gray eyes. He glanced around at the students on the bus, who wore the same uniform as him, with an air of indifference. When they saw him get on, everyone turned their eyes toward me.
The eldest son of the Amasawa family, Amasawa Reigetsu.
Amasawa Reigetsu nodded to everyone looking at him, then walked over with his hands in his pockets and took an empty seat.
What the hell? No, wait! The person next to me looked... kind of familiar! Isn't that our big sister Ayanokoji Kiyoko? It's only been a few days, but she's gotten so...
"Could you use that on me?"
A shocking statement!?
Amasawa Reigetsu's expression changed so many times in such a short span that anyone besides Ayanokoji watching him would have thought his mouth had twitched a few times.
At the same time, Amasawa Reigetsu stared at Ayanokoji Kiyoko in disbelief. What shocked him even more than running into her here was—
All right, she was still a silent girl. That made sense... What the hell? Wasn't that even weirder?
That wasn't how it was written in the White Room! You were supposed to be expressionless, carry a piano while practicing calligraphy, then beat me up without changing your expression, leave without looking back, and then have someone come in and tell me I'd been eliminated?!
The profound image I, Amasawa Reigetsu, had spent a whole two hundred words building—one part aloofness, two parts mystery, three parts nonchalance, and four parts cunning—had just been shattered by a single sentence from Ayanokoji Kiyoko?! As expected of the White Room's greatest masterpiece. Truly terrifying.
"What do you mean?"
Oh, damn, guys. Hold it together.
Although those thoughts had come from memories that had appeared out of nowhere, Amasawa Reigetsu had genuinely spent some time in the White Room. Though the outcome was... Well, never mind. As for the "that" Ayanokoji had mentioned... it was Amasawa Reigetsu's "ability."
On the day Amasawa Ichika was born, Amasawa Reigetsu awakened a special ability. It was as if the world had given him a gift, just as it had given Amasawa Ichika one.
Amasawa Reigetsu called this ability "Induction."
Induction could do many things. He could induce people's gazes and make himself disappear from sight, or use it to play basketball, maybe. He could also induce thoughts, making people believe or disbelieve something. And finally—he could control minds.
It was an ability, and Amasawa Reigetsu was the only person in this ordinary world who possessed one. That was why the old fox Ayanokoji Atsuomi had taken an interest in him and sent him to the White Room.
Amasawa Reigetsu found the White Room stifling and incredibly boring. So while he was there, whenever he felt like it, he used Induction to mess with his classmates or the supervisors. But as the experiments went on, everyone's reactions gradually grew more muted.
Ayanokoji was the only person he remembered after he was eliminated. She was the only one unaffected by Induction. And before the day he was about to be eliminated, Ayanokoji seemed to predict what he was going to do. She always called him to her room, did nothing at all, just watched him, then let him leave.
Though Ayanokoji was quite pretty, too...
His thoughts returned to the present.
"Use Induction on me."
Ayanokoji Kiyoko looked serious—or, rather, it was impossible to read her expression at all.
"And then? You haven't forgotten that you have no emotions, so I can't use Induction on your feelings."
Amasawa Reigetsu was a little speechless. So all that just to gather everyone here for this? Mind control could do it, too, couldn't it? But that wouldn't be any fun. Ever since his younger sister had forced him to use it once, Amasawa Reigetsu had never again used mind control at full strength.
Ayanokoji Kiyoko seemed to want to say something else, but she held it back. Their conversations in the White Room had always been like that: just a few words, then silence again.
Ayanokoji Kiyoko: ( ᗜ ‸ ᗜ )
"Could someone give an old lady a seat?"
A clear, bright female voice broke the silence in the bus.
That, instead, caught Amasawa Reigetsu's attention. He could sense the emotion packed into those words.
The speaker was a girl with short, light brown hair. She was carefully supporting an elderly woman with white hair, wearing her signature sweet smile, with just the right touch of concern and warmth. She walked gently toward the blond hunk occupying the priority seat.
"Excuse me, could you give up your seat? This is a priority seat for the elderly. It would be better to let the old lady sit."
[BLACK FILE] File status: Permanently sealed [Major Anomalous Incident] Time: Fourth Generation, 12 hours after "Yuki" was deemed eliminated. Incident level: BLACK Incident summary: The target individual displayed a clear loss of emotional control for the first time, followed by an ability malfunction that caused widespread, irreversible effects. Presumed cause: Experimental subject "Yuki" was eliminated. Partial transcript of conversation: Target individual: "Where's Yuki?" Researcher: "She failed." Target individual: "Then there'll be no one to talk to me." Researcher: "Those are the rules of the White Room." Recording interrupted for 17 seconds. [Anomalous Spread] Afterward, 17 staff members in the research area displayed: Severe irritability, abnormal heart rates, impaired judgment, and emotional instability. Three became involved in an argument, one attacked the surveillance equipment, and two suffered brief memory loss. Most severe case: Researcher B-09 attempted to activate the isolation protocol but stopped before entering the password, then muttered to himself: "There's no need to continue..." "Is this really right..." It was later confirmed: The staff member had never previously shown any fluctuations in personality. The technical department confirmed: There had been no external intrusion. [Final Conclusion] The committee determined: WR-4th-00's ability had exceeded the control of the education system. [Discussion Record on Proposed Measures] Proposal A Immediate isolation. Rejected. Simulations had already shown it would fail. Proposal B Continue cultivation. Rejected. Excessively dangerous. Proposal C Personality reconstruction. Rejected. Simulations had already shown it would fail. Recommendation: WR-4th-00: Permanently remove from the formal cultivation program. Classify all files as BLACK-level restricted. Personnel involved in the Fourth Generation were prohibited from further discussing this individual. [Appendix] WR-4th-01 Observation Record After the incident ended. WR-4th-01 stared at a blank surveillance area for a long time. Then spoke voluntarily for the first time: "Zero... left." The recorder did not respond. [BLACK FILE CLOSED]