"What crossroads...?" Asai Narumi, who was standing closest, caught a few indistinct words and narrowed her eyes. "Why does it feel like you're up to something again?"
"No, I was just feeling sentimental for a moment." Tangze straightened up and raised a hand to stop more teammates from approaching, signaling that he was fine. He quickly changed the subject. "I'm fine. I was just a little dizzy. What did Takeyori Oikawa say?"
Takeyori Oikawa's Palace being located in this villa was easy enough to predict.
And compared to him, the weakly guarded area that could become a safe zone obviously had something to do with Haruhito Kanbara.
So now, they were standing in Haruhito Kanbara's study, unable to see what the rest of the Palace looked like for the time being.
After eyeing Tangze suspiciously for a while longer, Asai Narumi pulled open the door and made an inviting gesture.
"You should... see for yourself."
Almost the instant she opened the door, a violent gust rushed in from outside, sending the scattered papers in the room flying everywhere.
Tangze stepped forward twice and saw what lay beyond the door. He immediately understood where the wind was coming from.
Takeyori Oikawa's Palace keyword was prison.
Considering the difficult past decade or so he had endured, that keyword was not particularly strange.
Within this mountain villa funded by Haruhito Kanbara, his strongest emotions and memories all concerned his wife—specifically, the desperate period when she was ill and he could see no way forward.
Whenever he stood here, he had to face his blank canvas and the painful past he could barely stomach. Feeling as though he were imprisoned here was only natural.
Tangze just had not expected this prison to be literal.
The Palace, rising atop the mountain in the shape of