Sky Striker Ace, But Symphogear

"I bought something... Ah, I remember now."

After obtaining a keyword and comparing it against the woman's face, Chris dug through her memories and recalled who she was.

She remembered that, when she had stayed by Raye's side for certain reasons, Raye had often gone to a convenience store to buy missing daily necessities.

In her memory, the young cashier at that convenience store seemed to overlap considerably with the adult woman now standing before her as a cashier.

"You're... the cashier from that convenience store?"

Chris voiced what she had remembered.

"Mm, you actually recognized me. I thought little Chris would definitely have forgotten me."

After Chris recognized her, the cashier spoke warmly.

"Um... it's not that bad. I'm not that forgetful."

Chris replied accordingly.

She intended to take this opportunity to linger here for a while. According to what Raye had said, she might run into wandering enemies if she went outside, and Raye had told her to wait for her signal.

Therefore, all things considered, chatting here with someone she was somewhat familiar with was what Chris considered the safest course of action.

"Still, um, I didn't expect to run into someone I knew here either. Have you always worked here as a cashier?"

With that in mind, though she was not particularly good at it, Chris took the initiative to strike up a conversation.

"Not all the time. I just happen to be on vacation from work recently, so I came to help out at my family's convenience store for a few days."

The cashier replied.

"Come to think of it, little Chris, did you come back here because of little Raye?"

The cashier continued.

"Well, more or less."

Chris answered absentmindedly. After all, it was indeed because of Raye that she had thought of coming here for a look around.

"Is that so... Then that's a little unfortunate. Because of some things, she's moved somewhere very far away. If you came looking for her, then you came to the wrong place."

After hearing Chris say that, the cashier paused for a moment before answering with an unchanged expression.

"Ah, moved somewhere very far away?"

At first, Chris did not quite understand what she meant. Wasn't Raye currently at the hot spring inn less than a hundred meters from here?

But she quickly realized that the people around here might not know that Raye was still alive.

To them, all they knew was that after a massive explosion and earthquake, a building had vanished from the surface. Naturally, they believed there had been no survivors.

P.S. Good night.

Brief Conversation

[With this, the chances of something going wrong over there should be reduced to a minimum.]

Watching Chris seemingly have a pleasant conversation with the cashier on the screen, Raye relaxed slightly.

Of course, only slightly. The current situation was not yet one where she could completely let her guard down.

[Then, I'll continue dealing with matters here.]

Raye thought to herself.

When she had responded to Chris earlier, she had just finished establishing herself before Hibiki Tachibana as an unremarkable stranger in the most natural way possible.

[First, let's see what this girl said while I was talking to Chris.]

Her fingers slid across the tablet in her hands, minimizing the video window showing Chris's situation and shifting her attention to another narrow bar where lines of text were scrolling frantically.

[What's going on? Why is it scrolling so fast?]

Raye felt a trace of confusion as she looked at the bar.

As mentioned before, she had transferred some less important functions that were usually housed in the device on her right eye to her tablet. Those functions included voice recognition.

The rapidly scrolling text in that bar was the final result translated after collecting nearby voices.

What confused her was the little icon in the upper-right corner of the bar, displaying 99+ unread messages.

[Judging by the time, I was only talking to Chris for a little over a minute. Why are there so many? Did the program malfunction?]

Seeing this, Raye could not help becoming nervous. If her translation system malfunctioned at a time like this, her next actions could become extremely troublesome.

Not only would she lose sensitivity to information around her and possibly miss a great deal of crucial intelligence, but others might also become suspicious of her hearing and connect that trait to her true identity.

[I need to check it quickly.]

With that thought in mind, Raye enlarged the module and began checking what had happened during the minute she had not been paying attention.

Soon, with a tap, she saw what the 99+ unread messages really were.

[Ruse, Ruse, what's wrong?]

[Why haven't you said anything since just now?]

[Ah, I get it.]

[Ruse, you must be hungry.]

[I understand, I understand. Once people get hungry, they don't feel like doing anything.]

[Oh, right. If you want something to eat, I recommend something super delicious.]

[The hot spring eggs here!]

[They're seriously super delicious.]

[The first time I tried one, I felt like my whole body had been healed.]

[Ah, they look almost the same as boiled eggs, but the texture is completely different.]

[Listen, those hot spring eggs have yolks that are nothing like the dry yolks in ordinary boiled eggs.]

[Instead, they're like thick, gooey sauce.]

[When you bite into one, warm yolk bursts out from the springy, silky egg white, carrying an incredibly delicious aroma, especially together with the flavor of soy sauce.]

[They're seriously super delicious.]

[And, and, listen, Ruse. Hot spring eggs can also be eaten in lots of different combinations with other things. If you pair them with xx, then...]

[...]

It took Raye only a few seconds to skim through the 99+ messages containing similar content.

[What even is all this!?]

Looking at those meaningless records in the window, Raye was a little stunned.

Originally, Raye had thought the 99+ might have been caused by recognition errors or garbled text. But after reading through them, she discovered that every single one was the musings of the airheaded flaxen-haired girl beside her about hot spring food.

[Only a little over a minute passed. Just one minute, and this girl managed to say so much to someone she had only just met. Even a machine gun doesn't fire as fast as you.]

Raye thought helplessly.

[Ah, if my hearing hadn't been damaged, she'd probably have nagged me into a nervous breakdown. This is the first time I've been grateful that my world can be so quiet.]

Raye could not help sighing. After all, for her own convenience and to prevent others from peeking at her screen, her translation system displayed recognized speech uniformly in Chinese.

Yet even so, she could still feel the visible noise radiating from the message log. It was hard to imagine how noisy it would be if the girl beside her bombarded her like this in Japanese.

[Oh, right, right, right.]

[Other than hot spring eggs, there are lots of delicious things here.]

[Let me introduce some more to you, Ruse. For example...]

Even now, text formed from the recognition of nearby voices continued appearing on the screen line by line, and the rate at which it appeared was even gradually increasing.

"Um, that's enough already, Miss Tachibana. You don't need to recommend things so enthusiastically. Besides, rather than hearing someone else describe them, I'd rather experience them myself when I have the time later."

Gathering her thoughts, Raye spoke with a gentle, unremarkable smile.

To prevent her simultaneous translation system from overloading, and to maintain the guise of an ordinary stranger, Raye ultimately interrupted the enthusiastic introduction to hot spring-related food from the girl beside her.

"Is that so? All right, then."

At Raye's words, Hibiki Tachibana stopped her machine-gun-like chatter. At the same time, the tablet in Raye's hands stopped displaying text so noisy it practically hurt her eyes.

"But there really are lots of delicious things here. Ruse, you definitely have to try them if you get the chance."

Hibiki Tachibana smiled brightly. She seemed to genuinely enjoy tasting delicious food, and her eyes appeared to light up whenever food was mentioned.

"Mm, I definitely will if I get the chance."

In response to the other girl's enthusiasm, Raye merely gave a perfunctory reply. After all, she could not possibly allow food whose safety had not been confirmed into her body, so she could only brush it off for now.

[All right, my presence in this girl's memory should be low enough now. A stranger met by chance who only exchanged a few words with her—an image like that shouldn't arouse any suspicion.]

Raye thought.

Everything she had just done was meant to make her identity appear as reasonable as possible and prevent anything about her from seeming suspicious.

If her behavior gave rise to suspicion, not only would all her previous efforts go to waste, but before she was prepared, she might also be besieged by the entire Second Division. That was something she could not accept.

[Still, this should be about enough. I've made the role of an ordinary stranger convincing enough. Next, I need to find an excuse to leave.]

Raye thought.

Unexpected

"Come to think of it, Tachibana, you came here to soak in the hot springs, right? Why did you come back to the changing room now?"

After thinking for a moment, Raye came up with an idea and took the initiative to start a conversation.

After considering it, she gave up on trying to escape by directly coming up with an excuse to leave.

Because she could not guarantee that, if she offered some reasonable excuse for leaving, Hibiki Tachibana would not enthusiastically invite her along.

Although Raye's target was to capture Hibiki Tachibana, based on her observations, Hibiki herself was a particularly sensitive subject of the Second Division's attention.

If someone like her showed any unusual movement, it could easily touch their nerves and ultimately develop into a full-scale unexpected encounter. Raye did not like encounter battles.

If she wanted to leave the heart of enemy territory without Hibiki Tachibana setting off the other side's alarm bells, she had to ensure that Hibiki herself was occupied by something when she left.

Therefore, Raye brought up the topic of the hot springs. That way, she could keep Hibiki occupied with something while also confirming how long Hibiki intended to stay here, making it easier for her to determine the earliest time she could launch an offensive.

"Ugh— I really want to soak in the hot springs too, but, um, anyway, for certain reasons, I'm planning to go in after a while."

Faced with Raye's question, Hibiki Tachibana furrowed her brows slightly, a conflicted expression appearing on her face.

Of course, she liked the warm feeling of hot springs, but she was equally unable to handle Miss Ryouko Sakurai's somewhat provocative teasing when they were naked together in the baths.

So, she planned to wait until Miss Sakurai came out before going in to properly enjoy the hot springs. That way, she would not have to deal with such embarrassing, blush-inducing situations.

"Is that so? But I suggest you go in sooner rather than later. It's already getting fairly late. If you hesitate for too long, the place might close just when you're ready to enjoy yourself, and your hot spring ticket will go to waste."

Seeing Hibiki Tachibana's troubled expression, Raye thought for a moment before saying this, adding weight to Hibiki's decision.

"That's true... Ugh, this is such a hard decision."

Raye's words seemed to have had an effect. Hibiki Tachibana looked toward the curtain at the hot spring entrance, narrowing her eyes as though making some difficult decision.

"Um... Tachibana, do you not like hot springs?"

Raye was somewhat confused by Hibiki's reaction.

"Could it be that you're the type who has to participate in team-building because of orders from work and appearances?"

Originally, she had thought that since Hibiki Tachibana had come to soak in hot springs, she must have wanted to do so to some extent, making this approach easier to succeed with.

But if Hibiki Tachibana herself did not like hot springs, then Raye would have to think of another way to make her leave, such as using some method to cause gastrointestinal discomfort.

"I do like hot springs. It's just that there's someone in there I can't handle, so I'm planning to wait until she comes out before going in."

Hibiki Tachibana explained, a trace of helplessness appearing in her expression.

"Mm, is it someone you don't get along with? All right, I understand. Everyone does have someone whose mere presence makes them uncomfortable."

Seeing Hibiki like this, Raye gave up on trying to persuade her further. Saying any more might reveal that she had an ulterior motive.

"Since that's the case, Tachibana, you should decide for yourself. If you came here for the hot springs, what matters most is that you enjoy yourself. You came here to relax, after all, so don't let something like this give you even more stress."

Raye then spoke to Hibiki Tachibana like a kindhearted stranger.

[What other way is there to make Hibiki Tachibana leave? There doesn't seem to be any. Should I find a way to make the person Hibiki can't handle finish bathing early?]