Onigawara Rin remained kneeling on the ground, staring blankly at the figure receding into the distance.
Other worlds?
For someone who had spent her entire life within the confines of the academy, preoccupied every day with such mundane matters as correcting boys and maintaining order, those words felt impossibly distant.
Absurd, even.
And yet.
"Heh."
Before Onigawara Rin could recover from that enormous shock,
A contemptuous scoff interrupted Onigawara Rin's thoughts.
Sasamori Aya silently followed behind Haimo.
But as she passed Onigawara Rin, she paused briefly.
Her obsidian eyes swept brazenly over Onigawara Rin's youthful, now completely exposed face, filled with undisguised mockery.
"You really do have a crybaby's face."
Sasamori Aya's lips curled upward as she spat those venomous words.
"That crybaby face suits you better than your mask does now."
With that,
Sasamori Aya seemed to lose all interest, refusing to spare Onigawara Rin so much as another glance.
She simply strode forward on her long legs, quickly catching up with Haimo and leaving only her haughty back behind.
It was a lion's final mercy toward a beaten dog.
"..."
Hearing that, Onigawara Rin bit down hard on her lower lip.
A crybaby?
No!
Onigawara Rin whipped her head around, fixing her gaze on the two figures about to disappear around the corner.
Her cheeks still burned with shame, and her shoulders still trembled uncontrollably from the terror she had just felt.
Yet her body had already made its choice before her mind could catch up.
Was she afraid?
Of course she was.
How could she not fear a monster who could shatter her psychological defenses through sheer presence alone, and even possessed the miraculous power to restore broken objects?
It was an instinctive response to an unknown threat, etched into humanity's genes, as natural as an antelope trembling before a lion.
But.
Humanity had risen above countless species living on raw flesh and blood to stand at the pinnacle of this planet, and that was not merely because it had learned to shape stones or wield fire.
It was also because of an instinct older, deeper, and stronger than fear-
curiosity.
When the first ape timidly climbed down from the safety of the treetops and set its feet upon grasslands teeming with saber-toothed tigers, dire wolves, and danger,
what drove it to take that step was not merely the unbearable hunger in its belly.
It was pure curiosity about what lay beyond the horizon.
That very curiosity had kept humanity from curling up deep inside caves through countless cold, pitch-black nights, compelling it instead to look up at the vast, star-filled sky.
It had led humanity across raging oceans, over peaks towering into the clouds, and even toward attempts to touch the domain of the gods.
Fear could certainly help people live longer.
But only curiosity could open a wider world to them.
At that moment, Onigawara Rin was no different.
If it was true...
What would that world look like?
That answer was like a wildfire suddenly blazing in her heart, burning everything else away in an instant.
At the thought, Onigawara Rin gritted her teeth, a fierce resolve flashing in her eyes. She immediately snatched up the katana from the ground and stumbled after them.
"Huh... Rin?!"
"W-wait for me, Rin!"
Mozunoya, who had been hiding off to the side like part of the scenery, hurriedly clutched the collapsible baton close and chased after her with a miserable expression.
The old school building's gymnasium at Aichi Kyosei Academy.
The building, usually visited by few, was now shrouded in an unusual stillness.
Afternoon sunlight streamed through the high ventilation windows, casting shafts of light across the wooden floor, with countless tiny motes of dust drifting slowly within them.
A girl had already been waiting there for quite some time.
She wore a traditional red-and-white kimono, her long white hair tied into two low ponytails that hung to either side.
Her figure was so petite it could almost be called frail, making her look like an exquisite Japanese doll.
Tsukuyo Inaba.
The youngest member of the Five Heavenly Swords, and the only middle school student among them.
At that moment, she knelt neatly on a cushion in the center of the gymnasium, eyes closed and hands resting flat on her knees. An imitation sword shaped like a katana lay quietly beside her.
The world was black in her perception.
But that did not mean it was empty.
On the contrary, to someone deprived of the domineering sense of sight, the world revealed a more delicate, more fundamental side of itself.
For human beings, more than eighty percent of the information processed by the brain came from vision.
Relying too heavily on the eyes often made the brain lazy, causing it to ignore the whispers of the wind, the vibrations of the floor, and the shifting temperatures carried through the air.
When the door of sight closed, the windows of hearing, touch, and smell opened fully.
Just as creatures living in the deep sea or caves had evolved extraordinary sensory organs to adapt to darkness.
Bats caught moths with pinpoint precision in the pitch-black night sky, while blind fish never struck rocks in turbulent underwater currents.
Thus.
For Tsukuyo Inaba, every movement around her instead constructed a world in her mind more three-dimensional than anything sight could reveal.
She could hear every sound throughout the entire academy with perfect clarity.
And this was no magic.
It was a sublimation of biological instinct, achieved by honing her hearing to its absolute limit.
And now, every sound conveyed a single message to her:
An incredible being had arrived.
"He's here."
Tsukuyo Inaba tilted her head slightly, the ears hidden beneath her silver-white hair twitching softly.
Her thin, cherry-pink lips parted, releasing those gentle words.
Creeeak-
Almost at the exact instant her words fell,
the heavy gymnasium doors slowly swung inward.
A flood of light poured into the dim interior as the doors opened.
Against that backlight,
Haimo's silhouette stretched long and slender.
Behind him came the impassive Sasamori Aya, followed by a breathless Onigawara Rin and Mozunoya, their faces still flushed.
Chapter 9: A Formal Invitation
"Oh?"
Haimo stepped over the threshold, his gaze settling on the petite figure kneeling in a shaft of light.
Seeing how she had clearly been waiting for some time, a flicker of appreciation crossed Haimo's eyes.
"So you knew I was coming?"
Haimo wasted no words and walked straight toward the center of the gymnasium.
"Yes, my lord god."
Tsukuyo Inaba bowed slightly, offering a proper traditional salute.
At those words,
Sasamori Aya, following behind Haimo, raised an eyebrow at the form of address.
Meanwhile, Onigawara Rin and Mozunoya, who had caught up panting, froze in the doorway.
"My lord god?"
Onigawara Rin and Mozunoya braced themselves against the doorframe, their faces full of disbelief.
"You know who I am?"
Naturally ignoring the commotion behind him, Haimo regarded Tsukuyo Inaba with interest.
"No, I do not know your name."
Tsukuyo Inaba shook her head.
"But I can hear."
"Hear?"
"Yes."
Tsukuyo Inaba pointed to her ears.
"From the moment you descended, every sound in the academy changed."
"The wind stopped flowing, the birds stopped singing, and even the dust in the air trembled."
"It was the instinctive submission of all things before an absolute superior."
"And..."
"I also heard you first defeat the Empress, then shatter Onigawara Rin's mask with Mozunoya's collapsible baton."
"I heard all of it perfectly clearly."
As Tsukuyo Inaba recounted each detail of the battle that had just taken place in the classroom building,
Sasamori Aya watched coldly from the side, her brows slightly furrowed, clearly disdainful of such eavesdropping methods.
However.
Deep within Sasamori Aya's dark eyes, a greater wariness also emerged.
After all.
This was the old school building's gymnasium.
The classroom building where the confrontation had taken place was at least several hundred meters away in a straight line.
Between them stood layer upon layer of walls and trees, along with the academy's incessant hubbub of voices.
Under such conditions,
she could not only hear it, but precisely reconstruct every moment of the battle, accurately identifying even the weapon's material and the exact point of impact.