[That absurd irritation born of extreme lucidity, as though you were looking at a crowd of hopeless people, stirred another ripple in the negative emotions you had only just forcibly suppressed, one that was difficult to calm.]
[You ignored Yuki Tsukumo, who was still dazed and mired in extreme self-doubt, and drew another cigarette from the shriveled pack, placing it between your lips and lighting it.]
[You inhaled deeply, letting the acrid, faintly numbing smoke make a full circuit through your lungs before forcefully exhaling. Amid the swirling gray smoke, your abyssally cold eyes fixed on her, and you continued mercilessly in the unquestionable tone of a superior.]
["Have you realized what you are?"]
["If you have, then get lost."]
["Don't ever appear before me again with that sickening savior act."]
[For Yuki Tsukumo, a Special Grade Sorcerer who had gone her own way for years, this was certainly not the first time in her life that someone had directed such aggressive words as "get lost" or "mind your own business" at her.]
[Both the furious Old Conservatives among the Higher-Ups and her colleagues who resented her abandonment of her responsibilities had hurled abuse at her.]
[But this time alone, faced with your quiet words that cut like a polar wind, she truly felt a helplessness that reached into her bones. She could not muster even the slightest confidence to argue back.]
[Because every piercing word you had spoken, stripping away all her pretenses like death by a thousand cuts, had been founded on bloody, objective facts.]
[They were all fatal problems she had tried to solve during her years of traveling the world, only to achieve nothing, leaving them unresolved to this day.]
[Precisely because of that, Yuki Tsukumo's once-proud reason recognized with absolute clarity that you had certainly