The recently, thoroughly 'ravaged' Seat of Evil picked up on the shift in the girl's mood at once.
Kirishika, who shared senses with the Seat of Evil, seemed to have completely forgotten why she had come looking for Su Yuzu in the first place.
Her whole head was now occupied by a single question: what exactly had she done wrong?
And then there was Sakura Koishin, who had been dragged along by Kirishika for an entire night, soaking in cold water with all the will to live drained out of her, delivering a perfectly serious lecture on The Origin of Life to a girl, hauled forcibly all the way from the Cambrian to the Silurian.
The instant she laid eyes on Kirishika, her scalp went numb.
As for Su Yuzu... having just eaten Sakura Mai clean off the plate, she stood at a natural disadvantage in front of Sakura Koishin.
Su Yuzu to the Seat of Evil, the Seat of Evil to Kirishika, Kirishika to Sakura Koishin, Sakura Koishin back to Su Yuzu.
And with that, the food chain radiating outward from Su Yuzu closed into a perfect loop.
She was still muttering internally about Kirishika and the eurypterid, still nursing the urge to let Kirishika experience firsthand what mortal paradise felt like.
But... clearly,
neither Kirishika nor the Seat of Evil was anything other than a free citizen at the moment.
If Su Yuzu wanted revenge, she probably couldn't lean on special methods like Combat Records. Physical means were likely her only option.
Still... Su Yuzu's gaze settled on Auntie Sakura, whose eyes had gone distinctly shifty, who looked ready to turn on trembling legs and bolt, who would clearly rather be back in the ward keeping Tsukiyomi-senpai company.
Now that she had the upper hand, even the way Su Yuzu addressed Sakura Koishin had changed.
Of course—
the change in how Su Yuzu addressed Sakura Koishin had absolutely nothing to do with the girl's teeny, tiny, itty-bitty appetite for revenge.
Not even a hundred-million-th of a connection, truly~
Su Yuzu purely didn't want to put Sister Mai in an awkward position, that was all.
"So... Sister Sakura and Sister Kirishika know each other?" Su Yuzu made a great show of being someone who knew nothing, understood nothing, and absolutely, positively had no interest in getting back at Kirishika.
After all~
Su Yuzu still needed Kirishika's hands to keep Sakura Koishin tied up.
"Ki... Kirishika!?" Astonishment flickered across Sakura Koishin's face.
Kirishika was hardly an ordinary name like Xiao Ming or Xiao Hong, Ichirou or Aika. Kirishika was an import, a symbol of the Holy Royal Court.
As far as Sakura Koishin knew, the only woman ever called Kirishika had lived more than a century ago: the Lady Godmother of the Holy Royal Court.
Before coming to the base, Sakura Koishin had read through Tsukiyomi Fuya's medical report and nursed a headache over it.
A condition that severe... only Kirishika herself stepping in could truly work a miracle.
And now she was looking at a girl with youthful, innocent eyes in front of Little Yuzu, a gaze that was playful and even a touch skittish.
Sakura Koishin simply could not connect her with the Lady Godmother of the Holy Royal Court.
After all... in Sakura Koishin's mind, the Lady Godmother of the Holy Royal Court was dignified, elegant, and full of fighting spirit.
She had walked through endless night, standing at the far end of an age torn apart by war, saving countless children beneath cities that were crumbling into ruin.
Her entire life had been spent fighting the Aberrants.
And in the end... it was to keep the Seventh Sequence's Seat of Evil from falling into the Abyss that she had walked into the ocean at his side.
But—
judging by the combat reports coming out of this base, the Seat of Evil hadn't actually died back then.
And Kirishika—
Sakura Koishin looked at the girl who was looking up at her.
Could this be coincidence?
Thinking of Tsukiyomi Fuya, who had suddenly recovered and was merely a little dehydrated now, Sakura Koishin found an answer already surfacing in her mind.
The girl in front of her was no human being.
Or at the very least... no ordinary one.
She had heard that Aberrants, after falling into the Abyss, all reverted to the form in which they were most alluring, or the form they liked best.
Like Kujou Iruka, all those years ago.
That travel-worn woman, weathered as an Ascetic, who had twisted around with a snarling grin and thrown herself into the Abyss—
and the black angel that rose with wings spreading from her waist had the body of a girl of seventeen or eighteen.
But... didn't Kirishika look a little too young?
Sakura Koishin had always been fond of the Kirishika in the Holy Royal Court's old, yellowed photographs: that noblewoman with a parasol raised, one hand resting on the head of the girl beside her.
If the choice were hers, Sakura Koishin would definitely have picked the age when her figure was at its finest. Or when her waist was at its finest.
"Tsk—"
Sakura Koishin found herself approving of Kirishika after all.
It was just... there were certain things she clearly could not avoid.
Having caught the delicate balance of restraint between Sakura Koishin and Kirishika, Su Yuzu stopped caring about whatever it was Kirishika had been squatting outside the hospital entrance to tell her.
She got behind Kirishika and the Seat of Evil, whose bearing toward Su Yuzu could only be described as cowering, and pushed them both straight at Sakura Koishin.
"Since Sister Sakura and Sister Kirishika know each other..."
"Why not catch up on old times together?"
Sakura Koishin froze where she stood.
The look she turned on Su Yuzu carried a distinct blankness, a startled disbelief, and something else—the wounded indignation of someone who had just been bullied.
If being bullied by a junior weren't so utterly humiliating, and if Mai weren't holding a certain piece of leverage over her from a moment ago,
Sakura Koishin would be rounding up people right now to announce that she was being bullied.
Bullied, no less, by the very cabbage that had gone and rooted up her own family's cabbage.
"Th-th-this..."
"I-I-I..."
That one shove from Su Yuzu was all it took for Kirishika to understand exactly what she meant.
She might be slow on the uptake sometimes, but clearly—
at a critical moment like this, Kirishika could be relied on.
Kirishika stared at Sakura Koishin with her eyes stretched wide. She was putting genuine effort into that glare.
"Then it's settled!" Su Yuzu grabbed Soga Yura's and Sakura Mai's small hands and got ready to bolt on the spot.
"Yuzu... slow down..." Sakura Mai clearly hadn't fully recovered yet.
She had helped Yuzu draw her sword again and again before she'd had any proper rest.
That she could still move around at all was proof of a tough constitution.
Had it been Soga Yura, she'd probably be curled up in Su Yuzu's arms by now.
Normal movement was more or less fine, but anything too strenuous still left Sakura Mai struggling to catch up with herself.
Yuzu's motion stopped short.
She shot a vicious glare at Kirishika, who was busy looking obedient and adorable, then reached into her Material Inventory and hauled out something enormous—held up by the tail, it stood half as tall as she was.
The fleshy sea scorpion slapped its tail against the ground with a wet flapping sound. Su Yuzu put on her fiercest face. "Here!"
"Your eurypterid!"
The girl could be genuinely wicked at times, but... most of the time, when it came to the girls around her, Su Yuzu wasn't stingy in the slightest.
By any standard, this eurypterid was a seven-color-tier ingredient.
Eaten outright, it might well grant a massive boost in ability.
And even uneaten, handing it over for research could effortlessly pad out a dozen or more papers, enough to graduate a whole crop of postgraduates.
Yet Su Yuzu, still wearing that fierce little scowl, shoved it into Kirishika's arms.
"Mmn!!!" Kirishika lit up with excitement.
[Ding—]
[A recruitable Operator has been detected.]
[Recruit?]
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