It had been a full hour now, the three of them sitting there, talking about anything and everything, as if time had decided to be kind to them for once.
Shinobu ended the previous topic with a faintly melancholic look.
"That Capsule experience... it was horrible. If I could go back, I'd stop myself from being that stupid at twelve."
Sakuya and Kanao exchanged a brief glance, silent, but heavy with memories.
"You know, Shino... it's in the past," Sakuya said softly. "You weren't the only one who underestimated what that damn Capsule Eight could do."
Shinobu lowered his eyes. Even after all these years, that day still weighed on him.
"Just imagine it, Saku... I could've been in the military. Admit it, you would've totally pictured me in an N.A.S.C uniform!"
Kanao gave her signature smile, the one that barely lifted the corner of her lips.
"Maybe... but I'm convinced you're an excellent teacher."
Sakuya slid his hand toward Kanao's and squeezed it lightly, then looked at Shinobu with genuine warmth.
"You're the best of all of us, Shino."
Shinobu lifted his head. A small smile, faint but deeply real, stretched across his lips. He puffed out his chest, reclaiming a flash of his old exuberance.
"Obviously! What did you think? My students even call me 'Great Teacher Shino'!"
The two lovebirds burst out laughing. Kanao added, teasing but fond,
"Honestly... I don't think we could find you a better nickname."
Clearly flattered, Shinobu hurried to keep the conversation going.
"So, what about you, Kana? Med school going well?"
Kanao nodded right away.
"Yeah, really well. But honestly, I never imagined how hard it is to interact with other people's Seimei. It's... a huge responsibility."
Shinobu raised an eyebrow, a sign he wasn't only talking about her studies.
"And you didn't have to stop classes at the university? I heard in Osaka, S-Class attacks have been getting closer and closer to campus."
Kanao nodded slowly, her expression serious.
"Yeah... it's true. We even have an Omega Brigade agent on permanent standby now, ready to respond anywhere in the Ashiya prefecture."
Shinobu let out a relieved breath.
"At least you're in good hands."
Then he turned to Sakuya.
"And you, Saku, your electrician job? How's that going?"
Sakuya crossed his arms and exhaled, tired.
"Let's just say... these two weeks off are going to do me a world of good. It feels great to be in Tokyo, to think about something else for once."
Shinobu frowned slightly.
"Sounds like you don't enjoy your job that much."
Sakuya stayed quiet for a moment, his gaze drifting into the distance.
"Let's just say... it's ironically not that stimulating."
Shinobu let out a small laugh, shook his head, then glanced at his phone.
"Ah, my ride's here. I'm gonna have to leave you two."
Kanao stood up at the same time.
"Same. Vacation's almost over... but we're really happy we got to see you again. We should do this again, seriously."
Sakuya nodded, sincere.
"Thanks for coming, Shino. It was good seeing you."
Shinobu gave them a smile that was a little sad, but satisfied.
"The feeling's mutual. Hope we can make time for this again soon."
He headed out of the small restaurant, boarded his adapted transport bus, and disappeared behind tinted windows.
Sakuya turned to Kanao.
"Alright... we've still got a bit of a drive too. Time to head home."
Kanao blushed lightly, affection shining in her eyes.
"You're driving today, okay? I'm exhausted... I need to doze off next to my favorite driver."
Sakuya smiled wide and bright, like he'd just been handed a mission of the highest importance.
"Come on then. Let's go!"
---
Meanwhile, a few kilometers away...
"...What the hell is that..."
The agent behind him immediately noticed the flinch in the young man wearing a black uniform.
"What now, Mitsuo? Another Anomaly in Nakano?"
Mitsuo narrowed his eyes, leaning over the scrolling data.
"No... there are two. And one of them doesn't match a normal S-Class at all."
Captain Takeru leaned in too, jaw tight.
"You're right... what is that signature? It looks like a..."
Mitsuo snapped his head toward him.
"Captain, we need an Omega Brigade agent dispatched immediately!"
Takeru nodded without hesitation and raised his voice toward dispatch.
"Send an Omega Brigade unit to Nakano right now. Emergency classification, Epsilon-2."
One of the dispatchers checked his screen, panicked, then looked back at the captain.
"Captain... all Omega Brigades are already deployed. We'd have to send Epsi..."
Takeru cut him off.
"Then send Omega-0."
The dispatcher went pale.
"But Captain... that's our best agent. Are you sure that..."
Takeru cut him off again, this time with icy impatience.
"Don't argue. This is an emergency, and that's an order."
The red Epsilon-2 alert light flashed across the screens...
...and that same red pulsed a second later on the dashboard display of the car.
Sakuya frowned.
"Huh? What's wrong with this screen...? I literally just bought this car."
The dashboard crackled faintly, streaked with strange bands of color, subtle but unusual enough to grab his attention immediately.
Sakuya tightened his grip on Kanao's hand and shook it gently, just enough to pull her out of her half-sleep.
"Hey, Kana... do you feel anything weird?"
She surfaced slowly, like she'd been dragged out of hibernation. It took her a few seconds before she could even form words.
"Huh...? What is it, Saku?"
Sakuya nodded toward the dashboard display.
"Look at the screen. It's weird, right? And... don't you feel like the air is heavier?"
Kanao closed her eyes for a moment, as if she were listening to the atmosphere itself. Then she turned to him, her gaze suddenly sharper.
"Now that you mention it... yeah. There's something in the air. I just can't tell what."
Sakuya glanced around, as if checking the cabin for something hiding in plain sight. Then he reached for the screen and switched the station, hoping, stupidly, to lighten the mood. He took Kanao's hand again.
"Here... let's try to relax a little."
Kanao looked at him with a forced smile. To anyone else, she would've looked calm. But not to Sakuya. He knew her too well. That wasn't calm. That was worry, held in a clenched fist.
"Kana... we should pull over. You look like you've got a fever."
She blinked slowly, as if she had to put her mind back in order.
"No... I'm okay, Saku. I promise. Just keep driving... it'll pass."
She meant it to be reassuring, but her voice trembled. A weight dropped into Sakuya's chest. He'd never seen her like this, not even her. Not even during that awful afternoon when they'd forced her to restore creature corpses in class. She hadn't worn that face then.
"You promise you'll be okay?"
Kanao squeezed his hand tighter, too tight for it to be nothing, then nodded with a sickly slowness.
"Yeah... I promise."
That was when Sakuya noticed it. The air had turned cold. Not normal cold. A cold that felt heavy, wrong. And in his palm, for the first time, he felt Kanao's Seimei tremble. A Seimei she wasn't controlling.
His heart skipped.
"Kana... forget it. I'm taking you to the hospital right now. This isn't normal."
She turned her head, ready to protest... but the words died before they left her lips. Her eyes slid shut.
"...Sakuya."
Just his name, spoken in a voice that heavy... He'd only heard it like that once before in his life.
"Kana, hold on, it's gonna be al..."
Kanao's face suddenly twisted into a raw grimace of pain. Pain so deep it looked like something was being ripped out of her from the inside.
"Sakuya... I'm scared..." Her voice shook. "Don't leave me..."
Her breathing turned ragged, irregular, like every inhale cost her years. Cold sweat beaded on her skin, pouring fast, alarmingly, almost dehydrating.
Panic spiked through Sakuya's body. He stomped the accelerator, eyes locked on the road and on the hand he refused to let go of.
Crack.
He felt the pain before he understood. Kanao had squeezed his hand so hard a sharp snap echoed through his fingers.
"Kana! You're hurting me!"
But she didn't answer. Her stare was locked on the empty air ahead, pupils blown wide, frozen by something only she could see.
The sweat on Kanao's forehead suddenly changed. It thickened. Turned heavier. Then, under Sakuya's horrified eyes, it darkened into a deep red... almost black.
He dared to look at her again.
And his heart seized.
Her pupils were gone. There was only white... and burst red veins spiderwebbing across her eyes like shattered glass.
Panic obliterated what little composure he had left. His mind started to come apart, crushed under pure terror.
"KANA!!" His voice cracked. "Hold on, please!! I need you!! I don't know what's happening, I don't know..." He was choking on his own breath. "I'm gonna get you out of this, I swear! We'll find someone, we'll treat you, but don't leave me... don't leave me, you're everything to me!!"
It felt like he was screaming into the void.
Kanao opened her mouth. Not to speak. To let something out.
A wet, warped crackle, almost electrical. A sound that wasn't human. Her breathing broke into jerky, disturbed gasps, like something else was trying to breathe through her.
A violet mist spilled from her lips, dense, vibrating, almost alive.
Sakuya burst into sobs, raw and uncontrollable. More real now than the sickening crunches running through the bones of his crushed hand.
And despite the pain, the fear, the horror...
He kept holding her.
Like letting go would already mean losing her.
"Kanaa!!"
His scream shattered inside the car.
Then, suddenly, Kanao's body twisted. Like her organs weren't obeying the same laws as her bones anymore, like something inside her was pulling in every direction at once.
Her outline warped, blurred, almost ethereal, like she was slipping out of reality centimeter by centimeter.
A freezing breath flooded the car. Not natural cold. A cold that came from something.
Sakuya felt that aura wrap around him, crush him, suffocate him.
His fingers stopped responding. The steering wheel turned by itself. His foot slammed to the floor and he couldn't lift it. Like an invisible force had taken over his body.
"Kana, KANA, NO!!"
The car screamed along the asphalt, the acceleration turning uncontrollable.
And before Sakuya could even understand...
The car smashed head-on into the front of a building.
Then... a breath. Pain. A blurred return to the world.
Sakuya opened his eyes to the wrecked carcass of the car. Or what was left of it. Twisted metal, shattered glass, and his own body pinned inside, almost every bone broken, every breath another step toward the other side.
He could feel life leaving him in uneven waves. And in that in-between, he turned his head.
To his left... her.
Or what remained of Kanao.
The creature had finished taking shape. A colossal, twisted impossibility, where only fragments, a sliver of cheek, a piece of collarbone, the familiar length of a lock of hair, still remembered what Kanao had been a minute ago.
It moved toward him.
Its steps were strangely light for something that huge, like part of its body existed in another plane. Then it reached out with a deformed hand and closed its fingers around his throat.
Sakuya stared back, eyes half-open, conscious and unconscious at once. The life inside him was pulled away, drained like warmth ripped from an already-cold body. He felt himself dissolve, mixing into a presence that wasn't his.
As if his identity was being erased, letter by letter.
Then a sound ripped through the air.
A sharp metallic shriek, followed by a burst of micro-detonations. Rapid impacts, one after another, like compressed air exploding at an insane cadence.
The creature didn't react. It only saw him.
Its eyes, eyes that shouldn't have existed anymore, flickered with something briefly human.
The creature made a sound, barely human, but still recognizable.
"...Sa...ku..."
A call. A goodbye. A piece of her, trapped in hell on earth.
And in the next fraction of a second,
Its arm, its torso, then its entire upper half detonated under the impact of a projectile that tore across the scene like a beam of light.
"...ya..."
Half its body slammed to the ground with a dull, wet thud, like organs stripped of logic. The rest toppled backward into the rubble in a distorted gurgle.
Sakuya, gasping, felt the grip on his throat loosen.
Air returned. Fragile. Thin. Maybe the last.
A silhouette passed through his vision. At first he thought it was an illusion, a mirage made by pain. But the debris shifted for real, pushed aside by something precise, controlled.
A boot stepped through broken glass. Then another.
A dark coat brushed the wreckage. The smell of ionized air and hot metal drifted through the dust.
And finally, through the blood and grit in his eyes, he saw a face. Not clearly.
Just outlines. A razor-focused gaze. An expression with no panic, no hesitation.
The man, or something close enough to one, crouched slightly, assessing the scene with almost mechanical mastery.
The aura around him vibrated. Not like ordinary Seimei. Not like what you learn to sense at school, not even like a high-ranking soldier's.
It was an unimaginable density. Seimei so compact it seemed to bend the air around him. A presence unlike anything Sakuya had ever felt in his life.
Then the silhouette stepped closer.
And in a flash of lucidity, Sakuya saw the man's eyes narrow slightly, as if what he was looking at wasn't just serious...
...but unbearable.
His lips parted.
"...Impossible... you are..."
And before Sakuya could understand, his eyelids fell shut. The world tipped into black.