Chapter 278: The Chronicle Cards Assembled. The Butterfly Effect Begins.
"What is going on here?"
Kaiba Chiaki was standing in the doorway of the booth with dark circles under her eyes heavier than Kuroshio Nagi's baseline, looking at the scene inside with an expression that could freeze standing water.
"Finesse Wein: if you want to do something indecent, please do it somewhere that is not a public space." The warning came out flat and cold.
Calling a virtual network booth at three in the morning a public space was something of a stretch, but not entirely unreasonable.
After that single warning, Chiaki set the Finesse situation aside entirely, crossed the room to Amano's unconscious body, and crouched down to check on him.
"What happened to Amano? What did you two do to him?"
Finesse and the Kikawayu currently hosting Amano's soul exchanged a glance. A cover story assembled between them in approximately one second of eye contact.
"Exhaustion," Finesse said. "The duel intensity was that high. You know how young people just crash when they hit a wall."
"He's clearly unconscious."
"Exhausted unconscious." Amano, speaking through Kikawayu's mouth, supported it from the other side. "It happened before, if you think about it. Senpai, you even came to visit him in recovery."
"Did I." Chiaki was not entirely convinced.
"If you don't believe us, just wait." Finesse glanced at the time on her Eva Terminal. "He'll wake up in about 1 hour and 27 minutes."
"Precise to the minute."
"Watch and see."
The accuracy of Finesse's prediction was consistent. Last time too: after the ambush on the Rin Seiya household, she had called the separation time to within minutes.
Chiaki confirmed with the other party: "Kikawayu, same opinion?"
"Yes." Amano nodded firmly.
"In that case, we wait." Chiaki pried open her can of black coffee, took a drink, and some of the exhaustion in her face eased fractionally.
Finesse and Kikawayu both knew Amano well. Neither of them would lie to her about something like this. She issued a quiet instruction to keep Kaiba Corp's medical team on standby and settled in to observe.
The other thing she had not fully processed yet: she had apparently walked in on Finesse and Kikawayu doing something. That had been genuinely unexpected.
Not that it was her business who Finesse Wein was involved with, as long as it was not Amano Rei.
Though it was somewhat remarkable how similar the Wein family's tastes apparently ran across both daughters. She had just received word that Latir Wein was planning a flash marriage to a female duelist next month.
Now Finesse Wein had apparently developed feelings for Kikawayu.
"Finesse Wein," Chiaki said, looking at the heiress with something like mild incredulity. "I didn't expect you to have a weakness for this type."
"For this type?!" Finesse immediately began waving both hands. "No, no, not at all, I absolutely don't!"
"Ah. The classic tsundere. Understood."
The problem with the tsundere dynamic: denying it only confirmed it. The more firmly you protested, the more firmly the "tsundere concealment" interpretation locked in. This was the tsundere infinite loop, and there was no escape from it once it started.
Amano noted this internally without particular sympathy. This was, in the most charitable reading, karma.
His more immediate concerns were practical: he had requested one day of leave and had been gone for three. Returning to the Academy was going to require some explanation. And more pressingly, he, Finesse, and Kikawayu had all vanished simultaneously, leaving Shio alone at the villa. The one saving factor being that Yui had moved in recently.
"Senpai, being gone from the Academy for three days won't cause problems, will it?"
"Don't worry about the Academy. I arranged coverage under Kaiba Corp's name: an invitation for a closed test of a newly developed system. The Academy won't ask questions."
"And Shio? She's... that is, Rei's younger sister."
"That one was a handful at first. She's family, of course she was worried, wanted to come over immediately. I told her you were here too, and that seemed to settle her down."
The "you" in that sentence referred to Kikawayu. Kikawayu's credibility in Shio's eyes ranked second only to Amano himself. Outside of Amano, it was the older-brother figure known as "Kikawayu-nii" who had spent the most time looking after her.
There was also the fact that, going back in his memory, Shio had always made joking remarks about "getting Rei and Kikawayu together." He had always written it off as teasing.
Had she known all along?
No. She couldn't have. Shio was straightforward and honest to a fault. If she had known something like that, she would not have stayed quiet about it this long.
Just teasing, then.
And since Chiaki had apparently handled everything that needed handling, Amano had nothing major left to worry about... except actually he did.
Using Kikawayu's hands, Amano unlocked his own unconscious body's Eva Terminal. The message notification had accumulated to 99-plus unread, the counter overflowing.
Chiaki, watching "Kikawayu" casually unlock Amano's Terminal, could not hide her surprise for a second.
"You two really are close. Amano actually gave you his Terminal password?"
In Eden, the unlock code for an Eva Terminal was arguably a person's most sensitive piece of personal information: more protected than any bank account or identification. Even between married couples, sharing Terminal passwords was rare enough that it counted as a meaningful gesture.
These two had gone past that level already?
Amano chose not to address the comment and simply set his own wrist back down without reading any of the messages.
Two reasons for restraint. First: Chiaki was watching with the attention of someone who suspected something. Reading VSN messages while inhabiting someone else's body was objectively strange behavior, and she would intervene. Second: the messages were likely personal, and reading them while in Kikawayu's body meant Kikawayu could potentially see them. The yandere version of his best friend watching him read messages from the various high-affection women in his life was not a situation he needed to invite.
"Senpai, were you here the whole three days?"
The virtual network booth technology moved the entire space together: a technical arrangement Amano could not fully explain. He knew that if Chiaki had been waiting in the booth during the three days, she would not have been able to see any of them. She would have been sitting alone in an empty room.
"When the company needed me I sent someone else to watch. Otherwise I stayed."
The dark circles confirmed it without further argument.
The unusual length of this Chronicle: Chiaki would not have failed to notice. She had been the one to push for the run in the first place. She had probably assumed some responsibility for it and stayed.
"So you completed it?"
"More or less."
"Good enough." Chiaki allowed herself to look slightly less exhausted. A three-day Chronicle was not something her schedule needed to handle again. Even if she had been knocked out on day one.
Though it raised a question she was already thinking about.
Had they actually completed it?
Eva had told Amano that he had deviated from the established historical timeline on too large a scale, generating a butterfly effect from three thousand years in the past that could alter Eden three thousand years in the future. That was not a typical Chronicle conclusion.
He had assumed the Chronicle was a simulation. It appeared to function more like a time machine.
Kaiba Seto had apparently been researching something in the dimensional underside: technology capable of traversing three thousand years of history. Going backward, the destination was ancient Egypt. Going forward from Eden three thousand years: the destination landed squarely within the Yu-Gi-Oh! animated timeline.
The Chronicle rewards.
Checking the rewards terminal while in Kikawayu's body was at least neutral territory: a Chronicle clear reward was not private correspondence.
The Chronicle reward terminal was blinking with a pending claim.
[Chronicle Top Score Clear Reward]
[Complete Neo-Spacian monster card series / Favorite Contact / Return from the Different Dimension / Evil HERO Fallen Claw / Springans Kitt / Fallen of Albaz / Branded Fusion / Guardian God - Exodia / Smile World]
Where had Eva's specially modified reward gone? Because none of these were anything Amano had not personally obtained during the Chronicle itself.
Cards acquired inside a Chronicle normally could not be brought out of the Chronicle. The ability to carry these cards out: that was Eva's doing. The hero squad assembled for the campaign against the Supreme King had, through those machinations, been reassembled inside Eden.
The unknown was whether the Chronicle versions of the cards would contain card spirits. That would have to wait until he reclaimed the cards in his own body.
At the bottom of the list, one additional card:
[Evil HERO Captive Claw]
Why was there an Evil HERO card in there? A token representative of the original Chronicle reward before the SSS modification, presumably.
Meanwhile, from inside Kikawayu's mind:
"I'm back, Rei!"
"What happened to you? You went completely silent."
"Someone was talking to me about something in there."
"Someone? Talking to you? Inside a mind-room? What exactly? Is it something to worry about?"
"Oh, it's nothing, don't worry about it. More importantly: how does my body feel? Being inside it, do you get a kind of... stolen feeling?"
Amano had no response to that.
He issued a firm warning: "I'm telling you, Kikawayu, do not say things like this in front of Shio. She's still a child. She doesn't need to hear that kind of thing."
"Of course I know that! I only talk this way when it's just the two of us."
In that case, the two of them should perhaps not be alone together for a while.
Exactly one hour and twenty-seven minutes after Finesse had predicted: the possession ended. Amano returned to his own body. Finesse's precision was frankly alarming.
First order of business in his own body: collect the Chronicle reward cards.
Unfortunately: like the Blazing Cartesia, the Virtuous obtained from the previous Chronicle run, none of the Neo-Spacian cards or Fallen of Albaz came with card spirits. Pure card rewards from the system.
Second order of business: open his VSN.
Nanki'in Sakuya:
"Amano, why didn't you come to class? Kondo said you took leave."
"Didn't we agree we'd see each other at school this week? Did you stand me up?"
"Why haven't you replied all day."
"Kondo says you were invited to participate in a Kaiba Corp closed test. Is that believable?"
"Is it dangerous?"
"Is it really just a test? It's been three days."
"If you've run into trouble, I'll have people storm Kaiba Corp!"
"Even if Kaiba Corp has money, the Nanki'in family has more combat power. Don't forget that."
"Reply immediately!"
"My husband, I've been missing you."
This was probably the first time Sakuya had fired off this many messages to him in one burst. Was this what affection hitting 90 looked like in practice?
She was typically reserved in person: between classes, in real life, she said far less than she wrote on VSN. Here she had apparently made up the deficit all at once.
As for the other 90-plus:
Rin Seiya:
"Are you free? Let's meet today somewhere."
"Didn't we agree today was the day you'd meet my friend? Why are you ignoring me?"
"So you just vanish on people, do you. Quite the heartbreaker."
"What do you mean you were invited to a Kaiba Corp closed test?"
"That's just Kaiba Chiaki kidnapping you."
"If you're being forced into something, blink twice... never mind, I can't see you anyway."
"It's been three days. Has Kaiba Chiaki done anything to you?"
"You can't get hurt. If something happens to you at Kaiba Corp..."
"I'll have my friend hang themselves at Kaiba Corp's front gate."
The nerve her ordinary civilian self showed when standing up to a zaibatsu was impressive, even if having a friend carry out the protest was perhaps somewhat excessive.
It was past four in the morning. He replied to both anyway, if only to confirm he was alive.
Both replied within seconds.
Sakuya: "Good. You're safe. Can you come to school tomorrow? I can't settle down properly when I can't see you."
Rin: "Are you still in one piece? Did Kaiba Chiaki do anything to you?"
He could have done without the latter question entirely.
He was relieved he had waited to read these in his own body. None of it was particularly explicit, but the thought of reading it in Kikawayu's body while she had access to his perspective was enough.
"You really don't have to have your medical team check me over, senpai. I just want to go home and sleep."
"Understood. If there are further complications, reach out. I share some responsibility for how this went."
"Your dark circles are worse than mine, senpai. Get some rest yourself."
He said goodbye to Chiaki, got on his D-Wheel, and headed out into the streets of Eden at four in the morning.
Only now did it hit him, as the city slid past on both sides with its usual high-tech backdrop: the Chronicle was actually over.
He looked at the buildings going by and found himself wondering: what exactly had the butterfly effect changed? What in Eden now looked different from how it had been three days ago?
He did not have an answer yet.
Inside the Security Management Bureau at the same hour:
"The comparison is done, Officer Kirigakure." An older officer slid a folder across the desk to the sharp, uniformed woman seated there.
The officer addressed as Kirigakure moved through the documents quickly.
Sitting across from her was a girl who looked like she was in middle school.
The older officer added: "There is no identity record for this girl anywhere in the mainframe Eva's system. It's as though she appeared out of thin air."
"Is that possible?" Kirigakure frowned.
"Theoretically, impossible."
Eden's population had been under complete Eva system registration for the past century. Any child born by any means was logged in Eva's records. This girl, who appeared to be about thirteen or fourteen years old, had somehow stayed off the system for her entire life.
"Your name is Saotome Rei?"
Saotome Rei nodded with enough force to confirm it twice over.
"And you say you're looking for someone named Amano Rei?"
"Yes! Amano-senpai is definitely in Eden! I saw him recently!"
The name Amano Rei was one Kirigakure had not forgotten. He had summoned the Wicked Avatar in plain view of everyone at the Academy Challenge, been brought in for questioning, and then been walked out by Kaiba Corp before anything useful could be extracted.
Since that incident, the Security Bureau had kept Amano Rei on its unofficial watch list.
And now, out of nowhere, a girl with no identity record in the entire Eva system showed up asking to find him.
"Why are you looking for Amano Rei?"
The question made the girl's cheeks go red. Then she lifted her chin with an air of settled conviction and answered.
"To marry him, of course."
"Marry? You?" Kirigakure looked at the clearly not-yet-adult girl in front of her.
He was going to catch a significant amount of legal electricity for that one.
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