The morning sun had not yet completely dissipated the thin mist covering Tracen Academy.
Kaito did not immediately run out to look for Narita Taishin like a headless fly.
Sitting in the office of the Fierce Umas Division, with a cup of hot coffee in his hand, he observed his "prey" in silence through the academy's internal surveillance system —a system "slightly" modified and kindly provided by Agnes Tachyon— like a top-tier ecological observer.
On the screen, Narita Taishin's life trajectory was as monotonous as a pendulum, terrifyingly precise.
Dormitory—Cafeteria (always the lonely seat in the farthest corner, with her back to everyone)—Training ground—Library—Training ground—Cafeteria—Dormitory.
A straight line between two points, repeating endlessly.
Around her, there seemed to exist an invisible and extremely repulsive wall that isolated everyone.
She spoke to no one nor made eye contact with anyone.
She was like a lonely gray shadow, alien to the entire Tracen community.
"This is no longer just social anxiety," Kaito thought while looking at the screen.
"This is a form of highly proactive and logically coherent auto-exile"
In the afternoon, when everyone finished their day's training and walked in small groups toward the cafeteria or the recreation room.
Kaito noticed that Narita Taishin, however, was walking in the completely opposite direction, toward the hills behind the academy, carrying her bag.
He changed the surveillance angle and finally found her figure on an old racetrack, completely abandoned and overgrown with weeds.
The track was riddled with the traces of time.
The starting line was already blurred, the synthetic ground cracked, and the grandstand seats covered in moss.
Narita Taishin was sitting there alone, in silence, in the cold highest row of the stands.
She contemplated the racetrack forgotten by everyone, while the setting sun lengthened her thin and lonely silhouette across the ground.
Kaito knew that this was her "territory".
It was the unknown secret base where this lone wolf could feel safe and abandon all her pretenses.
He turned off the monitor, stood up, and decided to make his first official approach here.
Kaito, in silence, like a true ghost, approached the ruined stands.
He sat down gently next to Narita Taishin, with an empty seat between them, without speaking immediately, merely looking into the distance, just like her.
But she seemed to have noticed his arrival long ago.
She showed no surprise; she did not even turn her head.
She spoke with a voice so cold it seemed she was speaking to the air.
"If you are an envoy from Miss Kiryuin, you can leave now"
"I don't need any kind of psychological comfort"
"I am not an envoy, I am a rehabilitation specialist"
Kaito said calmly, looking at her profile.
"Your body and mind are currently in a state of severe and prolonged internal exhaustion, I can help you..."
"Help me with what?"
Narita Taishin coldly interrupted his words before he could finish.
Finally, she turned her head.
In those beautiful and unique eyes, not covered by her long bangs, there was no anger, no curiosity, only a cold, philosophical wisdom that saw everything.
"Help me overcome the 'limit of talent'?"
A grimace of self-deprecation and lack of humor appeared at the corner of her lips.
"Don't be ridiculous"
She stood up slowly, with her hands in her pockets, staring at the starting line in the distance, as if she were enunciating an absolute truth of the universe.
"In the world of the Umas, from the moment we are born, everything is already decided"
"Lineage, bone precision, the upper limit of cardiopulmonary function... these are the gifts granted by 'God' that mortals cannot change"
"Mortals like me, who only possess a little more of the so-called 'talent' than ordinary people, no matter how hard we try, no matter how much we exhaust ourselves, can only infinitely approach the ceiling called 'genius'"
"However, we can never surpass it with the same ease as true geniuses do (images of Biwa Hayahide, Narita Brian, and others passed through her mind)"
She turned her head, and her single eye pierced Kaito's soul like a sharp scalpel.
"Your massages, your treatments, your little tricks..."
"Can they change my genetic sequence?"
Those words were not self-pity, nor were they complaints.
They were a form of almost cruel and absolute "rationality".
She had built a complete, logically coherent, and unshakable philosophical system for her "failure" and her "limitations"!
Any external stimulus or comfort seemed so pale, ridiculous, and insignificant in the face of this philosophical system.
In front of this cold wall of despair built from "philosophy" and "rationality".
Kaito decided to use his most irrational ultimate weapon, the one that complies with the rules.
He took a deep breath and instantly maximized the effect of the [Fatal Body Scent].
A fatal aura, capable of making Luna lose her composure and making Gold City tremble, overflowing with a primal masculine charm and capable of awakening the instinctive desires of all living creatures, instantly enveloped the ruined stands.
Logically, any female creature possessing the lineage of an Uma should have a violent and irresistible physiological and psychological reaction to this concentrated pheromone attack.
However—
Narita Taishin simply furrowed her brow slightly at the pleasant scent.
Then, she looked at Kaito with an expression of absolute boredom, as if she were watching an acrobatic clown.
"Pheromone attack? A very low-level tactic"
"Too much... for someone who long ago gave up on having any 'expectations' of the outside world..."
"This kind of thing makes no sense"
Her spiritual world was like a sealed room, plunged into an absolute vacuum, with the temperature maintained at absolute zero.
All external "heat", whether it was goodwill, encouragement, or this overwhelmingly potent pheromone, was mercilessly and completely repelled.
Kaito's ultimate trump card, the [Fatal Body Scent], which turned a basic attack into a super attack.
For the second time, it had failed totally and absolutely.
Just as Kaito kept a brief silence, his brain began to rapidly consider possible countermeasures.
The voice of Agnes Tachyon, the "off-field technical advisor," could be heard through the miniature Bluetooth headphones he was wearing, disguised as an earring.
"Interesting data, sample F (Narita Taishin) successfully blocked the resonance transmission between external pheromones and the central nervous system through the active construction of a 'high-intensity self-cognitive logical barrier'"
"Assistant, your 'idealistic metaphysics' attack has run into an insurmountable iron wall of 'materialistic philosophy'"
"My personal suggestion is to directly use physical means, sedate her by force, and take her back to the laboratory to dissect and research her"
"I knew you were going to say that!"
Meanwhile, at the other end of the stands, Kiryuin Aoi, who had been watching everything in secret through high-power military binoculars, saw Kaito's expression of frustration and helplessness.
The corners of her lips involuntarily curled into a victorious smile that said, "I knew this was going to happen".
Three days?
Hmph, I doubt you can last three hours.
Kaito cut the communication.
He knew that today's first attempt had ended in his complete defeat.
He rose slowly from his seat, preparing to leave.
Seeing that he seemed to have finally given up and was about to leave, an imperceptible hint of... relief? flashed in Narita Taishin's tense eyes.
Perhaps there was also a trace of... disappointment, which she herself had not noticed.
She turned around, ready to plunge back into her safe world, where only solitude and the racetrack existed.
But before Kaito went down the stands, he told her one last thing without looking back.
"You're right, I really can't change your genes, and I really can't break the so-called 'glass ceiling' of talent established by 'God'"
He paused.
His voice was suddenly filled with an extreme and undeniable challenge.
"But—"
"What I can shatter is that 'philosophical cage' you've built for yourself; a cage that looks cool, but is actually incredibly cowardly, and then, I will let you see with your own eyes the true 'you' that you've desperately locked inside this cage..."
"How fast she can run!"
Saying this, Kaito turned around and left without hesitation.
Leaving behind his confident and arrogant gaze.
Narita Taishin stood completely paralyzed, as if struck by lightning.
Kaito's words were like a precision bullet, capable of penetrating any armor.
He fiercely struck the only and most fatal crack in her "perfect philosophy".
It wasn't that she "didn't want" to do it.
She "didn't dare" to do it.
"Cowardly?"
For the first time, that word triggered a violent surge called "anger" that spread through her heart, which had been as still as an ancient well!
Instinctively, she clenched her fists tightly.
Watching Kaito's figure walk away, emotions such as "unwillingness" and "provocation" appeared in her only uncovered eye, the first emotions, other than "indifference," she had shown.
...
At the same time.
Kaito returned to the office.
Faced with Kiryuin Aoi's triumphant mockery (over the phone), he simply declared calmly:
"Day one: Information gathering and psychological destabilization, completed"
He hung up the phone, opened Narita Taishin's file, and began to devise a completely new "treatment plan," on the edge of madness.
Since he couldn't pierce her mental barrier from the inside.
Then—
He would use absolute "external facts" that she could not ignore or deny to cruelly and forcibly destroy her ridiculous "philosophical cage".
...
The next day.
Kaito sought out his "Harem Brigade".
He gave a kind smile to the few top-tier Umas who were bored to the core and overflowing with energy.
"Ladies, I need your help"
"Tomorrow we will hold a very special 'simulation race'"
"The opponent is none of you... but I want you at your maximum performance"
A war that intended to completely crush Narita Taishin's fragile worldview, a war that could only be described as "despair".
It is about to... begin!