"Click." Chris pulled the door half-open.
Outside stood Arisu Sakayanagi, dressed in her regular uniform.
She stood with her hands folded in front of her, every bit the composed, elegant lady as always — but a closer look would catch the faintest trace of jealousy in her eyes.
"You got the news out that fast?"
Chris raised an eyebrow. "Pretty efficient."
Sakayanagi tilted her pale chin up slightly, as if it were only natural. "My father happens to be this school's director, after all. If even he didn't know the details of something this important that the Black Sphere handed down, confirming it would've taken a lot longer."
Chris nodded, following up. "So you already know who these new teachers arriving soon are?"
Sakayanagi didn't answer right away.
Her gaze slid past his shoulder, drifting toward the gap in the doorway, before she pressed her lips together and let out a pointed little sigh. "You're really going to make me stand out here in the hallway to talk about something this important, Chris? Not even offering me a glass of water… how cold of you."
Chris sighed, sounding like an older brother resigned to a spoiled little sister. "It's not that I don't want to let you in. There's just someone changing in there right now. I didn't want your eyes to suffer."
At that, Sakayanagi's fine brows lifted slightly.
Even though she already knew perfectly well who was in his room.
She hadn't expected Amanatsu Kazuha to have the nerve to actually come to a boy's dorm looking for Chris on her own.
In Sakayanagi's eyes, Amanatsu Kazuha was nothing more than a caged bird that had only just slipped free.
No matter how much she flapped around, she'd still carry the label of a White House reject — never as much of a threat as someone like Ichinose Honami, who commanded an entire class through legitimate standing.
Did I underestimate this sly little cat's initiative?
Sakayanagi calculated silently, but her face stayed unreadable — she even hung a smile on it.
"Oh? Changing clothes? Knowing you, Chris, the person in there surely isn't a man, is it?"
Chris rolled his eyes without any hesitation.
At that, Sakayanagi pressed her lips into a satisfied little smile.
"In that case, there's no harm in me going in to take a look, is there? We're all the same gender, after all — nothing to be shy about."
As she spoke, she stepped forward with elegant poise. "Of course, if you think seeing another woman in your room would make me jealous, you're overthinking it…"
"As the one and only Muse Goddess, I've always believed that the version of me made whole is the most perfect existence there is. There's nothing in this world that could truly rattle me."
Watching her stubbornly put on her tsundere front, Chris paused for a moment.
Amused, he stepped aside to clear the way. "Suit yourself… since you put it that way."
Chin lifted slightly, Sakayanagi strode right in without hesitation.
Chris shut the door behind him and turned to look.
The moment he did, even Chris found himself impressed by how fast Amanatsu Kazuha had gotten into character.
At some point, she'd already finished changing into her custom-tailored maid outfit and stood quietly beside the living room sofa.
So the instant Sakayanagi stepped inside—
Amanatsu Kazuha folded her hands naturally over her stomach and bowed her back in a demure curtsy, her wine-red twin tails falling over her shoulders, looking every bit like a personal maid who'd been waiting patiently for a long while. In a sugary voice, she greeted softly, "Good evening, Senpai Sakayanagi…"
Watching her flawless performance, it was genuinely hard to tell whether she was just role-playing or actually had some real maid talent buried in her.
To Sakayanagi's eyes, the scene carried a blatant edge of provocation and probing.
Was this her way of declaring she'd already gotten there first?
Sakayanagi's lips twitched, barely noticeable, her tone flat. "I didn't expect you to keep such a low profile and then move the second you got a chance. Quite fast, aren't you."
Amanatsu Kazuha straightened up, smiling sweetly at her with a knowing look. "Well, I did promise Chris, after all~"
"Now that I've got the chance, of course I have to grab it firmly. Otherwise, if something really happened to me in some future exam, I'd be left with a lifetime of regret. Don't you agree, Senpai?"
As much as Sakayanagi disliked this shameless sly cat, she had to admit the logic behind the words made sense to her.
So her tone softened, if only a little.
"Since none of us know what fate holds, all we can do is seize the present by whatever means necessary."
"Still—"
Sakayanagi's tone suddenly shifted, the smile at her lips turning dangerous.
"Funny, I seem to recall the story behind how this outfit got made isn't quite the same as how you told it."
"Well… I don't much care about this little trick of passing off borrowed flowers as your own, but as your senpai, let me offer you a word of warning."
"Everything you've ever done clings to you forever. Parroting someone else out of self-satisfaction will only leave you lost — your own path is something you have to forge yourself, Kōhai Amanatsu."
Amanatsu Kazuha glanced at her, quietly amused.
This is what you call not caring? Sounds like you really, really don't care.
Of course, being an elite raised in the White House, her control over her expressions was flawless around the clock.
Not only did she give nothing away, she deliberately furrowed her brow and pressed a fingertip to her rosy lips, feigning a look of thoughtful distress.
"Senpai… I don't really understand all these grand truths you're talking about. Could you explain it in a bit more detail?"
"Oh."
The moment she asked, Amanatsu Kazuha seemed to suddenly remember something, tapping her right fist lightly into her left palm, exaggerating a look of sudden realization.
"Oh, so that's what you meant… Ah, I almost forgot — you're the real protagonist of this story, Senpai! Sorry for stealing your spotlight~"
Sakayanagi took a deep breath.
Look at you, playing so coy.
That sugary, put-on voice could rival the sickly-sweet act of every green-tea girl over at Moon Forest.
"Since you understand, then you ought to know your place."
Sakayanagi scoffed and stopped paying attention to the little brat.
She walked a slow circle around Chris's room, eyes sweeping the space, and quickly spotted — beside the storage cabinet by the windowsill — the paper shopping bag she'd left there earlier, holding her own custom maid outfit. She bent and picked it up.
Sakayanagi had meant to use it to stake her claim.
What's this sudden sneak attack of yours worth?
I left my clothes here who knows how long ago — what do you have to compare with that?
But just as she picked up the bag, ready to strike back—
Out of the corner of her eye, Sakayanagi caught sight of something through the half-open cabinet door: a strange item of middling size, pink and soft-looking, resembling nothing so much as a silicone rear end.
Wasn't that the [Magic Butt] Chris had pulled from a blind box last time!
Sakayanagi's clever mind spun into motion, instantly conjuring a dozen ways to make the maid-costumed Amanatsu Kazuha make a fool of herself on the spot.
But before she could reach for the cabinet to put any of them into action—
Chris had already appeared silently behind her, and with one hand hoisted her by the back of her collar like a cat, hauling her back over to the sofa.
"You two, seriously…"
Chris looked at the pair of them, ready to claw at each other at a moment's notice, and sighed helplessly.
"If you want to fight, honestly, I don't mind. Watching women argue and pull each other's hair is basically my favorite spectacle — one of humanity's rarest forms of entertainment."
"But have you two forgotten what's actually the most urgent thing right now?"
At Chris's words, Amanatsu Kazuha immediately took the opening to back down gracefully.
"…Chris does have a point."
She nodded slightly, dropping the sugary voice, and spoke to Sakayanagi with a serious expression.
"I did come here to keep my promise to Chris, but if there's something more important going on, of course I know how to prioritize!"
Before she'd even finished, Chris smacked her on the head without any hesitation.
"You be quiet too. Stop stoking the fire."
Amanatsu Kazuha rubbed her head, sticking out her tongue playfully. Then she instantly straightened her expression, clasped her hands behind her back, stood perfectly straight, and put on the picture of an obedient girl owning up to her mistake.
Seeing Chris take control of the room, Sakayanagi had no choice but to sigh helplessly too.
Setting aside her mischievous thoughts for the moment, she walked over and sat on the sofa, her tone turning serious again.
"Just this afternoon, the Black Sphere issued a formal notice to the school's administration."
"According to it, when the next intake of new students arrives, teachers from 'other worlds' will join our school as special teaching assistants."
"Teaching assistants, huh…"
Amanatsu Kazuha murmured thoughtfully, her eyes flickering.
Chris pulled over a chair and sat down, asking:
"Is that all the information there is?"
"Like which world they're from? Their exact identities? Whether they mean us well or ill? None of that at all?"
Sakayanagi shook her head, explaining:
"I wouldn't say there's nothing, but what's given is very limited."
"The Black Sphere only gave the school a few digital business cards. Aside from their names and occupations, the only other thing on them is a single icon of a 'corresponding item representing their identity' as a marker."
"A few… so there's more than one teacher?" Amanatsu Kazuha asked, feigning confusion.
Sakayanagi said seriously, "Naturally. And more than two, as well."
"Going by the number, it doesn't line up at all with the number of casualties — Teacher Hoshinomiya and Tokinari Tsukishiro."
"So we can rule out the idea that the Black Sphere is simply sending a replacement for each fallen teacher. This is most likely a systemic version update."
Chris nodded slightly, then pressed further.
"So, what's the specific information?"
Before Chris even finished asking, Sakayanagi had already pulled a specialized phone from her pocket.
After quickly unlocking the screen, she opened the photo album, flipped the phone around, and slid it across the table to him.
"See for yourself. I have somewhere to be right now."
With that, Sakayanagi stood and stretched.
Then she picked up the kraft paper bag beside her and walked lightly toward the bathroom, clearly intending to change into her own "battle uniform."
Chris glanced up instinctively, watching her slender figure for a moment.
In the end, he didn't call out to stop her.
As Amanatsu Kazuha leaned over, curious to look at what was on Sakayanagi's phone, Chris snapped back to attentionand looked down at the screen.
Reading the information on the first card, the words slipped out of his mouth before he realized it.
"Gojo Satoru… first-year homeroom teacher at Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College, the strongest sorcerer of the modern age." "Corresponding item marker is… Sukuna's Finger?"
Chris swiped lightly across the screen.
Seeing him fall into a brief silence, Amanatsu Kazuha leaned in and picked up reading where he left off.
"Jiraiya, one of the Legendary Sannin from the Hidden Leaf Village in the Land of Fire. Corresponding item is… an Explosive Tag?"
"Koro-sensei, originally known as the Reaper, a top-tier assassin wanted worldwide. And the corresponding item is actually a Parasyte?" As Amanatsu Kazuha read on, Chris kept swiping the photos to the left.
But after swiping past Koro-sensei's card—
what appeared on screen was no longer information about the new teachers, but other unrelated videos and photos saved in Sakayanagi's album.
Chris had no interest in those and was about to hit the button to turn off the screen.
But Amanatsu Kazuha seemed to spot something incredible, letting out a small, surprised gasp.
"Chris, wait!"
"Look… isn't this the surveillance footage from the hallway outside your dorm?"
She leaned in for a closer look. "And the timestamp on it… it's exactly when I came looking for you!?"
Amanatsu Kazuha blinked, feigning shock.
"Senpai Sakayanagi can even get her hands on something like this? Is her father really the director of Advanced Nurturing?"
Chris replied offhandedly, not particularly bothered.
"Probably. Otherwise, how would someone with a congenital heart condition who needed a cane just to walk end up placed in Class A from day one?"
Amanatsu Kazuha's mouth formed a small "o," playing the part of someone caught totally off guard.
But her eyes soon flicked with mischief, and she leaned in toward Chris's ear to ask, testing the water.
"Chris… what do you think, should we keep scrolling? See what other 'crimes' are recorded in Senpai Sakayanagi's album? We might catch her with some incredible leverage~"
Chris glanced up at her flatly.
"Aren't you afraid… that if I keep scrolling, I might land right on the footage Sakayanagi recorded of you creepily stalking me before?"
At that, Amanatsu Kazuha visibly froze for a second.
But she quickly relaxed into a smile.
After all, she too had a Parasyte fused with her.
Even without pulling off the kind of absurd synchronized enhancement Ayanokōji had, using all manner of T-Virus strains and super-serums on his own Parasyte,
just relying on the Parasyte's most basic "calm analysis" and "enhanced perception" support functions,
Amanatsu Kazuha could clearly sense the aura around Chris growing more and more terrifying by the day.
It was nothing like the ordinary curve of someone growing stronger through hard training!
In her perception, this kind of growth felt more like a peak-tier master who had long since broken through every meridian barrier —
who had merely had his power wiped clean by some grievous injury or seal, forcing him to start over from scratch.
But because he'd once reached that height and built up that depth of foundation—
even now, relying purely on instinct and his body's muscle memory, he could recover his strength without hitting any bottleneck, rocketing upward at a speed far beyond ordinary comprehension.
Facing a "monster" on that level,
having her supposedly secret little stalking tricks seen through was about the most natural thing in the world.
After a brief moment of thought, she felt none of the panic of being caught out.
Instead, she met his gaze head-on and said, perfectly straight-faced:
"Since you already knew, Chris, and you didn't turn me away just now… then I have even less reason to be scared off, don't I?"
She smiled, eyes curving with a righteous kind of coyness.
"After all, admiring the strong is every girl's rightful privilege! No one can take that away."
"Honestly, knowing you don't hate me makes me really happy right now~"
Faced with that sugar-coated bombshell, Chris just shook his head noncommittally.
"Admiration… is sometimes the emotion furthest from actual understanding."
Amanatsu Kazuha just laughed softly and spread her hands, unconcerned.
"Understanding is a bit of a luxury for a defective piece of goods like me."
"It's like a melon forced off the vine before its time… it might not be sweet, but it beats dying of thirst, doesn't it?"
At that, Chris raised an eyebrow, about to say something more to take her down a peg.
Just then, a soft click sounded.
The bathroom door swung open.
Now dressed in a finely tailored black-and-white maid outfit, Sakayanagi stepped out gracefully. Backlit by the warm-toned lighting, her pale skin set off the elaborate lace trim beautifully, and paired with her short silver hair, she looked exactly like an exquisite, delicate porcelain doll stepped straight out of a display window.
Unfortunately, the beautiful, charged atmosphere didn't last long.
Sakayanagi's gaze swept between the two of them, and her composure cracked almost instantly as she sneered.
"Look at you two, still looking unsatisfied — don't tell me you didn't sneak a peek at more photos while I was gone. What a shame. I had a little surprise saved for later, too."
Amanatsu Kazuha's brow lifted slightly, but she quickly slid back into her flawless smile, firing back with a pointed remark.
"As your companions, Senpai, of course we know what to do and what not to do. That's called having a sense of restraint."
"By the way, Senpai…"
Amanatsu Kazuha forcibly steered the conversation back on track.
"What do you think — in what form will these teachers the Black Sphere is sending actually go about instructing us?"
"And without meeting them face to face, how are we even supposed to gauge their relative strength?"
She paused, then reasoned it out.
"Could it be that the corresponding items the Black Sphere hinted at are meant as the standard for judging their power?"
"But if that's the case, it still doesn't seem clear who'd rank higher or lower."
"After all, the value of an Explosive Tag and a Parasyte are both clearly priced in the shop, so those are easy to judge. It's really only Sukuna's Finger that's hard to gauge directly with S Points…"
"But overall, none of these corresponding items seem like they'd be worth some priceless fortune."
Sakayanagi thought it over, then lifted her skirt hem and sat down on the sofa.
"Hard to say. Maybe these items aren't meant to indicate combat power at all — maybe they're purely a mark of identity, simply signifying which parallel world tied to that item each teacher comes from."
Chris nodded in agreement beside her.
"That's certainly possible."
"But who knows… anyway, since they're coming along with the next batch of transfer students, and given how fast the school fills vacancies and admits new students these days, I doubt we'll have to wait too long."
"Once they actually get here, we'll know exactly what's what."
Actually, back when he'd first set up the information for these teachers—
Chris really had intended, just as Sakayanagi guessed, for the items to purely serve as markers for each teacher's home world.
Unfortunately, in the Assassination Classroom world that Koro-sensei belonged to—
it wasn't that there was zero cutting-edge tech, but things like tentacles or antimatter materials—
when Chris was picking an item through the Mysterious Merchant, none of that stuff came to mind right away.
It was the kind of thing that, on reflection, wasn't weak, exactly — just hard to make a strong impression with.
So, mostly for the sake of convenience and filling the slot,
Chris had settled on "Parasyte" — something that resembled Koro-sensei in a certain way — and tagged it as his icon.
In a way, though, the label wasn't wrong at all.
After all, hadn't the original Reaper, before he became Koro-sensei, been every bit as cold and ruthless as a Parasyte fresh off its arrival on Earth — treating himself and everything around him as nothing but tools for completing the mission?
Chris mused on this quietly.
Meanwhile, Amanatsu Kazuha and Sakayanagi seemed to have both picked up on some signal. The two exchanged a glance and spoke in perfect unison, with uncanny synchrony:
"Well then, in that case… it's time we got to the real matter at hand."
Sakayanagi turned to glance at Amanatsu Kazuha, then continued.
"Even though I don't much like you, you shameless little cat, since things have already come to this, I suppose I'll grudgingly accept reality — if only so as not to spoil Chris's mood."
Amanatsu Kazuha squared her shoulders without a hint of fear and shot back.
"You're still far too proud, Senpai."
"You're always putting yourself somewhere untouchably high. But actually, from a 'master's' perspective, a maid who's too domineering, too opinionated — that might not exactly be a point in her favor~"
"M-master?"
Hearing that embarrassing term slip so smoothly out of Amanatsu's mouth, Sakayanagi parted her lips slightly, clearly caught off guard that she could actually say it so naturally.
But on second thought, considering the other girl came from a place as inhuman as the White House—
lacking the usual shackles of morality and shame seemed like a perfectly normal thing.
As if she'd read exactly what was going through Sakayanagi's mind,
Amanatsu Kazuha covered her mouth and sighed with exaggerated emphasis.
"Oh dear… see, I told you, Senpai, you just don't have it in you."
"You can't even get a name out of your mouth, and here you are pretending to be some mature adult…"
Her competitive streak thoroughly ignited, Sakayanagi let out a cold laugh.
"It's just a word. What's the big deal."
"If Chris asked me to, forget 'master' — I could even call him 'Otōsan,' couldn't I!"
Chris couldn't help raising an eyebrow, disbelief written all over his face.
"Oh? Really now?"
The Sakayanagi who'd been so full of bravado a moment ago suddenly fell into an eerie silence.
Her pale cheeks caught fire at a visibly rapid pace, and her whole aura of confidence deflated in kind.
Chris found this delightful.
That's exactly how little vixens like her worked.
All bluster and bold talk most of the time, spouting the most outrageous lines without a second thought. But the moment things got serious, the moment actual follow-through was required, they instantly reverted to their true selves — struck mute, unable to answer.
Still, given Sakayanagi's fiercely competitive, never-back-down personality,
she clearly wasn't going to just accept being crushed and mocked by Amanatsu Kazuha.
Sure enough, after a moment of silence, Sakayanagi's violet eyes hardened. She took a deep breath, and every trace of hesitation vanished from her expression.
"Really!" she said through gritted teeth, throwing caution to the wind.
"Even playing some over-the-top game wouldn't be entirely off the table… like, like a punishment game involving spanking or something."
By the last few words, her voice had shrunk to something barely audible, thin as a mosquito's whine.
It wasn't that she had any objection to Chris, or found the idea distasteful.
Quite the opposite — after going through several life-and-death moments together, she actually harbored a faint, slightly perverse anticipation for that kind of sense of control that could crack open her perfect facade.
But the problem was… Amanatsu Kazuha, an outsider, was right here!
No matter how much Sakayanagi wanted to experience that thrill of losing control, she would never allow herself to show weakness or submission in front of a rival.
After all, she didn't consider herself the shameless type like Amanatsu Kazuha, who could say something like that without so much as a blush.
And she trusted that, given Chris's judgment and character, he was absolutely not the kind of hormone-addled pervert who'd bulldoze right through someone else's feelings.
That was the real confidence behind her daring to say something so bold in this moment.
And Chris's reaction did indeed go the way she'd anticipated.
"Actually going through with something like that… let's skip it."
Chris waved a hand, offering an airtight excuse.
"If I had to guess, you two probably spent a whole day and night sweating away in those stuffy Combat Suits, didn't you?"
"I'm a bit of a clean freak. If I smack away and the fabric ends up stuck together with sweat and won't peel off, that's not exactly going to be a pretty picture."
Hearing this "considerate" explanation,
Sakayanagi nodded slightly, her eyes shifting softly in the warm light, taking it as Chris genuinely giving her a face-saving way out.
Then, determined to fully shake off the suspicion that she'd merely been posturing—
a flash of inspiration struck Sakayanagi, and she spoke up to add:
"Actually… even without direct contact, there's a perfectly good alternative."
"That [Magic Butt] you pulled from the blind box before, Chris — that would solve the problem perfectly."
The words had barely left her mouth—
Amanatsu Kazuha, who'd never seen the item's power for herself, leaned in at once like a curious kid.
"A [Magic Butt]? Is that the thing Chris got from that blind box before? What… exactly does it do?"
Chris nodded, explaining offhandedly.
"It's simple. All the user has to do is link it to the target's nerves."
"After that, any pain or sensation dealt to the [Magic Butt] transfers directly, one to one, to the corresponding spot on the target's actual body."
At that, Amanatsu Kazuha's eyes lit up instantly.
"That's perfect! We can totally do this!"
She clapped her hands excitedly, praising the idea.
"It works around Chris's clean-freak thing, and it saves us from getting too embarrassed with direct physical contact…"
"Senpai, you really are a certified genius!" "Th—" What had only been an offhand remark had somehow backfired, checkmating herself instead.
Caught in a bind of her own making, Sakayanagi's ears flushed red, and she looked away, visibly embarrassed.
She glanced instinctively at Chris, seeking help.
But she found him stroking his chin, looking like he was seriously weighing the feasibility of the proposal.
Inside, Sakayanagi fought an internal battle that lasted less than three seconds…
In the end, she made up her mind and said:
"Well, since it's about honoring a promise from a bet I lost before… there really is no escaping it."
She forced herself to look composed as she turned to Chris. "So, Chris, what rules did you have in mind for this?"
Chris looked up and sighed.
"I was actually thinking it might be fun to just have you two do that embarrassing maid-café stuff — the 'moe-moe' chant, or 'casting a spell,' that kind of thing."
"But if we're set on using this item as punishment… well, fine. Though Truth or Dare feels a little too old-fashioned."
Amanatsu Kazuha disagreed, shaking her head repeatedly.
"No way, I think it's actually a great game."
"After all, I really do care about your past, Chris. I'd love to use this chance to get to know you better~"
Sakayanagi nodded along in agreement beside her.
Compared to the small embarrassment she didn't want to show in front of Amanatsu Kazuha,
without question, unraveling Chris's fog-shrouded past held far more appeal for her.
Besides, knowing how sharp Amanatsu Kazuha was, even if she witnessed something embarrassing, she'd never be foolish enough to go blabbing about it to hold over her. That much trust existed between two people smart enough to know better.
Seeing this, Chris spread his hands helplessly and asked, testing the waters.
"Let's just go with the simplest thing — Spin the Bottle. I don't exactly have dice or a deck of cards lying around in my dorm."
Amanatsu Kazuha immediately grabbed the half-finished bottle of iced tea off the coffee table, volunteering eagerly.
"We've got the perfect tool right here! Let's use this!"
"And we'll spin it ourselves, so there's absolutely no way for the master to secretly rig it!"
Sakayanagi's eyes flickered, and she quickly added to the rules.
"As for the rules, they're simple too."
"As the 'master,' you get a privilege. If the bottle lands on you, you can choose to answer or refuse, and refusing carries no penalty at all."
"But if it lands on one of us… even if we answer honestly or complete the dare, we still have to accept the master's punishment. How about it?"
Listening to rules so blatantly stacked in his favor, Chris clicked his tongue.
"Talk about a clever concession… fine, no objections here." With Chris's approval secured—
Amanatsu Kazuha's lips curved up slightly as she reached out and laid the half-full bottle of iced tea flat on the table.
With a light flick of her finger, the bottle spun rapidly across the smooth tabletop…
As its spin slowed, the bottle's mouth wobbled to a stop, pointing right at Chris.
Sakayanagi let out a light laugh.
"Looks like the lucky winner of round one is you, Chris."
Amanatsu Kazuha jumped in eagerly.
"Master, let me think about what to ask…" She propped her chin in thought for a moment, then her eyes lit up. "All right, let's go with this! Master, you never went through anything like the White House's twisted extreme training — so how did you get chosen by the Black Sphere in the first place?"
"And how exactly did you end up getting so strong, so fast?"
Facing the two girls' curious eyes,
Chris began spinning a story, cool and composed as ever.
"I told you both a long time ago, didn't I — I don't remember anything from before I came to this school…"
"But as for getting stronger — honestly, when the Black Sphere first showed up, I wasn't nearly as strong as you two probably imagine. At most, my physical condition and combat skills were just a bit above the average student's."
Chris leaned back against the sofa, his gaze distant.
"But fighting those inhuman monsters in the exam grounds still meant relying on Black Sphere items."
"But after going through exam after exam, as time went on… it felt like something in my body had broken through some kind of limiter."
"Even with something as ordinary as throwing a punch, even when the visible progress looked minor, I could clearly feel myself growing stronger at an unbelievable rate…"
He raised his fist, giving it a loose clench, half-joking.
"Maybe… I was just born to be king?"
Amanatsu Kazuha pressed her lips together, staring at Chris thoughtfully.
Sakayanagi, sitting beside her, could no longer suppress the urge building inside her.
She quietly reached toward the bottle on the table.
The instant her fingers touched the bottle, she covertly channeled a trace of her inner Ripple energy to assist.
Whoosh—
The bottle spun again, and finally, with a slight wobble,
its mouth came to rest precisely, once more, pointing right at Chris.
Sakayanagi let out a triumphant little laugh.
"Oh my, looks like it's my turn to ask a question this time~"
She leaned in slightly, looking Chris straight in the eye, and asked the question that had been lingering in her mind for a long while.
"My question is…"
"Chris — in your memories, or in whatever fragments you've lost — have you ever truly loved someone?"
At that, Chris reached up and rubbed his chin lightly, as if genuinely searching through some distant corner of memory. After a long moment, he rubbed his temples, looking a little pained, and gave an ambiguous answer.
"Probably. My gut says there probably was."
"But unfortunately, I can't remember exactly who they were, or what they looked like."
He paused, then added:
"And honestly, I have a pretty good impression of quite a few girls around me these days. Maybe… it was never some deep, unforgettable love at all — maybe I'm just the type who falls for anyone, being a bit of a shameless flirt."
With that, Chris looked at Sakayanagi.
Rather than getting angry at his shameless remark, she wore the smug, tsundere-certain look of someone thoroughly convinced that the person from his memory could only be her.
Chris found this amusing too, reaching out to flick the bottle, spinning it with a bit more force this time.
Rattle-rattle—
With a touch of Ki guiding it,
the bottle's mouth eventually slowed to a stop, landing precisely, without the slightest deviation, right in front of Sakayanagi.
Sakayanagi's eyes brightened, and she sat up a little straighter, looking at Chris with anticipation, waiting for his question.
She'd even mentally braced herself to accept the punishment.
But Chris just looked at her and said flatly:
"I'll save this one for later. I'm planning to ask all my questions at the very end, all at once."
A sword hanging overhead, with no telling when it might fall — that was the most agonizing kind of torment.
Sakayanagi thought it over and found she didn't mind, after all.
She figured there wasn't much she couldn't answer anyway.
So she reached out generously and pushed the bottle over to Amanatsu Kazuha.
Amanatsu Kazuha took the bottle.
Calculating quietly to herself,
with Ripple's ability to make tiny adjustments to physical trajectories as a helpful little trick,
as long as the bottle was in her own hands, with deliberate guidance she could land it precisely on Chris roughly two times out of three…
That way, she'd get to learn even more about him.
With that thought, Amanatsu Kazuha put strength into her fingertip and flicked the bottle.
But—
when the bottle stopped spinning,
this time, unexpectedly, its mouth had come to rest right in front of her.
"?"
Amanatsu Kazuha stared at the bottle pointing at herself, tilting her head.
This… I calculated it perfectly!
Could it be because… She looked up at Chris, who was leaning back on the sofa, sipping a glass of plain water.
Seeing her look over, he smiled and offered encouragement.
"It's fine. You can hold off on this one for now, too."
"After all, the night's still young. We've got plenty of time left ahead of us…"
____
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🔥 New history: DanMachi: Inheriting the Legacy of Alternate Versions — posted on The_Mikudayo