"Yimi, what are you reading?" Ritsuka looked over at the little cat sitting on the bed.
She was reading a manga, her short legs swinging in the air because they couldn't reach the floor. Compared to books full of words she didn't recognize, illustrated ones were clearly easier for a child to get into.
The kitten held up the volume in her paws. "A story about a fat guy and a little boy."
Ritsuka froze, then quickly took the manga from her hands to look.
Doraemon.
"..."
Nothing technically wrong with that.
Ritsuka sat down beside Yimi, scooped her up, settled her on her lap, and then rested her chin on the kitten's head, right between the two ears.
"You really won't come back to Chaldea with me?" She let her voice go deliberately whiny, playing for sympathy.
"I'm going back to my own home." The kitten butted her chin with the top of her head.
"Mmgh..." Then I'll just hold you while I still can. Once she got back, she'd have to face the pressure of saving the Human Order, and Yimi's guardians at home probably had their own demands on her—after all, the "King of Mages" who incinerated the Human Order had ties to God himself, in a sense.
That easygoing refusal to force things—that was exactly why Ritsuka got along with most Servants.
Lancelot, dressed in a suit, walked in. "I drove off something outside that seemed to be a familiar. Also, someone in Holy Church vestments came by. I sent them on their way too."
"Oh! Sir Lancelot, you didn't randomly strike up conversations with any women out there, did you?"
Lancelot flushed despite himself. "That was purely out of concern and courtesy for a lady. I have never approached any woman with any other intent."
He pivoted, stiffly: "I have a rough understanding of the Incineration of the Human Order now. I'd be happy to help you—but please don't forget that my Saint Graph is Berserker."
"I'm not going to give up on someone willing to help just because of their class." Ritsuka flopped backward onto the bed, pulling Yimi down with her, and held the Grail up, turning it in her hands.
It really was different from the other Grails they'd recovered. There was a distinct feeling that using it would suck her straight into the Root.
This was the thing that had nearly driven the impossibly elegant Tohsaka Tokiomi to outright beg her.
"Better not to play with that, honestly. Your aptitude has its limits, Ritsuka—who knows what would happen if you actually reached the Root by accident." Roman had finally come through on comms.
"Doctor, is Rayshift available again?"
"It is. I'll send the Mystic Codes through first. Use them to transfer Sir Lancelot's contract to yourself."
The doctor rubbed his eyes. "Honestly, I'd thought there'd be a toad standing guard over [this Holy Grail War] afterward..."
After all, a toad was what had blasted Ritsuka into the singularity in the first place.
What that toad even was, he'd researched all night and turned up nothing. Lord El-Melloi II, the "real talent in matters of magecraft," had no insights either—if anything, the man had been faintly depressed ever since Iskandar's exit.
The other puzzle: no matter how hard he racked his brain, Roman couldn't place the kitten. He genuinely didn't recognize the little creature, but a single Noble Phantasm summoning the Lord Himself was a thing that had actually happened. Not even the King of Mages could pull that off.
Such a beautiful opening, and it had to happen in a parallel world. If only at a Singularity—standing before the fake who called himself the King of Mages—they could have summoned a teammate like this. Wouldn't that have been a delightful little shock for him?
"Then I guess this is goodbye, Yimi."
"Bye-bye." The little cat batted her paw in farewell.
————————
Perhaps the prior contract with Yimi had conferred some lingering benefit, because even after the transfer, Sir Lancelot didn't slip into Mad Enhancement.
A rational Berserker, with no "Mad Enhancement EX" on his stat panel. Ritsuka was unspeakably grateful for that.
"So this is the last line of defense for the Human Order?" Lancelot gazed wistfully through the window at the swirling snow. "I've never seen a sight quite like this."
"I'll be counting on you from now on, Sir Lancelot." Ritsuka swung the Grail in her hand and headed briskly off in one direction.
"Where are you going, Master?" Lancelot followed, confused.
"I'm wondering if I can use this Grail as a Catalyst to summon someone." Can I roll Yimi again with this?
"A startling line of thought..."
Bang!
A sudden, massive force slammed straight into Lancelot's face, sending him spinning three full rotations in midair down the corridor before he embedded himself in the wall.
"Senpai! I was so worried about you!"
A pink-haired girl with bangs covering one eye had come flying out of one of the rooms, and on her follow-through she'd batted Lancelot away with the shield in her hand.
Ritsuka braked hard, the soles of her shoes screeching. "Little Eggplant makes her entrance under wildly unexpected circumstances! But why are you in full combat gear inside the base? And why attack Sir Lancelot?"
She glanced down at her shoes—she'd already instinctively stopped.
Then, ditching the brake, she pretended to lose her balance and collapsed into Mash's arms.
"I don't know. I just saw an incredibly suspicious man—exactly the kind of awful guy who'd deliberately catch a woman's attention and then play innocent—following Senpai. So I acted decisively." Mash's reply was completely serious, and she rapped the shield against the floor a couple of times. "Don't worry, Senpai. I made sure to use the back of the shield."
"The back... that familiar feeling—surely you're not—?" Lancelot crawled out of the wall, staring at Mash in disbelief. "But why a girl... no, perhaps it's better this way."
Bang!
"Without even letting me finish, here it comes again!"
Today's Little Eggplant seemed to be in a particularly foul mood.
————————
Fuyuki City had returned to its everyday peace. To the average citizen, the only big news of the past few days was the child-abducting serial killer, and the sudden gas explosion in the river—both of which had everyone on edge.
"Sakura."
Tohsaka Tokiomi stood beside his wife, looking at the small girl in front of them. A familiar face that had become, somehow, a little foreign.
The head of the Matou family had died in some kind of accident, the Einzberns had been wiped out under unknown circumstances. The Three Founding Families had been reduced to the Tohsakas alone, and naturally he wasn't going to leave Sakura at the Matou house wasting time.
He noticed her expression hadn't really changed—but he had no way of knowing that the light in the little girl's eyes was a hard-won gift that Kariya had spent these recent days carefully restoring.
"Daddy and Mommy have come to take you home."
"Daddy... I don't have a daddy." Sakura clutched at Kariya's clothes. "Uncle Kariya is Sakura's foster father."
"What are you saying? Stop fooling around, Sakura. Don't you remember Mommy?" Tohsaka Aoi forced a smile, knelt, and clapped softly as she held out her hands.
In the past, that one gesture had been enough—Sakura would come running and throw herself into her arms.
But today the little girl only hid behind Kariya again. "Let's go, Uncle Kariya."
Kariya rested a hand on the girl's head and glared at the man across from him. "Tohsaka Tokiomi. I am not handing Sakura back to a man like you."
"You'd just take our child from us, Kariya? You're a single grown man—do you even understand what you're doing?" The one who fired back was Tohsaka Aoi, covering her mouth as though about to cry.
"You don't know what happened! None of you have any idea!" Kariya clenched his fists. The infatuation he'd carried for Aoi was fading, right there in the moment. "You magi don't have feelings the way normal people do. Even if you ever bothered to look into—"
To really look into how disgusting that ancient worm was—
"Uncle Kariya, let's go." Sakura tugged at his clothes, making it clear this was not a child's tantrum.
"..."
Am I... smiling?
From a distance, Kotomine Kirei watched, idly touching the corner of his own mouth.
Watching something this twisted brings me... pleasure?
While that domestic drama unfolded, over on the other side of the park:
"Hey, idiot, what are you thinking about?" The Matou family's other brat huffed warm breath onto his fingers, charging them up, and flicked the red-haired boy hard on the back of the head.
A friend he'd made just in the past couple of days.
"That hurt, Shinji! Do that again and I won't play with you anymore." The red-haired boy rubbed the sore spot.
"Sorry, sorry, my bad. Still thinking about that chick?" Shinji clapped a hand over his mouth in mock astonishment. "Don't tell me you have a crush on her."
"H-how could I? I'm just worried." The red-haired boy stared down at the slingshot in his hand.
"Worried about what?"
"It's been a while since I've seen her."
The Fuyuki child-abducting serial killer had never been caught.
Since that day, the red-haired boy had never again caught sight of the foul-mouthed little girl. In his heart, he already knew the answer.
That fierce, monstrous red-haired figure he'd seen that day was the same child-abducting serial killer stalking Fuyuki!
That girl... probably wasn't coming back.
The boy clenched his fist. "Why hasn't the killer been caught even now... Is there really such a thing as justice in this world?"
(End of volume.)
Volume: Eastern Wonderland (Gensokyo)