Seiji reached out to touch the woman's black veil, but he only felt empty air.

"Eh?" Seiji realized that his hand had pa.s.sed straight through the black veil. "This is… just an image?"

He tried touching the woman's body, but his hand went straight through her body as well. There was no sensation of physical contact.

This was indeed only an image. It was just a shadow that appeared real.

"It's no good; I can't touch anything."

Seiji retracted his hand and looked towards Natsuya. When he saw her unsurprised expression, he understood that this was within her expectations.

"The correct method must be used in order to communicate with a Guardian Spirit. The problem is that each Guardian Spirit has a method unique to them, and I don't know the correct method for this one."

"Method… is it to play this game?" Seiji asked.

Natsuya blinked at this. "It's possible. But you guys beat the game already, and she didn't express anything, which means that just beating the game normally isn't the correct way."

"Hmm… do we need to gather a total of six players, one for each player piece? Land on some special s.p.a.ces? Or even have all the players defeat her first before winning?" Seiji made several guesses.

"Anything could be possible," Natsuya said lightly. "We could experiment, but…" 

"It'll be a big ha.s.sle," Seiji said with a sigh.

The two of them entered a brief silence.

"Let's just leave it for now," Seiji said. "We can explore our options after investigating Mr. Uehara. Perhaps we'll learn more information regarding this board game then."

Natsuya nodded in agreement.

The two of them looked back at the black-veiled woman. She merely stood there quietly, without making a sound.

The next morning, Seiji told Mika the result of last night's tests on the spiritual artifacts.

"…Natsuya will send someone to begin investigating today. If she finds out about anything important, she'll contact us. All we can do now is wait."

The pigtailed girl nodded. Then, she looked towards the television in Seiji's room.

On the television screen, there were two small, large-nosed figures wearing plumber uniforms. They were jumping around, stomping on pitiful monsters, stealing s.h.i.+ny golden coins, touching strange objects that somehow caused them to transform, and wreaking havoc everywhere…

Kaede and Reo were playing a video game together. They seemed to be having lots of fun.

Seiji looked at Mika's expression and felt that something was off. He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but nothing came out.

He decided to maintain his silence and watched the video game on the screen.

A while later.

"I thought about many things last night," Mika said in a soft voice.

Seiji looked back towards her again.

"I suddenly started thinking and couldn't stop myself. I thought and thought until I fell asleep. After I woke up, I thought that maybe I thought too much about it, but…" The pigtailed girl revealed a complex expression. "I always thought that my dad was just a normal person, same as my mom. I always thought that I… that we were just an ordinary family.

"But now… to learn that my late father might have been not so ordinary after all... Just thinking about it, I feel… I don't know what I should say.

"I know that I shouldn't think too much about it, but I just can't calm myself down. I don't know how to describe this feeling."

"You just feel uneasy," Seiji told her gently. "You learned something that changed what you knew before, which is why you feel uneasy. Now that there may be a secret about your father that you don't know about, having this type of reaction is normal."

Mika looked towards him. The two of them faced each other directly.

Seiji smiled gently at her. "Mika, you should know, no matter what the truth is, or what secrets there may be, you're you.

"No matter if you're actually the daughter of a superpowered ability user, or the secret daughter of some megpowerful family, or even someone who has a vicious demon sealed inside her… you're still you. You won't change into someone else. Our relations.h.i.+p won't change because of this. Before, at the Grand Spring department store, I told you and Chiaki that no matter what our ident.i.ties may be, we're all good friends. You're someone important to me, and this won't change."

"Seiji…" Mika recalled the words he said at that time, thanks to the similarity between his rather moving smile then and his gentle smile now.

The scene before her overlapped with the scene in her memory. How moved she was back then also overlapped with her current feelings.

Mika's eyes sparkled, and her face flushed red.

'He's just like this. I just happen to like a man who's like this. This heartfelt feeling of mine won't change, so… why am I worrying? Just like he said, I won't change. I'm still me, no matter what the truth is.'

"Thank you," she said from her heart. 

Seiji smiled in return. "There's no need to thank me." 

'He has always been like this.'

After Mika returned home, Seiji received a parcel.

It was from his sister, Hana Haruta. 

'It's probably the high-cla.s.s streaming equipment.'

Seiji carried the box to his study and opened it up. There was an action camera, rechargeable batteries, a Bluetooth headset, a signal amplifier, a tripod, and a camera stabilizer…

He unwrapped everything and did his best to a.s.semble the pieces by himself. He used the instruction booklets to guide him as he installed everything. It wasn't long before he succeeded.

Seiji turned on his computer, opened up his stream, and attempted to stream with his new equipment.

It was a success!

His computer displayed the scene from the new equipment.

He pa.s.sword-protected his stream, then notified Hana on the chatting application that everything was ready. She responded instantly.

"The video quality is excellent. Very good."

"It's because of the high-cla.s.s streaming equipment that you purchased."

"But of course! I picked them myself! Is your headset connected?"

"It is."

Hana sent him a voice chat request in his chatting application's conversation window.

Seiji clicked on Accept.

He then heard a clear and pleasant-sounding female voice in his headset.

"Hey, hey… can you hear me?"

"I can hear you," Seiji answered. "Really clearly."

This was the first time he had used his real voice, not a voice-changer, to speak to her.

Hana's body tensed up upon hearing his familiar yet also unfamiliar voice. He had the same voice as "Seiji Haruta." However, he gave off a different feeling from the "Seiji Haruta" that she knew.

"You… you're my familiar! Walk around and show me around."

"Yes, Master."

The stream thus began moving as Seiji walked around his room. The camera was quite steady, and the video didn't shake or anything. It seemed that walking normally wouldn't be a problem for the stream.

Hana saw a Sakura Island-style living room, with a kotatsu sitting atop tatami mats. Next to the kotatsu sat a beautiful, blonde-haired woman and a green-haired little girl. They were playing a video game together.

"Who are they?" Hana asked.

"A child who's temporarily living here and the upstairs neighbor."

"Temporarily living… is this little girl is the person you said you're now living together with?"

"No, she only came here recently due to some reasons. The person I mentioned before is someone else."

"…Is that person male or female?"

"Female."

"Is she beautiful?"

"Yes."

Hana was momentarily rendered speechless.

"That is to say," she said, her voice steadily growing in volume, "you're currently living together with a very beautiful girl as well as the cute little girl I can see right now, and the three of you are living together? And you also have a very good relations.h.i.+p with this beautiful blonde lady that lives upstairs?"

"That's right."

An indescribable feeling surged within Hana's heart. It even surpa.s.sed her urge to yell, "Winners in life should go explode."

Instead, she came out with something far more shocking: "Perverts should go explode!!"

Seiji was rendered speechless.