I was talking to Kouta, who was occasionally

staring off into the distance, amidst the hustle and bustle of the pre-homeroom

cla.s.sroom.

It was June 19th. Two weeks had pa.s.sed since

Masato Yahara's body had been found.

The murder, king of all scandals, sent ripples

throughout the school. But contrary to my expectations, the ripples faded

within a week. The reason was that Yahara had always been something of an

untouchable delinquent, avoided by his schoolmates due to being perceived as an

abnormal individual. Thus the event was simply perceived as an "abnormal

individual" becoming involved in "abnormal incident," allowing interest in the

entire affair to quickly fade. It was like a gangster getting killed;

insufficient to pique the interest of the public.

The school had already returned to its daily

routine, everything working normally.

But there was one exception.

The fact that that exception was Kouta went

without saying.

Kouta, Yahara's sole friend, was dragging out

his death.

"Looks like they still haven't caught the

killer, huh."

It would be too sad for Kouta if he didn't

feel that I least I felt sentimental towards Yahara's death.

"Yeah. They still haven't been caught."

But given Kouta's abilities, he likely

realized that my sentimentality was simply a pretense. But he nodded all the

same.

...To be quite honest, I couldn't muster any

sadness at Yahara's death. Although I felt pity for him, that was the extent of

it. And I suspected most others would feel much the same way I did. Even his

parents didn't look particularly sad. To the contrary, they seemed rather glad

that a nuisance had disappeared from their lives. Every way you looked, people

were simply feigning sadness, and most were doing a dozen times worse of a job

than I was.

It seemed this fact came as a shock to Kouta.

He was trying not to let it show, but... actually, knowing Kouta, he may not

have realized it himself.

"Kouta..."

"...hm?"

Even his responses were delayed. He had been

like this a lot recently.

"Well, if you're able to... I'd like you to

try to stop thinking about Yahara.

"Why?"

"It might be dangerous."

Kouta's eyes widened in puzzlement.

I wasn't confident. But it looked to me like

Kouta's state was changing by moment to moment. And Yahara was no doubt the

cause of that.

The dead can't use magic.

But a person's magic is most powerful in the

moments before their death. In order to leave behind traces of themselves

within another, they can use "agglutination" magic. People put down their

defenses when faced with the dying. No matter how much of a sinner that person

was, people inevitably forgive them, stop resisting them, and accept their

influence. Depending on who their partner is, the living may even

unconditionally take on the will of the dead and agglutinate. It's not

dissimilar to succeeding the will of the departed.

And Yahara clearly left something in Kouta. If

Kouta were a normal person, even if he agglutinated he would only extract the

parts that were useful to him, so he himself wouldn't change. But this was

Kouta we were talking about. The pinnacle of indifference, not only would he

not notice changes within himself, he wouldn't even care whether they were for

good or for evil.

So if he kept thinking about Yahara, he was in

danger of agglutinating.

He was showing symptoms already.

"Recently, my magic hasn't been as potent."

Kouta wasn't supposed to have an attribute,

but he was beginning to take someone else's on. He was drifting away from mine.

As for whose attribute he was taking on, it should go without saying — Masato

Yahara's. If things continued on this way, at worst Kouta might end up becoming

a powerful, evil magus like Yahara was.

"Everyone, note that the bell has rung. I

would appreciate it if you took your seats."

At the same time as the bell rang, their cla.s.s

representative's voice called out. Their cla.s.s's distinctive routine.

Thinking it rather unpleasant as I looked at

said representative, I somehow felt a sense of displeasure from him when our

eyes crossed. Was he trying to tell my to get out of his cla.s.sroom?

"...I have to get going. Let's give it our

best this week, okay?"

"Yeah."

On account of Yahara's incident, we had

postponed his home visit until this week. I had until then to think of a way to

resolve this situation. I shouldn't be in so much of a hurry. My foe was

powerful, but he was also dead. Even if this situation continued, my foe

couldn't draw any more magic.

"See you later, then. Bye bye!"

Although my hand was trembling, I smiled as

sweetly as possible. A smile has the power to forcibly bind a person. That's

why I made sure to never forget to smile.

My bedroom. It was both my territory and

within a boundary. It was the place where my magic was amplified the most. In

there, there should be no shortage of ways to dispel Yahara's magic.

After I returned to my cla.s.sroom, I scowled as

if I were glaring at a blackboard and thought about Kouta.

I had to rea.n.a.lyze the individual named Kouta

Hiiragi.

Kouta had low magic resistance. He took magic

magic in without resisting in. The reason for that lay in his efforts to avoid

possessing an attribute of his own. His entire life was makes.h.i.+ft. Changing his

attribute from moment to moment, he spent his days noncommittally. There were

plenty of people who lived like that. Heck, I had been that way once too.

But most people wouldn't go so far as to

forget their own attribute. Even if they changed themselves on the outside to

match their partner, they would be loath to accept them inside their very

attribute.

But Kouta had no such reaction. He would take

people in not just superficially but to the bottom of his heart.

What I was most concerned about was that

attribute taking hold after being accepted so.

It was practically a miracle that an attribute

hadn't taken hold in him yet. As proof of that, he had already started

becoming stained in mine.

Attributes are largely determined by one's

family environment. When you're young, your family helps form the basis for

your attribute. Whether you try to rebel against your parents or ingratiate

yourself with them, through that process your attribute takes its form.

But for whatever reason, Kouta never created a

baseline personality. He wasn't influenced by his family.

As for the reason no attribute had taken hold

in him yet, it was likely due to the fact that he had never had any

particularly deep relations.h.i.+ps outside his family either. Given his

disposition, despite his ability to make friends he was probably unable to make

close friends or a girlfriend. In order to form deep relations.h.i.+ps, people have

to lay themselves bare. But Kouta had nothing to lay bare. He was empty.

He had no way of forming such relations.h.i.+ps. Although he didn't realize it

himself, he had a habit of keeping others at an arm's length so as to avoid

forming such deep relations.h.i.+ps.

That was my hypothesis.

So with that to work off of, I contemplated

how to save him from Yahara's clutches.

I had to first discern how exactly he had

changed. But understanding that, I could uncover the properties he didn't have

naturally, correct them, and bring him back to normal. As long as I could do

that, everything would be fine.

I was left with a nagging sense of discomfort.

But what specifically made me uncomfortable?

In order to collect my thoughts, I focused my

vision on the tip of my mechanical pencil. You often saw people in manga and

such close their eyes to focus, but my approach was the opposite. I would open

my eyes wide and focus on a single point. It was even better if that point was

something with traces of my magic in it. My mechanical pencil, which I used

every day, fit that definition to a T. I stared at the tip for so long it got

burned into my retinas. With that as my signal, my thoughts sharpened.

But right in the middle of all this, someone

poked my back several times, breaking my concentration.

"C'mon, Sayuri! What do you want?"

Whispering so the teacher wouldn't hear me, I

turned to glare at the culprit, Sayuri.

Her dyed-brown hair wash in a straight perm.

Her loose sweater intentionally concealed her hands. And wearing a short skirt

that accentuated her universally-esteemed legs was my cla.s.smate Sayuri Taneoka.

Her willful, almond-shaped eyes shone with self-esteem and strong intent. From

the first day of school I realized that she would be the center of attention in

cla.s.s, so I make sure to curry favor with her.

Sayuri's personality was strict, which I was

fond of. And she wasn't the type to put others down. So even though I called

myself a magus, we still got along quite well.

"You haven't taken any notes in forever.

You've got something on your mind, right?"

She went on, grinning for some reason.

"It's about a guy, right?"

...Well, she wasn't wrong.

"Ooh, looks like I nailed it. If that's the

case, did Makino confess to you?"

"...Makino?"

That wasn't the name that was on my mind.

"Oh, that's not it? It got out that he had the

hots for you, so I figured he must have finally confessed."

Hearing this, I glanced at Makino's seat. He

happened to be glancing at me as well, and as our eyes met I returned his

smile.

Makino did act over-familiar at times, but...

was that really the case?

"Besides, doesn't everyone already know that

I'm going out with Kouta?"

"Yeah, but isn't that, like, you know? Aren't

you two one of those fake couple-type deals? You know, where you go out with

some random guy to keep the rest of the guys away? You know he doesn't suit

you, he's like a background character or something."

While that wasn't true, the fact that we

weren't a normal couple was. But getting into the details would be messy, so I

just laughed ambiguously.

Although she seemed to want to drag the

conversation out and began poking me again, I simply ignored her.

Good grief, Sayuri... or rather, all

high-school-age girls seemed to love talking about romance. Perhaps that was a

simple form of magic.

Kouta.

Kouta. Kouta.

I want to protect him. No matter what.

At long last, it was finally lunch break.

We sat in the courtyard as always, each eating

our own sandwiches. After my initial failure with the homemade lunches, I

decided that I would try again once I had practiced a little more. Granted, I

had only practiced once since then, but... sooner or later!

With Yahara's glare no longer present, I was a

little concerned that Yamazaki or whatever his name was would come ha.s.sle us

again, but in the two weeks since the incident had come to light he hadn't

shown up once.

I had decided that during this lunch period, I

would take a different approach from this morning. In order to root out the

cause of my discomfort, I wanted to see Kouta in as flat a condition as

possible. To do that, I had to hide my concern and act just as bubbly as

always. Given Kouta's disposition, no matter how down he was over Yahara's

death, he would probably match my behavior and interact with me just as he

always did.

Just as I expected, Kouta was talking

perfectly normally. As we conversed, we laughed together, and I would

occasionally unilaterally touch hom on the back or shoulder.

"So in other words, you really are

collecting lizard tails and hanging out with black cats, aren't you, Miki?"

As far as Kouta was concerned, this

conversation didn't particularly have any deeper meaning.

"I don't, I'm telling you. I try to avoid

following any formal conventions or anything. Although, it is true that certain

rituals can strengthen magic's power."

"Are you saying that there's things you

wouldn't do for the sake of magic?"

I was at a loss for words.

At my abrupt change, Kouta looked at me with

worry on his face.

"Yup. After all, there are some things that if

you go too far with, you become unable to go back."

...That's right. Ever since "that mistake," I

had been suppressing my magic. Compared to how I was back then, I had much more

common sense and much less power.

Is Kou even the

one you're really tryin' to protect? ...Heh, you can't even refute it. What

you're tryin' to protect by force-staining Kou's a.s.s Is your flimsy-a.s.s,

brittle little closed world.

I suddenly recalled

the words Masato Yahara spit at me.

I had no retort for

him. After all, I couldn't proudly puff up my chest and proclaim it to be

false.

Even now, I wasn't

certain that staining Kouta with my magic was the right thing to do.

"What do you mean by

'unable to go back'?"

After I had gone

silent, Kouta asked me a question as a follow-up.

So with all my

effort, I put on a smile.

"Well... you know how

integrating into everyday society is pretty tough, right? You know that it's

not something that just anyone can do, right?"

"You're right. My

sister refuses to go to school, and a couple of my relatives are shut-ins, so

what you're saying kind of resonates."

"I see." You being

the way you are makes me worried for your sister as well, but I'll set that

issue aside for now. "The more a person holes themselves up in their closed

world, the more powerful their magic becomes. So if you're completely

compatible with normal society, you can't use it. But if you entrust everything

to magic, your closed world becomes all-encompa.s.sing. If that happens, the

people around you will see you as a weirdo or a freak."

"Like

Matsumi-senpai?"

"...Ahh, maybe."

I had heard about

Ririko Matsumi from Kouta. Although the scanning she used surpa.s.sed my interpersonal magic, I knew how to explain parts of it.

She

fixed her eyes in place and let out a strange voice that sounded like a machine

noise. It was self-hypnosis that let her raise her powers of concentration to

the extreme. A ritual designed to open her magical circuits. Normally to

accomplish that you'd have to draw a magic square, mutilate yourself, or do

some other form of large-scale preparation, but it seemed she didn't need to.

This was probably because she believed in her magic implicitly.

Ririko

Matsumi had isolated herself from society.

A

commonplace worldview leads to relatively weak magic. Furthermore, it lacks

appeal. Most people recognize that they're going to die without accomplis.h.i.+ng

anything or leaving behind and notable traces. Because it's so unappealing,

some people want to discard it. There's plenty of types of dubious, half-baked

kinds magic, like cults, that try to quietly drive away commonplace worldviews.

Ririko

Matsumi is a person who discarded her commonplace worldview.

"Miki,

do you know anyone who became unable to go back?"

I did.

I knew

of someone other than Ririko Matsumi.

And the

person who drove her to that point was none other than myself.

"Nope.

I just know this all in the abstract."

I lied.

I

didn't have faith in myself to explain it right now.

"Huh."

Kouta

casually saw through my lie. He had to have seen through it. But because he was

Kouta, he didn't follow up on it.

And

yet—

Discomfort.

The

discomfort I had been looking for was right here.

"Miki,

is something wrong?"

Kouta

gazed at me worriedly. He was staring at me. It was like he was trying to

peer into me.

That's

it. Those eyes. Kouta's eyes weren't like that before. Kouta was a.n.a.lyzing

my responses.

Kouta

excelled at understanding others. But he never cared about their motives. He

simply understood things as they were. It was precisely because he didn't care

that he didn't have an attribute.

"Miki?

What's going on? Is it something I [1]did?"

I knew.

A man whose eyes looked like that.

A man

who called himself "I" like that.

Masato

Yahara.

I

lightly touched the red hair band, which appeared completely ordinary, that was

keeping up my hair. It was an inexpensive hair band, the kind you could buy

anywhere. But because it held up my hair, the place in my body most densely

packed with magic, almost every day, it had gradually changed into something

special. Perhaps if the right person looked at it, it would appear to glow

orange.

I had a

means to release him from the curse. For Kouta's sake, I resolved to use this

hair band in the most effective way possible.

But,

why?

Even

though I was doing it for Kouta's sake, it felt like I was betraying him.