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The next morning.
"Is this the President's house?"
Yakishio Lemon held her phone, comparing the address from the Line message to find the described location.
"It should be correct, the nameplate even says Asakura,"
Yanami concluded after observing for a moment: "Asakura-kun's house is quite large."
The nameplate on the outer wall had the characters 'Asakura' printed on it, so it seemed they hadn't come to the wrong place.
Beyond the wall, a detached house stood. The house looked quite old; one wouldn't doubt it even if told it was built during the Taisho period.
The house was slightly dilapidated, and even the surrounding wall had thick moss and mottled traces left by time. The black paint that should have been ingrained in the characters on the nameplate had almost completely peeled off, leaving only a copper plate mostly covered in rust.
The not-so-spacious courtyard inside the wall clearly hadn't been well-maintained, with weeds growing rampant. However, this gave it a unique sense of vitality.
"Asakura-kun said he went to the supermarket to buy ingredients and drinks, and told us to go in first. The key is in the mailbox by the door."
Yuigahama Yui checked the message she had just received.
"Hmm, ingredients are important."
Yanami nodded with a serious expression.
"We didn't see any supermarkets or convenience stores walking from the station, so it seems quite far. If the President had said so earlier, we could have brought things from other places."
Yakishio Lemon said somewhat angrily, "President-san is too distant."
"Hmm, if we brought our own, we could indeed choose our favorite ingredients,"
Yanami also nodded in agreement: "Though I can only bring somen noodles."
"Anna, it feels like she can eat anything."
Yuigahama Yui joked with a smile at the side.
"Even I have things I can't eat, like wild pufferfish liver, undercooked ginkgo nuts, and sprouted potatoes,"
Yanami retorted indignantly.
"So only poison can stop Anna, then…"
"Yuigahama's words are strange. Isn't dirt not poisonous, but you still can't eat it?"
"…I can't tell anymore whether Anna is playing dumb or is genuinely stupid."
After finding the key in the mailbox next to the nameplate, the three opened the door and entered the house.
"Hoh hoh, looking at the yard, I thought Asakura-kun's house would also be quite messy, but it's surprisingly clean."
Yanami looked around curiously.
"Instead of clean, it's more like there's nothing at all…"
Yuigahama Yui complained.
After entering the house from the entrance, there was the living room, but aside from a low table and a few cushions, there was nothing else in the living room.
There was no furniture, no sofa, no TV, just clean and empty space.
There was no hint of life at all.
"Look, there's writing on the shoe cabinet over here."
Yakishio Lemon, with her sharp eyes, noticed a small storage box on the only piece of furniture at the entrance, with a sticky note attached to it. On the note, "Discard my phone here" was written in marker pen.
"What does that mean? Is Asakura-kun telling us to put our phones in the storage box on the shoe cabinet?"
Yuigahama Yui curiously placed her phone on it, but nothing happened.
Yakishio Lemon and Anna exchanged glances, then excitedly put their phones in as well.
The next moment, the bottom of the storage box opened, and the three girls' phones dropped into the shoe cabinet. Immediately after, the bottom of the storage box closed again, as if nothing had happened.
"Are you kidding me… Give me back my phone!"
Yakishio Lemon immediately panicked. She pulled hard on the shoe cabinet's handle, but the shoe cabinet door seemed to be just for decoration, showing no intention of opening. Even the shoe cabinet itself seemed to be firmly nailed to the ground; she couldn't even make it wobble, let alone move it.
The other two also tried, but even the athletic Yakishio Lemon was powerless, so they were clearly even more helpless.
Yuigahama Yui suddenly noticed that the text on the sticky note attached to the storage box had, at some point, changed to "Discard my mercy here." However, considering Asakura was a magician, such an illogical minor detail didn't seem too alarming.
"Asakura-kun should be back soon. I'll go outside and check."
Yanami quickly said, putting her shoes back on, and was about to leave, but the doorknob inside wouldn't turn no matter how much she distorted it.
Then the girl found a very inconspicuous line of small text next to the doorknob.
'Cannot be opened from this side.'
Yanami: "???"
She pulled hard on the doorknob, but still couldn't open the door.
Instead, the doorknob came off in her hand with a 'pop'.
The girl stared blankly at the doorknob in her hand, then after a moment, finally realized: "Wait, does this mean we've been imprisoned by Asakura-kun?"
Unable to contact others for help, and unable to leave the house, no matter how you look at it, the current situation is what the world calls 'imprisonment,' isn't it?
"How could that be? Asakura-kun wouldn't do something like that."
Yuigahama Yui felt she was just making a big deal out of nothing: "It's definitely just a joke, just a joke."
"No, think about it carefully. That's Asakura-kun, who would name his club 'Chiba Magic Society,' right? It wouldn't be strange for him to do anything, would it?"
"…"
So even Yuigahama Yui started to feel uneasy.
"If we can't open the door, we'll go through the window!"
Yakishio Lemon's temper flared at this point. She walked directly through the living room to a window, gripped the edge of the window, and tried to open it, but like the door, it wouldn't budge no matter how hard she pulled.
Yuigahama Yui also tried her hand at it, feeling as if the window was fixed to the space, completely unmoving.
"You're kidding me…"
Yakishio Lemon was completely bewildered: "What exactly does that guy want to do?"
Yuigahama Yui was silent for a moment. If they couldn't get out through normal places, it didn't mean they couldn't crawl through air conditioning vents or sewers.
Admittedly, it would be difficult for humans to do, but for a snake, it wouldn't be much of a problem.
So the girl went to a corner of the room, pretending to observe something, but in reality, she was already summoning her Golem Snake in her mind.
'Come out, Napoleon!'
But nothing happened.
A moment later, the Golem Snake, which usually obeyed her every command, sent her a message.
'Napoleon is afraid of something, cannot be summoned.'
Yuigahama Yui: "?"
Move, Napoleon, move! What are you afraid of, Waterloo?! Why are you just watching from the side? Have even you betrayed me?!
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