Countless ideas had crossed her mind — things she had wanted very much to act on.
But in the end, all Kujou Katora did was lay out a bedroll on the floor of Su Yuzu's room.
In the end, she simply didn't have the nerve to take that "sacred" step.
Still... breathing in that citrus fragrance that filled the room, even the bath towel she'd borrowed for the night seemed steeped in Lady Yuzu's scent, marked all over as hers.
Kujou Katora couldn't remember ever resting so well in her life.
Because she had already seen through the connection between Tsukimisato Somehana and the radical faction within "Epiphany Manufacture," Su Yuzu flatly refused the Investigation Bureau's request that she submit to a full physical examination.
The request looked perfectly reasonable. Su Yuzu understood that a trap was hiding behind the reasonableness.
Soga Yura put the terms to the Investigation Bureau: they were welcome to examine Yuzu. But the examination had to be conducted by the laboratory and hospital of Keigunen Private Academy, by the laboratory and hospital of Imperial Capital University, or by a laboratory under the Soga clan's control. At that, the Investigation Bureau fell silent for a very long while.
Both Su Yuzu and Soga Yura understood what that silence meant. The Director of the Investigation Bureau was consulting the people standing behind him.
Consulting "Tsukimisato Somehana."
"The plan's failed—" The woman with the beautiful gray-blue eyes sat at her desk, staring at the message forwarded from the Investigation Bureau, her expression ugly.
She could feel it with perfect clarity. Su Yuzu, Soga Yura, the Soga clan... they had already grasped what she and her people were after.
The accusation against Su Yuzu was never more than part of the smokescreen.
One of their most fundamental objectives was to obtain a sample of the "Factors" in Su Yuzu's body after her re-awakening.
A tiny move buried in the sprawl of the board, so utterly unremarkable that no one should have looked twice at it — and somehow it had still been read and broken.
Tsukimisato Somehana couldn't tell whether Su Yuzu and the others had seen straight through their purpose, or whether it was... nothing but coincidence.
Soga Yura's instinctive urge to protect her Little Sister had happened, by pure chance, to unravel their plan.
Tsukimisato Somehana studied the photograph projected on the screen before her.
Su Yuzu, hooking the little finger of a woman dressed in something scandalously revealing, threading her way through a night market.
Even with that picture of Su Yuzu and Kujou Katora sitting right in front of her, she found it hard to believe. That Little Sister left behind by the Smiling Abyss, that hound of The Empire who had sworn to kill every Aberrant in the world, growing so close to a girl who kept such close company with Aberrants.
And she certainly never would have imagined this: the Investigation Bureau's Fourth Action Division — the organization that made the extermination of Aberrants its sole purpose, whose name alone struck terror into countless minor nobles across The Empire, who dreaded getting tangled up with them for any reason at all.
That woman whose name everyone had long since forgotten, remembered only for her methods and her codename, the woman with the poise of a hunting falcon.
Even she had chosen to fall in with Kujou Katora, pulling the file straight out of the Investigation Bureau's archives and placing it in Su Yuzu's hands.
Half of their plan had already collapsed.
Which meant the other half could not be allowed to fail.
Tsukimisato Somehana rose to her feet, gazing out through the glass at the quiet city, and at the gray-blue eyes reflected back at her in the faintly glowing pane.
"For 'Epiphany Manufacture.'"
"And for..."
"...the Eldest Young Lady."
Before long, the public prosecution of Su Yuzu was underway.
Su Yuzu followed Soga Yura to the Procuratorate near the Investigation Bureau.
He was the man bringing the charges against her, and yet the somewhat overweight Director of the Investigation Bureau spent the whole time apologizing to Soga Yura.
The session hadn't been called to order yet, and the hall was still noisy.
Seated in the defendant's chair, Su Yuzu kept her eyes lowered, studying the Investigation Bureau's side of the room.
The young female superintendent who always drew field duty was there as well.
She kept glancing over at Su Yuzu, nervous, her gaze darting away every time it landed. The colleague beside her took her hand and pumped it in a little cheer aimed at Su Yuzu on her behalf.
The young superintendent's face went even redder.
On the other side.
The Fourth Action Division, which by every rule belonged to the Investigation Bureau's camp, stood behind Su Yuzu to the last member.
Kujou Katora stood at the very front, her face carved from ice.
Behind her stood Hayabusa, a smile on her lips and a gaze sharp enough to make grown men flinch.
And behind the two women, the burly bruisers of the Investigation Bureau's Fourth Action Division wore their most villainous faces, every one of them cold and dangerous.
During the operation that had swept out the Laboratory, they had already accepted the girl now sitting in the accused's seat.
"Besides..."
"She's the one the Fourth Action Division's already unofficially settled on as our..."
The big men's eyes slid back and forth between Su Yuzu and their boss's back, their expressions twisting into something strange before they hauled them back into some semblance of professionalism.
The Fourth Action Division's performance had the prosecutors dabbing cold sweat off their foreheads.
To anyone in the world, the Fourth Action Division was an exceptionally dangerous dagger.
Because of what the Fourth Action Division was, and because of what Kujou Katora who led them was, that dagger had earned itself a name: the Mad Dog.
No faction had ever managed to win them over.
And yet... since when!?
That dagger now looked very much like it was gripped in the Soga clan's hand.
Su Yuzu turned her gaze to the other side of the room.
The representative of "Epiphany Manufacture," the one who had submitted the evidence to the Investigation Bureau, was seated there.
The woman she had met once before.
A woman built so lavishly, so outrageously voluptuous that she might have stepped out of some strange game, sat there in perfect stillness, and the nameplate propped up in front of her read... "Tsukimisato Somehana."
The moment Su Yuzu's eyes settled on her, Tsukimisato Somehana lifted her head.
Those beautiful gray-blue eyes looked back at her.
Tsukimisato Somehana smiled at her, warm and welcoming.
Smiling like that, the woman looked nothing at all like a villain determined to see Su Yuzu dead. She looked more like an older sister returning after years apart.
Then — the trial began.
The Procuratorate ran mechanically through the formalities, informing Su Yuzu of her rights in the proceedings.
"The accused—"
"Su Yuzu."
"You stand charged with involvement in multiple Aberrant attack incidents."
"With colluding with and harboring Aberrants."
"And with having fallen into the Edge of Aberration yourself, a single step away from becoming an Aberrant."
"You are therefore assessed as posing an extreme threat to society."
"Do you..."
"have anything you'd like to say?"
Amusingly enough, the prosecutor's voice carried the full tsundere-l0li flavor of a Kugimiya-style delivery.
Which made perfect sense.
Su Yuzu looked at the prosecutor. She looked at the assembled ranks of the Investigation Bureau. And she looked at... Tsukimisato Somehana.
Over in the prosecution's seat, the Director of the Investigation Bureau mopped the cold sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief.
He knew this hearing was destined to raise a storm, and he... was the unluckiest bastard of them all, tossed out front to carry the blame.
Nothing could be allowed to happen to Su Yuzu.
But she couldn't be allowed to walk away untouched either.
Whatever the outcome, neither "Epiphany Manufacture" nor the Soga clan was going to make his life easy.
And then—
To everyone's astonishment.
Su Yuzu looked at the prosecutor and smiled. "Nope."
"Nothing at all."
She offered not one word of rebuttal against any of the charges laid at her feet. She only smiled... her eyes fixed in Tsukimisato Somehana's direction.
If accusations are what you like.
Then go ahead and accuse.
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