---
"theloveofmylife."
The Love of My Life.
A technique Hoshino Ei had evolved in her most desperate hour—born the moment Nanami Kira drove the Arrow into her.
Starlight, shed from the depths of her soul. Silver. Beautiful.
It poured across the ground, flowing like a lake of liquid silver.
Its effect was simple.
Everything the starlight touched had its time reversed.
The limitation was severe.
Thirty minutes. It could illuminate only a single target. Once per day. And it could never be used on herself.
The dead—those whose souls had already departed—could not be revived even if their bodies were rewound.
Hoshino Ei could return a yellowed apple to its state thirty minutes prior, fresh and sweet again. She could rewind a decomposing body to the living flesh of half an hour ago. She could reunite fallen leaves with their branches, coax withered blossoms back into bloom.
Thirty minutes. Because thirty minutes was the watershed—without other means of preservation, a severed limb would begin to stiffen after thirty minutes.
For a hand, thirty minutes was a lifetime.
Every minute. Every second. That was its love.
All of it, turned to starlight, to walk beside you.
---
"Do you like... meat?"
"Good... good, good... good... hee hee."
"You seem to be having fun."
In the instant before the starlight reached him, Nanami Kira spoke softly.
Black fire ignited from his heart.
One instant. Only one.
He detonated every drop of Cursed Energy in his body. Wild, terrifying power poured out without restraint, blossoming like a black lotus.
It tore free of his ruined body like a beast—dark, fathomless, horrifying. Like black flame.
Cursed Energy is shaped by emotion.
Seven hours of compressed fury. Seven hours of suppressed restraint. Seven hours of churning agitation and hate, of humiliation and pain—
With Nanami Kira's body as the crucible. With his soul as the kindling. Carrying an avalanche of killing intent—the purest murderous will of a born killer—carrying the most violent storm hidden beneath still waters—
It erupted.
"Let me join the fun!"
Black Flash. Black Flash. Black Flash. Another Black Flash. The dark fire burst outward, striking the vitals of every spirit in range—the precise 3:7 point—and detonated.
Merging into a sea of flame. Merging into a river. Drowning everything around him.
"Auction initiated..."
"Auction initiated..."
The cold voice murmured by his ear. Invisible hands reached into his soul, prying it open, greedily extracting—but in the next instant the starlight had already descended upon him.
His body began to reverse. His severed arm regrew. Ruptured vessels knit shut. Half his skeleton began to reform. The memories plundered from him flooded back into his mind.
And Hoshino Ei held him in the light, cheek pressed to cheek.
Whispering something by his ear.
Around them, black flowers bloomed one after another, sending crimson ripples outward. Autumn rain fell on the night. Through the rhythm of the drops one could imagine the mountains beyond the mansion—that stroke of indigo painted at the edge of the sky.
A dreamlike, beautiful backdrop.
The spirits dissolved in starlight. All things dissolved in starlight. And the two of them dissolved in starlight too.
Hoshino Ei's Concealment activated.
---
"Huh?"
Nanami Kira caught Hoshino Ei by the scruff of her neck and peeled her off his chest.
"What's the status on the Curtain?"
"Already done!"
Hoshino Ei planted her hands on her hips, beaming—the very picture of I finally proved I'm useful and you have to hold my widdle hand before I'll calm down, like a proud little hen.
"Too slow."
His tone was faintly disdainful.
"Huh?"
Seeing the hope shining in her eyes, Nanami Kira sighed. Lately, his sigh count had risen well above baseline.
"Too slow. But you weren't late. Good enough."
The words left his mouth and he stumbled, hands still trembling.
His body was still weak. The rewind had only taken him back thirty minutes—and thirty minutes ago, he had already been in ruins.
The Cursed Energy detonation had annihilated the spirits in his immediate vicinity, but only those nearby.
He set his hand on Hoshino Ei's shoulder. He felt her go rigid, pupils contracting, a small yelp escaping her.
He leaned half his weight onto her and whispered by her ear:
"Walk me out."
"Mm."
A tiny, deer-like sound. She could barely get the word out. Both ears had flushed scarlet, and her normally cool gaze was scattered with panic.
They say a bro helps you up once. A woman helps you up all night long. To Nanami Kira, Hoshino Ei ranked below both categories—she was purely a crutch.
Ignoring the fantasies running rampant in Hoshino Ei's head, he thought.
The warehouse held a thousand years' worth of monsters—Amber Mansion's entire accumulated collection.
"We need to get out of here. Now."
Hoshino Ei's Concealment could fool the spirits, but it could not fool Amber Mansion's will. Between the two of them they held only one invitation, and being targeted by the mansion was a certainty.
They had to leave. Out of the warehouse, down from the second floor, back to his room.
---
Even Amber Mansion's will had to follow Amber Mansion's rules. Once you're in your room, you can't be attacked—that should be one of the rules.
They wove through the sea of corpses, stepped between the wreckage, and at last reached the warehouse entrance.
The thick barrier had been dismantled by Hoshino Ei. Fortunately, Geto's group would be sheltering in their own rooms at this hour—they too were hiding from the dark—so an ambush outside was unlikely.
The corridor was dark, the lamplight murky and near-black.
Nanami Kira felt something sticky beneath his foot. A strange texture.
Blood. A pool of it. Years of experience told him instantly what he had stepped in.
"Blood here too..."
His gaze dropped, and he found the anomaly beside the doorway.
A girl, slumped against the doorframe. A white lady's dress covered in dust. Beautiful eyes drained of all luster. Hands hanging limp at her sides. She had stopped breathing.
Dead.
Nanami Kira frowned.
Death was nothing unusual. He felt nothing for Minamoto Sorako—or rather, he felt nothing for anyone. Dead was dead. It had nothing to do with him, and it could not stir so much as a ripple in his heart.
From the moment she chose to become a sorcerer. From the moment she felt pride in her noble lineage. From the moment she took it as her right to command others. Sorako had assumed the obligation of death. That was the resolve a sorcerer was required to carry.
What made him frown was the strangeness of how she died. It did not look like the work of a Cursed Spirit.
The body was intact—and given how those spirits couldn't stop muttering about eating, an intact corpse was impossible.
Preliminary cause of death: exsanguination. Even less consistent with a spirit killing.
Most critically, her body bore no trace of a spirit's Cursed Energy.
Or rather—her wounds carried no residual Cursed Energy at all.
No one had killed her.
Then there was only one possibility. Nanami Kira leaned on Hoshino Ei's shoulder, his expression placid.
Minamoto Sorako had been killed by fate.
At this same moment in the previous timeline, someone had killed her—and now, in this timeline, the same wounds had manifested on her body.
Killed by whom?
By whom?
He gently lifted the edge of her clothing. Pale skin exposed to the air.
Wound after wound, fine and dense, covered every surface.
He smiled calmly.
She had been killed by him.
He laughed softly.
And this death—left behind by his previous self—was the key.
The key to victory. Fortune truly did favor him.
This was the key to breaking the deadlock.
Nanami Kira read this death.
> Author's Note: One more chapter coming—I had classes all day today, uuugh. Barely any comments between chapters... this little pigeon is lonely.