Light filtering through the gaps in the clouds shone faintly through the grimy window glass.
But that light was muddied by dust, and by the time it reached the floor, it had turned into a dull yellow-brown.
“…This feeling, we’re already inside the labyrinth.”
The tiles in the entrance had peeled away, and here and there they had blackened as if they had soaked up water.
Even though no one was walking, footsteps echoed a beat late, as though they were following from behind.
Under the gaze that pierced into her so sharply it felt enough to make her mistake this place for a stage, Senano slowly lowered the guitar case and opened it.
Then she lowered the lever and took Hibari out from inside.
Permission had already been granted beforehand. However, since she was required to report it, Senano promptly took out her transceiver and spoke into it.
“Yoshiba-san, Kiba-san, from here on I’ll be using NARROW. If you confirm anything abnormal from outside, let me know.”
『Understood. Be ca■ef■■』
Yoshiba’s voice came through the well-worn transceiver, mixed with noise.
Looking at the message she had only been able to make out half of, Senano frowned.
“As I thought, store-bought just won’t do.”
Letting out a sigh, she tossed Hibari into the air.
『Recognition connection, Oath-link disclosure. Confirmed.』
Along with the mechanical voice, Hibari transformed into a bird and landed on top of Senano’s head.
Senano had been about to complain, but when she remembered that the weight and warmth she felt from atop her head was the only thing that would help her, she fell silent and started walking.
The stair railing was rusted over, and if she touched it, red-brown powder clung to her fingertips.
Even though it should have been daytime, the hallway was dim, and she could even feel a strange chill.
(Normally, once you enter a labyrinth, they try to kill you immediately. …Could it be waiting for an opportunity…? If so, it’s an intelligent, troublesome Aberrant Entity.)
Every door to every room was shut tight.
In the corner of the hallway, an old tricycle had fallen over, and only one wheel kept spinning on its own with a dry rattle.
Precisely because it was a scene seen under the midday sun, it felt unnaturally vivid, enough to make her think someone might still be living here.
And yet neither Senano nor even Hibari showed any reaction.
If someone told her this was just an ordinary run-down apartment building, she might have believed it.
The farther she went, the colder her spine became, like ice.
Senano had long since forgotten the warmth of the morning sun.
(I know it’s here. …But pinpointing the location is difficult. Maybe I should just burn everything down.)
With the residents gone, it would probably be fine even if this empty apartment building was burned down at worst.
Thinking that, several of the rules she had read before the mission flickered through her mind, and she shook her head.
“…Let’s search the hard way.”
Saying that as if to tell herself the same, Senano opened the rooms one by one and continued her careful search.
At times like this, her own excellent talent felt almost hateful.
Back when she was still only an apprentice, it had been mandatory for her to move in groups of at least five.
However, the more capable she became, the more often she was sent alone.
Aberrant Entities had been increasing in recent years, and there simply was not enough personnel to assign multiple people to every case.
That was exactly why Senano, despite still being a student, was sent out alone on nothing but the basis of her talent.
She herself understood that logic, but even so, somewhere in her heart there was still loneliness.
(It’d be nice if I had a buddy at times like this.)
Even knowing that once one reached S-rank, that possibility became next to zero, Senano found herself imagining it anyway.
And as though to distract herself from that emptiness, she opened her mouth to the transceiver once more.
“Still nothing abnormal on my end. Do you have any information, like what floor it was seen on specifically?”
『■■■■』
Only harsh static echoed through the room in reply.
Senano frowned and shoved the transceiver into her pocket.
“Honestly.”
And just as she was about to start walking again while letting out that complaint, it happened.
Suddenly, she felt a sense of wrongness in the scene before her.
An utterly ordinary room with traces of everyday life still left in it.
A half-read magazine had been tossed aside, and several sun-faded stickers were stuck to a pillar.
Walls yellowed by cigarette smoke, a study desk that had already outlived its purpose and become little more than a place to set things down, none of it was anything but a perfectly ordinary scene.
Senano slowly looked around once more, and then she noticed it.
The window.
The glass, which ought to have reflected the roadside trees outside, was faintly rippling like the surface of water.
As though it were water itself, only the glass undulated.
“…There you are.”
When Senano took a step forward, a golden eye appeared beyond the glass.
Larger than a human face, a snake’s vertically split pupil stared fixedly at her.
The next instant, the wavering of the glass intensified, and a pitch-black mass of snakes came crawling out, bursting through the surface.
Their thick tongues flickered, and the sound of scales scraping against one another rang out across the walls and floor.
The silence from just moments ago inverted in an instant. The area was overflowing with Aberrant Entities.
One, then another.
At first they had been like thin shadows, but gradually they took on substance and came rushing toward Senano’s feet as they crawled along the floor.
Countless tails scraped against one another, and the whole room trembled as though it were rustling.
Beyond the window, the snake’s eye was still glaring this way without even blinking.
As though it were observing what Senano would do next.
In the face of that snake’s eye, Senano returned a fearless grin.
“Hah, then let’s do this.”
Against the approaching snakes, Senano stepped back, one step, then another.
But this was no mere retreat.
Her steps were light, as though scattering flower petals, and her turns were as graceful as the trail of beating wings.
The twist of her wrist, the slide of her soles, each movement was not merely evasion, but something shaped into an offering dance.
The snakes that had nearly reached her feet suddenly burst into flames.
As if in a chain reaction, the fire spread to the ones drawing closer to Senano.
“Sorry, but I’m used to cheap first-timer traps like this.”
Her footwork was no longer mere evasion, but a kagura itself, like a bird ascending into the heavens.
The attacks pouring down on her instead became trials that refined her dance, tracing rings of divine flame around her.
Even bearing the risk of death, she continued to dance.
That was precisely the only way to draw out the full power of this NARROW.
“I couldn’t do it back then because my legs were pinned, but――”
Hibari cried out sharply, and its body burned crimson.
Her dance was no longer mere evasion, but had shifted into a liturgy of counterattack.
From this moment on, Senano lost the boundary between attack and evasion.
The act of dancing itself was attack and evasion.
Each beat of wings left fiery feathers in its wake, carving into the enemy and burning them away.
“Come on, instead of sending nothing but trash like this, you fight me yourself.”
As though diving into her dance, the snakes were charred black and died one after another.
In the midst of that, Senano glared at the eye in the window as if provoking it.
“What’s wrong? Scared of one human?”
Senano did not stop dancing.
Before long, the number of snakes dwindled, and by the time Hibari burned the last one to ashes, not a single snake remained.
Ash spread across the area, and the lingering heat still warped the scenery.
Even so, there was no trace of the room having burned, and the bizarre sight of ash scattered through a lived-in room stretched out before her.
“…Ran away, huh. Boring.”
The window had already returned to normal, reflecting nothing more than the ordinary scenery outside.
As if to say she had no more business there, Senano left the room behind.
“Let’s open every room one by one and take a look. Hey, can you hear me? From here on, I’m going to burn through every single room!”
Senano’s voice echoed loudly, reverberating over and over through the apartment building.
But there was no answer, nor any sign of even a single snake coming out.
“…Tch, the type that hides in its own domain is a pain.”
The moment Senano said that and was about to kick in the door to the next room—
“Eh, are you an Enri Bearer…!?”
Along with the frightened voice of a woman, the mail slot attached to the door timidly opened, and two eyes peered out from inside.
Human eyes.
“Heh, so you can make eyes like that too.”
Senano did not hesitate.
And just as she was about to begin her dance so she could burn the door down along with whatever was behind it—
“Thank goodness! I’ll open it now!”
The door opened without any caution.
The one who came out from inside was a single woman.
The white-based clothes she wore were the familiar Enri Academy uniform.
Combined with her chestnut-colored hair cut neatly at her shoulders and the frightened expression with which she warily watched her surroundings, Senano got the impression of a small squirrel.
“And you are?”
Keeping her guard up, Senano asked the girl before her.
Her stance was set so that she could snap the girl’s neck at any moment.
But perhaps the girl did not notice that, because with tears welling in her eyes, she answered like this.
“I’m Kagemori Shion, a third-year at Enri Academy. …Thank goodness, the distress signal reached someone…!”
She must have been overcome with emotion, because Shion collapsed to the floor crying right there.
Senano watched her while remaining on guard.
“Thank goodness… truly, thank goodness…!”
That voice, as if it had finally found salvation, echoed through the hallway for a long time.