“Uwah…
Big Brother is so cruel…
I already said I was wrong…”
After having her bottom continuously thrashed by Shido for half an hour, Kotori wore a mournful expression, her hands trembling as she covered her burning, aching rear.
Sitting opposite her was Shido, who had already showered and changed into fresh clothes, currently staring at Kotori with an extremely grave face.
As for Tohka, Shido had coaxed her to go to sleep early by promising that “all three meals tomorrow would feature kinako bread as a side dish,” allowing him and Kotori to hold this serious family meeting.
Thus, only the two of them were present in the Itsuka household’s living room; there was absolutely no excuse Kotori could use to escape this conversation.
“Phew, you really hit hard…
Shido…”
Finally recovering a bit from her earlier state, Kotori’s hands trembled slightly as she untied her white hair ribbons, pulling out her “Commander Mode” black hair ribbons from her breast pocket to re-tie her twintails.
Her tone of voice remained noticeably weak, however.
It seemed Shido had genuinely hurt her this time—though, in a sense, she had brought it upon herself.
After all, she hadn’t come home for an entire month, and to a brother who cared so deeply about his little sister, Shido felt compelled to teach her a harsh lesson regardless.
“Is there anything you want to say to me—”
Seeing Kotori switch to her black ribbons, Shido spoke up slowly.
Over the past month, he had experienced countless bizarre occurrences.
He had witnessed Spirits possessing unbelievable powers, learned the true cause behind spacequakes, and discovered that his little sister possessed two distinct personalities.
Kotori was privy to all of this.
However, because Shido’s spankings had been so severe, even shifting her posture slightly sent a sharp sting through her bottom, preventing her from immediately giving Shido the answers he sought.
“Anything I want to say?
Let me catch my breath first.
Really, Shido, if you wanted to talk, did you have to hit me so hard?”
“No brother could watch his sister stay away from home for a whole month and still talk to her with a straight face.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, my fault.”
Kotori shrugged helplessly.
It was strange how the dynamic between them had leveled out; at the start, it was clearly Shido who was lecturing Kotori.
“By the way, did you bring Tohka home?
When you told her to go to sleep earlier, you mentioned something about ‘training’—what on earth is going on here?!”
Perhaps because he had been entirely focused on scolding Kotori the moment he stepped through the door, Shido hadn’t initially found it odd that Tohka was inside his home.
“My, my, calm down, calm down~”
“How can I calm down!
Isn’t she supposed to be with…”
“Hello, Shin.”
Suddenly, a voice echoed right beside Shido’s ear.
Standing behind the sofa where the two were seated was a sleep-deprived woman holding a steaming mug.
“…”
With the person he was just about to ask about suddenly appearing right before him, Shido felt temporarily unable to process the situation.
“Reine, good evening.
“I was a bit worried about you.
After all, you can’t manage anything in your white ribbon mode, so I came down to check on things.”
“That’s true enough.
My butt still hurts even now.”
“Re-Reine?
Why are you…”
As the two conversed, Shido voiced his confusion.
Then he suddenly noticed that Reine wasn’t wearing her usual military uniform or lab coat; instead, she was dressed in Shido’s mother’s pajamas with a towel draped around her neck.
“…I honestly can’t even guess what’s going to happen next.”
No longer knowing where to even begin deadpanning, Shido covered his forehead and slumped listlessly against the sofa.
It seemed the family meeting was dead in the water, morphing instead into Shido’s self-reflection session.
Patting his chest lightly, Shido slowly sat upright with a sigh.
Only after his brain fully digested the current reality did he continue.
“What is actually going on?”
“It’s really nothing major.
Tohka is just going to be staying at our house temporarily.”
Kotori pulled a Chupa Chups lollipop from her breast pocket and popped it into her mouth.
“So what I’m asking is why things turned out this way…”
“It’s too much trouble for me to explain.
Reine, you tell Shido.”
“I will.
Well then, Shin-taro, the reasons can broadly be split into two.”
As expected, Reine still couldn’t remember Shido’s name correctly.
“My name isn’t Shin-taro, it’s Shido.”
“Ah…
my apologies, I will correct myself.
Sorry about that, Shin.”
“Ehh…”
She hadn’t corrected it at all, merely reverting to her usual nickname for him.
Shido let out a sigh for what felt like the hundredth time today.
Problems always seemed to arise whenever she tried to remember his name, but if he could understand the truth behind all this, he couldn’t care less about his name right now.
“The first reason is—Tohka’s follow-up care.
Last month, Shin sealed Tohka’s Reiryoku through a kiss, but simply sealing it isn’t enough.”
Seemingly recalling the tactile sensation from that day, Shido’s cheeks flushed a light red.
“Shido, mind your demeanor.”
Kotori, focused on soothing her aching bottom, offered a careless reminder, causing him to lower his head in embarrassment.
“The second reason is—to train your romantic skills in preparation for other Spirits that will appear in the future.”
“!”
“Don’t look so surprised.
Did you think everything was over just because you sealed Tohka?
“Besides, Big Brother already ran into one yesterday when he went out.”
“Wh—!”
Shido’s heart jolted violently.
Immediately, his mind flashed back to that short-blue-haired girl.
Her peculiar speech style, her strange way of thinking, and those unchanging, stoic eyes.
At this moment, Shido couldn’t clearly describe his own emotions—was it nervousness, fear, or something else entirely?
An indescribable sensation churned violently in his stomach before spreading throughout his entire body, causing his fingers and toes to quiver as if his body had gone numb.
“That Spirit’s codename is ‘Shiratori’.
She is the most destructive among all Spirits.
You were lucky enough yesterday not to be blown into mincemeat by her.”
“…That girl…
isn’t—”
Shido seemed to want to say something, but he couldn’t find the words to defend her, leaving his mouth awkwardly half-open.
“So from here on, we will continue conducting training for you.
The full truth of everything else will be explained gradually during the training process.
Even if we told you everything now, you wouldn’t be able to digest much of it anyway.”
“In short, the road ahead will be extremely difficult.
You wouldn’t want to watch a Spirit be eliminated by the AST either, right?
So you can only follow our instructions.”
Kotori bit through her lollipop and raised her arms high, stretching lazily.
“Save those Spirits.”
Uttering those words with a nonchalant attitude, Kotori intended to move the meeting location to her own room, standing up and urging the two to come upstairs.
Reine followed right behind her, while Shido remained sitting dazed on the sofa, clutching his head in agony.
He quietly muttered the Spirit’s codename under his breath, as if none of this were real.
“Shiratori…”
_______________________
“Payee…
Unit 177.”
In stark contrast to Shido, who was currently wrestling with his worries, Shiratori—whose codename was being uttered—was orchestrating something massive.
Yes, a massive affair in the literal sense: right in the newly opened stock market.
A high-value transaction involving tens of millions of yen.
Within a few short seconds, Shiratori’s Angel had already adjusted the black-box manipulation of the stock market, ensuring she maximized her profits without raising the suspicion of whoever controlled the system behind the scenes.
It turned out that this really was a quick way to generate money.
When withdrawing the funds, she deliberately selected the designation code of one of her former comrades as the payee, using it as a way to commemorate that companion.
However, these were no longer matters to dwell on now.
She prepared to take a sleep in the internet cafe for the night, then head out tomorrow to buy her villa outright in full.
It truly gave her something to look forward to…