"Tokugawa Yuka... Tokugawa..."
Casper thought for a moment, then started slightly.
"You're the granddaughter of Tokugawa Kai, the oni Grand General of the Falling Blossom Kingdom?"
He remembered from the letter that the Right Hand who matched Komachi Yua as Left Hand, the "Bloody Butcher" Hino Yosuke, had gone to assassinate Tokugawa Kai!
Though thinking a step further, Hino Yosuke's operation should have been synchronised with Komachi Yua's, which meant it was already over by now.
And going by Komachi Yua's stray-by-the-roadside, zako-grade combat power...
Hino Yosuke, stripped of the Plague Horseman's gift of power, had probably been cut down at the roadside by Tokugawa Kai too.
As crown princess, Philia Soren was on the face of it merely a person of exalted station.
Whereas Tokugawa Kai, as the oni Grand General, had earned a great many of his achievements by killing monsters!
"Hey, don't always treat me as 'Tokugawa Kai's granddaughter.'"
Tokugawa Yuka broke into a smile and put out her left hand in a V-sign, her manner bright and unreserved.
"Rather than a station, what I want is to prove myself — and my tachi, God's Lament!"
"God's Lament?"
What an outrageous name!
The same line surfaced in Casper's and Komachi Yua's minds at the same moment.
Even the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who did this world enormous harm and would one day bring the end of days, could not be called true gods.
A tachi that could make even gods weep — what sort of a peerless thing was that?
Thinking it over, Komachi Yua began to study Tokugawa Yuka from head to foot.
Pure white hair to the waist, two flesh-coloured horns in the gaps of an M-shaped fringe, a face pale and finely made but with an expression thoroughly bright, her bearing and movement like a gang leader's.
A loose short martial robe in a deep crimson, distinctly in the oni style, left her clean neck and fine shoulders bare, while intricate, high-born layered fabric hung over her sleeves and covered half her small hands.
The thick cloth sash at her waist, the flower-worked ribbons, the great knotted cord at her back, the mysterious tachi God's Lament — all of it made her upper half look extraordinarily ceremonial.
Below, in the leftover of all that stacked fabric, a hem fell in staggered tiers and was short enough to just barely bare the absolute territory, plump and powerful legs stretching over-the-knee white socks tight, her feet in wooden clogs that looked in no way convenient for fighting.
What a beautiful girl...
Might this one be one of the heroines?
"So you want to challenge me."
Casper shrugged. "I've no objection as such. If I have the time, I'll accept.
But I'm Lady Philia's guard at the moment, and protecting her safety is my first duty."
Which was to say, a polite refusal!
In fact Casper had no intention whatsoever of sparring with this girl.
That sort of thing very easily caused trouble.
But Tokugawa Yuka could not understand a roundabout brush-off of that kind at all, and only laughed.
"Hahaha, that's fine. Then I'll go find Philia Soren and get her to agree!"
With that, Tokugawa Yuka set off in great meteoric strides toward the closed door of the principal's office.
She had entirely the air of someone who would not rest until she had her spar with Casper!
"What a self-willed person..."
Komachi Yua stood behind Casper with the look of one to whom none of this had anything to do, and delivered her commentary at leisure.
Completely unlike Philia~
Still, in station or in strength, Tokugawa Yuka had every right to that much pride.
Inside Dilan United Academy, anyone with any reputation at all was stronger than Komachi Yua, the "Soul-Draining Witch" who had lost her power — and Tokugawa Yuka was one of the outstanding ones at that.
At this moment, however, Tokugawa Yuka had not gone two steps before she stopped short, just as she was about to pass Casper.
"?"
Casper's guard went up abruptly, and he did not dare be careless; his hand clamped onto his hilt.
Surely this martial-arts fanatic of a girl wasn't going to attack without another word?
But Tokugawa Yuka did not draw that tachi of hers. Instead she closed in on Komachi Yua at once and sniffed hard, up and down, like a great white dog.
"Eeeeeeek!"
Komachi Yua was badly startled, her arms bending up despite her, all ten fingers awkward and flustered. "Wh-why are you suddenly doing this...?!"
She wanted to back away, but the wall was right behind her. There was nowhere left to go!
"Sniff, sniff..."
Tokugawa Yuka's expression was grave. "On you... there's a smell..."
Oh, that was all it was.
Komachi Yua let out a breath inwardly and gave a cute, rueful smile. "That's the sweet-and-sour fragrance that comes with this maid dress."
Is the scent really that strong?
A race with a sense of smell as sharp as Tokugawa Yuka's would react extremely strongly to it!
Mm, so the way Casper was behaving just now was because he'd caught this scent as well...
The smell really is very clear, very inviting. Philia does know how to design a thing...
"That's not all."
Tokugawa Yuka said gravely, "There's also the scent of a witch."
In that instant, Komachi Yua felt her heart was about to pound its way straight out of her.
The oni could sniff out her identity on nothing but their sense of smell?!
And what in the world was the smell of a witch anyway!
To Komachi Yua's eyes a witch was only a designation, like a knight... surely not every knight smelled the same!
Countless thoughts flashed through Komachi Yua's mind in a single moment, heating it nearly to melting, and the ten fingers in their maid's lace half-gloves twitched, lightly and continuously.
She was on the verge of loosing mana threads from her fingertips on reflex and invoking the Hand of Woven Thread!
Casper's eyelid twitched.
He could see how badly cornered Komachi Yua was under Tokugawa Yuka's step-by-step advance. Any further and Komachi Yua would be exposed!
"Lady Yuka!"
Casper took one long stride, put out a hand to hook Komachi Yua's shoulder, and drew her into his arms.
"She is my personal maid, and accompanies me at all times. When I was cutting a witch down, she may well have picked up a trace of the scent standing nearby... please don't press her further."
"Hm?"
Tokugawa Yuka put one hand on her hip and raised the other to stroke her chin with great interest.
"The one you're protecting is Philia Soren, the pearl of the Nightingale, isn't it? And yet you also happen to have a personal maid this beautiful. Well, well, well..."
"..."
Casper did not know how best to answer that, and only went on holding Komachi Yua's shoulder, keeping her nestled against him.
And Komachi Yua at this moment — those young, sweet, gently rounded cheeks with their trace of baby fat had flushed utterly through, red all the way to the base of her ears.
This Casper...
That is way, way, way, way, way, way too much of a cheat!!!
How, how could he just pull her into his arms out of nowhere like that!
She knew it was to get her out of a corner... but being nestled up like this gave Komachi Yua a feeling that went numb from her brain to the soles of her feet.
And Casper — he didn't look strongly built from the outside, but pressed together like this, she could feel his muscles were quite solid.
Though Komachi Yua was making the contact through those two protruding soft ripe fruits of hers with a layer of milk-white fabric in between, so the reading wasn't necessarily reliable.
Mm... actually using that particular place as a "feeler" was another entirely novel experience for Komachi Yua.
So this... is what being a girl feels like...
How strange. It feels rather like she wants to melt into these arms...
At that moment, the office door opened.
Philia came out from inside.
She saw Tokugawa Yuka, whose face was pure appetite for gossip; she saw Casper, thinking something over; and she saw Komachi Yua, held in Casper's arms, squirming in shy distress and at the same time nestling into him, lost in it.
In that moment, the air went very quiet indeed.