The next day.
Because the Lord Hero Candidate she was responsible for had gone straight to a sickbed to recuperate before the adventuring proper had even begun, Seraphia could only drape herself in the robe that concealed her shape and wander the middle district of Kaze City alone, with nothing to do.
She still had some doubt about which was the true core self: Miss Angel, or the transmigrator.
Whether the emotions that arose in her heart because of these various events came from the original Seraphia or from the memories and feelings she had inherited was, as yet, unknowable.
And within those past memories, the original Seraphia, when dealing with the people around her, would occasionally come out with vocabulary that could not possibly exist in this world.
That plainly belonged to the knowledge of an Earth person.
【Never mind... what's the point of thinking about this sort of thing anyway? In my previous life I was just an ordinary person on Earth nobody paid any attention to, and now I'm a monster spy who'll be executed the moment my identity is exposed. I've only moved from one hell to another.】
Because her mind was unsettled, the halo above her head flickered faintly on and off.
Concern and solicitude carried across from within her shadow.
When she had walked as far as an area where people were rarely seen, dim and old-looking all around, the shadow at her feet rippled faintly, and a pair of arms reached out from behind her and circled her waist.
In the original Seraphia's memories, an embrace like this between the sisters seemed to have happened a great many times.
But on the Earth soul's side, she had almost never been held by anyone this way.
Perhaps when she was young enough not to understand anything, her parents had held her like this too, though that had already blurred past the point of confirming.
Miss Angel turned around, and met Nephim's eyes, so unlike an ordinary person's.
"Big Sister... are you still unhappy about what happened yesterday?"
Perhaps because she had received no answer, Nephim studied her expression and carefully released her hands.
This was a little sister who always followed along behind her, and who treated her as something to rely on.
Seraphia felt slightly dazed.
In her previous life she had been an only son, and her father had been the youngest child in his family, so among her close relatives there had been almost no one near her own age.
She put out a hand and gently cupped Nephim's cheeks, watching her tilt her head like a small animal and put on a puzzled expression.
【She's rather cute, actually.】
For reasons she could not name, Seraphia smiled faintly.
Perhaps she would never be able to tell which was the so-called core self, and perhaps going on thinking about the question had no meaning at all...
But whether it was the original Seraphia or that Earth soul lost in another world, both of them ought to like this closeness.
Her fingers gently rubbed Nephim's cheek.
"I'm not unhappy any more."
Nephim did not know what had actually happened, but from the emotion she sensed through her halo, Big Sister genuinely had cheered up.
She laughed too, with a slightly dopey air about it.
Nephim did not want to go back to the shadow space so soon, so she chose to lean within Seraphia's shadow and take the walk along with her steps.
Seraphia could not help feeling her little sister's magic was the more useful of the two.
An Innate Magic named Umbra (the full shadow). She could hide inside a space formed of shadow, with even scent, body heat and mana fluctuation swallowed up along with her. An opened shadow space could also store things, doubling as that classic spatial-storage equipment out of novels.
Within a shadow she could move covertly and conceal her shape, and although that was a second-rate means of concealment, it was quite enough against anyone without a keen means of perception. She could also create Shadow Beasts, and shadow limbs that extended her own attack range.
The Shadow Beasts even seemed to possess a simple intelligence; among Seraphia's memories were scenes of her playing with them to pass the time.
By comparison, her own 【Corona】 only made everything too bright and too conspicuous, as though wherever she went, someone were forcibly training a spotlight on her.
At least as she was now, she had not yet worked out what her magic, Corona, could do beyond making a weapon bigger, brighter and more dangerous.
【It would be so nice if I could use Nephim's magic.】
At the very least it would make running away a great deal more convenient.
So thought Seraphia, walking down the street holding her little sister's hand.
Clear delight came across from Nephim, whose hand she was holding, and Seraphia came to understand a little of why the 'Seraphia' of the original work, even after building a sufficiently deep connection with the protagonist, would still choose the side of her own people and stand against the protagonist Shu.
At every moment, the feedback of an interaction was so clearly visible, and yet it was not the mind-reading sort, not a prying into another's heart. It was simply an accurate grasp of what ripples one's own actions had raised in the other person's heart.
Between one person and another, in that wall between hearts, a window had been opened.
And as Seraphia went on strolling the streets, passing through a slightly dim old quarter, she saw a pair of human sisters come running out of an alley.
The elder held the younger's hand, and in her other hand carried a picnic basket covered with a checked cloth.
The wind blew the younger one's hat askew, and the elder stopped and, somewhat roughly, jammed the hat back onto her head.
"I told you not to run so fast."
"But you're walking fast too."
"That's because I have to grab the grass behind the clock tower."
"If we don't get it, can't we have a picnic?"
"If we don't get it, the wind will blow your bread away."
The younger one clamped her hands over the basket at once.
Watching how nervous she was, the elder could not hold back a laugh.
And the angel sisters stopped where they stood, as if by agreement, watching from a distance that everyday exchange between the pair of human sisters.
The two of them were soon far away.
The shadow was quiet for a while.
"Big Sister."
Nephim's voice was very soft.
"In the future, will we be able to do that too?"
Seraphia glanced down at her own shadow.
Her magic was still at work, and over on the shadow's side there was nothing at all.
But the warmth in her hand and the expectation carrying from her side were perfectly clear.
Simply taking something to eat, finding somewhere with sunlight, and sitting down.
Just that. A simple thing.
But only the 'beautiful' Seraphia could appear beneath the sunlight of the human world without any constraint at all.
Seraphia's throat moved slightly, as though to say something, but inside her that contradictory feeling blocked the words again.
That was right. What she hated most of all were people born holding the capital to be 【loved】.
But set against Nephim, was she not precisely the one born to be 【loved】?
And besides... that little creature, the one she had seen at the very beginning.
Suddenly, as though her heart had been run through by a sharp thorn, an oppression beyond words welled up in her.
【No... I'm not... this has... nothing to do with me... I'm just an ordinary person... who wants to go on living in this world...】
"Big Sister?"
Nephim gripped her hand a little harder. Seraphia's violent swings of emotion were something she had no way of reading, and it was starting to make her panic again.
"...We can do it now, too. It's only... a picnic."
Seraphia bit gently at her own lip, forcing down that feeling which ought not to belong to 'her'.
The emotion carrying from the shadow was quiet for a long time.
Then a small, careful happiness, like something finally daring to put its head out of the darkness.
She returned to the streets thick with people, feeling that atmosphere of ordinary life belonging to another world, and once they were back where the crowds ran heavy, Nephim went back into her shadow for safety's sake.
【This world is pretty big too, isn't it? Maybe I should just... take her and run away together. The world, the Hero, the races, all of it... just throw the whole lot behind us.】
A modern Earth person always has a great many ways of talking themselves into running.
Her heart began to grow lighter.