Watching the multicolored text drift past in front of him, Ryōgi Minato blinked hard again, but the scene in his vision still hadn’t changed in the slightest.
He recognized the characters floating across his line of sight as Chinese, and this odd way of presenting them was, in the knowledge he carried, apparently called “danmaku”…
[Whoa—did this kid just say “danmaku”?]
[Don’t tell me he can see us?]
[I just backed out to check, and all the other shows are normal—it’s only this video that’s off.
Everyone, I think I’ve figured out the truth.]
[So this video really does connect to another world?
∑(O_O;)]
[But even if it does, it should connect to the world of Kara no Kyoukai.
I’ve rewatched KnK plenty of times, and I swear I’ve never seen this character.]
[Could this kid be that almost-never-seen, legendary brother of Shiki-nee—Ryōgi Kaname?]
“You know Kaname-nii-san?”
Looking over what the danmaku were saying, Ryōgi Minato suddenly caught sight of a familiar name and asked the question almost before he knew it.
[He actually interacted with us!]
[Looks like, for some unknown reason, we really are seeing events unfold in another world through this video—almost like a livestream.]
[So who on earth is this kid?
There’s nothing about him in the wiki at all!]
“My name is Ryōgi Minato.
And what are you?”
The boy frowned.
Precocious “prodigy” though he was, even he found something this inconceivable hard to make sense of.
True, as the Ryōgi family’s adopted son he’d had strange swordsmanship techniques surface in his dreams since early childhood—things like “Ashina Arts,” “Santoryu,” “Sun Breathing,” “Judgement Cut”—but all of those put together still weren’t as bizarre as what was happening before him now.
[This intro… adopted son?
Wait, since when does the Ryōgi family have an adopted son?
Hold on, this is nothing like the KnK I know!]
[Nothing like it is putting it mildly.
And what’s with “prodigy”—don’t tell me this is some transmigrator kid?]
[Your transmigrators come stock with this many sword skills?]
[I could let Ashina Arts and Santoryu slide, but what the heck is Judgement Cut?
You want a double jump too?]
[If you ask me, this is some infinite-flow Sword Saint who botched his reincarnation—only drank half the bowl of Meng Po’s soup.]
[Anyway—if he’s an adopted son, doesn’t that mean this kid is family with Shiki-nee?]
“Shiki-nee… do you mean Shiki?”
Not quite understanding why this crowd of danmaku called the girl his own age “Shiki-nee,” Ryōgi Minato took the towel off his head, puzzled.
And just then he saw a comment asking what his relationship to Ryōgi Shiki was.
“Shiki is family, and also my very important fiancée.”
The boy answered honestly, his young voice earnest.
But the moment the words left his mouth, the danmaku in his vision seemed to freeze, the screen going blank—and the next instant a great wave of yellow comments came pouring out all at once, filling his sight in a heartbeat.
Startled by the flood of text, Ryōgi Minato instinctively took a step back—and the danmaku in his eyes seemed to answer the wish in his heart, vanishing from before him at once.
In his surprise, the boy caught only fragments: [(lemon 🍋)], [I want a fiancée too], [Shiki-nee, my Shiki-nee], and other comments of complicated meaning.
He stood there looking left and right for a while, blinking, wondering just where those danmaku had gone—and then the lines of text began appearing before his eyes again.
[What was that just now?
Why could I suddenly not post anything?]
[Probably got blocked—didn’t you see you all scared the poor kid?]
[We can even get blocked?
I’m crying.
Here I thought we were a clairvoyance cheat for this kid, but turns out we’re just bystander NPCs?]
[It’s fine.
In that case I’ll just enjoy the sugar.
Fly free, Minato baby—Mama will always be with you~!]
[No male moms.
No male moms.]
[So angry I’m shaking, freezing cold… and I forgot the rest (smug).]
[Damn it, I’m still salty.
Wait right there—I’m off to find a truck, I’ll transmigrate to your house within three days.]
[Minato, kid, listen to me—the Ryōgi house runs deep, you can’t handle it.
Let uncle take it from here.]
Looking at this much-reduced string of danmaku, Ryōgi Minato gathered from it that he could close the text on his own, and couldn’t help feeling relieved.
After all, if these characters were always drifting before him, they might well cause trouble for his daily life at certain moments.
But the present situation he didn’t mind—if anything, it added a few threads of life to that cold, quiet routine, and it stirred a flicker of curiosity in him too.
Perhaps these danmaku might know where all his sword knowledge had actually come from.
This wasn’t the time to look into that, though.
Having dried his hair, Ryōgi Minato washed the towel, folded it, and straightened his yukata in the mirror.
He took a hair tie from the drawer, held it in his teeth, raised both hands to gather the black hair behind his head—baring the fair, slender nape—and tied it into a small ponytail.
Sunlight bathed him through the open sliding panel, until his whole figure seemed to blur softly.
At the same time, a heap of [awsl]—comments of unclear meaning—flashed past his eyes.
Curious as he was about what it meant, Ryōgi Minato didn’t ask.
He turned and left his room, and walked along the wooden corridor toward where his fiancée was.
His room and hers weren’t far apart; it took only a few minutes to reach her.
For this mansion built in the style of a martial household, that counted as a thoughtful arrangement.
Her door hadn’t been closed, so the moment he came up to it, Ryōgi Minato could see into the room.
Under the pale-gold sunlight, a slight, delicate figure sat leaning against the frame of the sliding panel, head tilted, gazing as if lost in thought at the bamboo grove before the mansion’s front gate.
She wore a pale blue-green yukata, her stillness like that of an exquisite doll.
The profile she showed had the soft beauty of a girl not yet fully grown, yet carried a certain dashing edge as well—hard, for a moment, to tell the sex of.
But that aloof, rejecting stillness broke at once at the sound of the boy’s voice.
“Shiki?”
The girl seemed just then to step out of her own world.
She turned her head, and those eyes—flowing dark as ink, seeming to care for nothing—reflected the boy’s figure, and yet seemed at the same time to gaze somewhere far more distant.
The next moment, that remote chill vanished from her eyes, and a vitality surged up out of her.
She broke into a grin, the corners of her mouth lifting, and spoke to Ryōgi Minato in a manner almost like a boy’s.
“Yo, Minato.
How’d this afternoon’s bout go?
You beat Chichiue-sama again, didn’t you?”
At the same moment, the danmaku watching the scene stirred to life once more.
[Ah, it’s little Shiki-nee!
I’m healed!]
[No good—she’s just too cute!]
[Screenshotted.
I’m treasuring this for life!]
[So salty, so salty—why wasn’t I the one who got isekai’d, sob sob sob.]
[Small-time.
Your scope’s too small.
I’m already lying flat in the road, just waiting for the truck to come.]
[I’m already driving the truck—just waiting to run into that chosen one.]