Yamato lay tucked inside its cloth bag, resting across his thighs.
Ryōgi Minato was riding in a car.
It pulled steadily away from Mifune City, drawing nearer to the destination of this trip—Misaki City.
After saying his goodbyes to Ryōgi Shiki, the boy had gone straight to Suzurigi Akitaka and laid out his request.
The man had moved with remarkable speed; by that very afternoon the two of them were ready to set off, and even matters at the elementary school had been smoothed over.
Of course, there had been one small interruption along the way.
Perhaps it was on account of the family head—but as Minato was about to depart, his foster mother had sought him out.
She hadn’t come to talk him out of it, though.
Quite the opposite: she’d thoughtfully packed a few changes of clothes for him, murmured a couple of concerned reminders, and pressed into his hands a bento hastily put together at the last minute.
What it held was nothing elaborate—just plain umeboshi onigiri.
One look was enough to tell it hadn’t been made by the household’s cook.
It seemed more the work of someone who had only recently grown comfortable in the kitchen, finished off with a kind of flustered haste.
The one strange thing was that the boy didn’t quite understand what his foster mother had said to him as he got into the car.
—Minato, remember to stay safe.
If anything comes up, contact Akitaka right away.
Oh—I almost forgot to tell you.
This bento isn’t one I made.
—?
The foster mother he remembered as gentle and composed had, just then, shown a smile he couldn’t quite read.
But with departure already upon him, Minato hadn’t pressed any further at the time.
He turned to look at the bento box resting in the seat beside him, and blinked in confusion.
The fact that his favorite food was umeboshi onigiri… apart from the household cook, Akitaka, and his foster parents, no one should have noticed that…
Just as his thoughts were about to wander deeper, the young man in the driver’s seat spoke.
“Minato-sama, we’ll reach the hotel shortly.
Please make ready.”
The boy nodded and put the matter of the bento out of his mind, picking up the long cloth bag and cradling it in his arms instead.
His golden eyes, reflected in the windshield, mirrored a world sliding away behind them.
In his heart he silently repeated the name that was the purpose of this journey.
Aozaki Touko…
…
Ten years ago, Misaki City had been a little town of nothing but farmland and forest.
But as urban development pressed on, the place—once no more than a waystation village in the hills—had taken on a fairly modern air.
Even so, between the rows of high-rises one could still glimpse the hills and mountains left over from the past, lending the city a curious impression: never so remote that a visitor from the metropolis would call it backwater countryside, yet never quite bustling, either.
Once the check-in was handled and his luggage in order, Ryōgi Minato turned to the young man before him.
“It’s all right, Akitaka.
I can manage the rest on my own—you should head back to the estate.
You still have the family head’s work to see to, don’t you?”
Suzurigi Akitaka’s brow knit with hesitation.
He understood that the boy was nothing like an ordinary child, that he could perfectly well stay alone in an unfamiliar place—yet his sense of duty left him a touch uneasy all the same.
“Minato-sama, are you truly all right by yourself?”
He gave voice to the worry directly, meaning to decide his next move by the boy’s answer.
“Mm, I’m fine.
I’ll contact home every evening, and if anything out of the ordinary happens, I’ll let you know first, Akitaka.”
Ryōgi Minato nodded earnestly.
He knew that in others’ eyes, his staying here alone looked less than proper—but for one thing, the young man before him had other work to do, and Minato couldn’t keep him at his side.
For another, what he meant to do next might not be something others could understand, nor easy to explain.
So this was simply how it had to be.
“Understood.
In that case, I’ll leave a few people stationed near the hotel afterward.
Should anything urgent arise, Minato-sama, you may give them your instructions.”
Having grasped the boy’s wishes, Suzurigi Akitaka settled on a compromise.
Only after seeing him agree did he take a respectful leave.
A glance at the wall clock: four-thirty in the afternoon.
There was still a little while before dinner.
Ryōgi Minato took the umeboshi onigiri from the bento box and ate them in small bites, staving off the hunger in his belly.
He might, after all, have a stretch of mountain road ahead of him before long; best to top up his strength first.
The pickled green plum spread its sour-salt flavor through his mouth, lingering and crisp, and the boy couldn’t help narrowing his eyes.
The texture differed slightly from the umeboshi onigiri he usually ate—yet he rather preferred the ones in his hands.
They might not be as refined, but there was one extra plum tucked inside.
Once every last onigiri had gone into his stomach, the boy gathered up the long cloth bag and left the hotel room, stepping out onto the street.
Following what the danmaku had told him, he walked away from the station, and before long came upon a long sloping road that led up toward a hill standing a notch above the rest.
Climbing the asphalt slope, Minato passed only a single, solitary vending machine along the way—standing there as though it marked the boundary line between city and wild.
The higher he went, the denser the trees grew, and the more the slope began to look like a mountain path.
Pausing there to gaze out, one could take in the whole sweep of Misaki City, the little town laid out as neat as a set of toys.
But the moment he stopped, without even meaning to, the danmaku came drifting excitedly across his sight.
[Famous-location check-in!]
[The red umbrella—do I still get to see Aoko’s red umbrella?]
[Pity it’s not raining now, and Aoko’s not here, or we could recreate that famous Type-Moon key visual.]
[Unforgivable—Mushroom, you wretch, when in the world is Mahoyo 2 coming out?
I’ve been waiting all these years!]
[Stop nagging, stop nagging, it’s already in the works—has your boy Mushroom ever lied to you?
Didn’t the Tsukihime Remake finally drop?]
[Like hell I believe you, you slacking Mushroom—you’re rotten to the core!]
Aoko?
From the danmaku of the past, Ryōgi Minato knew the name referred to Aozaki Aoko—the younger sister of the very Aozaki Touko he was searching for.
And his current destination was precisely the Western-style house at the end of this slope, where that Aozaki Aoko presently lived.
Words like “red umbrella” and “famous scene,” though, the boy couldn’t make sense of; he simply filed them away as more of the danmaku’s usual strange chatter.
After some time he reached the crest of the hill, and a Western-style residence rose into view before him.
It was a sizable mansion—the main building large enough to swallow three ordinary homes, with a courtyard wrapped all the way around it.
Tall iron railings ringed the courtyard, overgrown with thorn-like creeping plants.
Up on the higher ground beyond the main building stood even an annex, lavish-looking yet steeped in a sense of age—the sort of place where, in stories, only vampires and ghosts would dwell.
Ryōgi Minato stopped before the railing gate at the courtyard’s edge.
He found it unlocked, but without the owner’s leave he wouldn’t simply walk in.
Keeping one arm around the blade, the boy tilted up his small face, reached out, and politely gave the iron railing a light knock.
He blinked.
“Hello.
Excuse me—is anyone home?”