[Anyone there?]
[Nope, not here, f— (smug)]
[The hell’s this dog doing here—buzz off (smug)]
[Hey, hey, hey—don’t go cursing and corrupting Minato-chan!]
[Looking at it, though, the Kuonji place really is huge.
Alice is a rich girl after all!]
[Sort of, I guess—she may be the heiress of the Kuonji conglomerate, but after her father died it seems all she inherited was this one mansion.
Otherwise life wouldn’t be so tight for her.]
[Is that so?
I always figured magecraft just burned through cash, and that’s why she’s renting out rooms to make ends meet.]
[That’s probably part of it too, but Alice’s wallet can’t be very fat either.]
[Anyway, we’ve been watching this long—why’s there still no sign of anyone?
Is nobody actually home?]
It had been nearly ten minutes since the knock.
Ryōgi Minato stood before the railing gate, looking at the still-empty courtyard, and no master of the mansion had come.
Perhaps, he thought, his voice earlier had simply been too soft, and whoever was inside hadn’t heard.
So the boy called out once more, his childish voice pitched a few notes higher.
“Hello.
Excuse me—is anyone home?”
—Flap, flap, flap.
A burst of beating wings—several crows hidden in the trees, startled by the sudden sound, scattered in a panic from among the branches.
But even so, the door of the main building stayed firmly shut.
It really did seem the house’s owner wasn’t home.
[Hmm, Alice isn’t home today?]
[Beep beep beep beep beep beep, beep beep, beep beep beep beep—beep!]
[The hell—how are you making sound effects?]
[That’s it, I no longer recognize the word “beep.”]
[Maybe there really is no one today.
Wasn’t Alice attending Reien?
Maybe school’s not out yet?]
[It’d be out by about now—and besides, today’s Saturday.]
[Then she’s probably gone out with Aoko.
Want to head back to the hotel first, Minato?]
Watching the danmaku’s suggestion, Ryōgi Minato thought it over, the blade in his arms, then shook his head.
“If she’s gone out, then she should be back later.
I can wait a while longer.”
He felt no particular tiredness anyway, and he’d eaten the umeboshi onigiri before coming, so he simply settled in beside the railing gate to wait.
The sooner he found Aozaki Touko, after all, the sooner he could learn the whereabouts of Araya Souren.
According to the danmaku, this man called Araya Souren was a monk who had lived more than two hundred years—and that alone was enough to upend a few of the boy’s assumptions.
There was no telling what other strange and uncanny abilities he might possess.
So it was never wrong to prepare early.
All of it, of course, would have to wait until he knew where the man was.
And so Ryōgi Minato stood there at the courtyard gate, waiting for the mansion’s owner to return, now and then trading a line or two with the danmaku in his sight, while the sky gradually dimmed with the passing time.
…
—Chirp, chirp.
A blue robin flitted down from the mansion’s second floor and landed, square and sure, on the tea table between the two deep-green sofas in the great hall.
The robin gave its wings a shake, took two steps forward across the tabletop, its ink-blue beak opening and closing, its cries seeming to tell of something.
“Quiet down, Robin.”
The girl seated on the sofa frowned faintly, a thread of irritation at the foolishly clamorous bird before her.
—Chirp, chirp-chirp.
“I know there’s someone outside.
Probably just another child come to play explorer from who-knows-where.
Pay him no mind.”
She turned a page of her book lightly, her gaze resting quietly on the text.
Her unmuddied black hair and the black, nun-like uniform she wore made her look like something out of a landscape painting.
The girl’s name was Kuonji Alice—the owner of this mansion, and a witch.
She knew well the rumors the locals spread about her home, likening the place to a haunted house.
Though it had, admittedly, stirred displeasure in her once, the girl did not fret over such things the way her housemate did, and so she had never once moved to set the record straight.
Thanks to that, the rumors multiplied by the day, and the mansion slowly became a thing to be feared.
About this the girl saw nothing amiss—she had never wished for anyone to set foot inside in the first place.
Even delivery people, at most, she allowed only to stand in the courtyard.
Only, every so often, situations like the present one arose.
High-spirited elementary schoolers would climb the hill on purpose, under the banner of “exploration,” hoping to catch sight of the rumored ghosts and other oddities around the mansion.
It was nothing more than children’s passing whim; come dinnertime they always left of their own accord, and Alice had always dealt with it just so.
A faintly yellowed light spilled through the curtains onto those slender limbs and skin so pale it seemed never to have known the sun.
The girl held the grimoire in her hands, quietly whiling away the time—a beautiful doll carrying a trace of its own melancholy grace.
The blue robin lingering on the tabletop cried no more; with a flap it spread its wings and flew off to who knows where.
…
It might rain soon.
Looking up at the somewhat leaden sky, the thought rose unbidden in Ryōgi Minato’s mind.
He had waited over an hour now at the courtyard gate, and still the mansion’s owner hadn’t come, which told the boy that today, perhaps, he wouldn’t manage to meet this “Aozaki Aoko” after all.
He waited another ten-odd minutes, blade in his arms—until the sun was wholly swallowed by the brooding clouds and the surroundings turned as oppressive and dim as nightfall.
Only then did Ryōgi Minato decide to head back to the hotel first and call again tomorrow.
But before he could so much as move, a complaining sort of sigh drifted up from the slope not far below, and a moment later a girl came walking this way—wearing the weary irritation and gloom of an office drone just off a punishing shift.
In an instant, the boy’s golden eyes met the girl’s blue ones.
And in that very moment, the danmaku began to surge madly.
[Aaah—Aoko, it’s a moving Aoko!]
[To see Aoko in motion in my lifetime—I can die with no regrets now.]
[Go for it, Minato-chan.
Just play cute for Aoko and she’ll hand over Touko’s contact info.]
[Oh right, come to think of it, Aoko’s got a soft spot for shota types—though who knows if she’s developed that particular taste this early (smug)]
[Yay, shota for the win!
♪(′∇`*)]
A soft spot for shota types—doesn’t that mean…
Catching the drift of a none-too-savory word, Ryōgi Minato blinked.
He knew he shouldn’t pass judgment on someone’s character based on the danmaku’s one-sided remarks and whatever definition of a certain word came bundled with his own knowledge.
Still, he found himself instinctively hugging the blade in his arms a little tighter, eyeing the approaching girl with a touch of wariness.
Hm?
A child out playing?
Why is one still here at this hour?
And no parent anywhere nearby…
Or could it be… he’s lost?
The girl named Aozaki Aoko looked at the boy standing by the railing gate, baffled, her brow knitting faintly, a premonition of trouble stirring in her chest.
Granted, with the school’s sudden phone call today, she’d rushed off to deal with student council business and squandered nearly her entire day off—she had no wish left to deal with anything.
And yet, if she simply left this possibly-lost child to his own devices, her conscience wouldn’t let her rest.
So, forcing away the gloom she’d carried back from school, the girl put on an amiable smile and stepped closer to the boy.
She came to a stop right in front of him, bending down a little so that her eyes were nearly level with his.
The gentleness of the smile on her face would have stunned those at school who paled at the mere mention of her name.
“Hello there.
Are you lost?
Why are you out here all alone—”
But before the girl could finish, the boy took a step back, as if on guard—and her upturned lips froze in place.
Just then a streak of blue lightning flashed across the sky, the rolling crack of thunder hard on its heels.
—Pitter, patter.
A few fat drops of rain came down, like a floodgate thrown open.