They picked up a few trinkets as mementos of Old Tokyo, strolled the underground arcade with light hearts, then hit a stone-hard question: where to sleep tonight?

In the Special Zone, aside from the official mini-mart’s quick hotel, everything else was the open wild—eating wind under the sky, or eating wind under a leaking half-roof.

Summer spared them chills like a warm shawl, but rain and raids were wolves at the door. They needed shelter fast, like birds before a storm.

They asked Souu. She didn’t know, her voice thin as paper. First time in the Representative War, and only sixteen, a reed bending against rules.

Ivaris watched, worry pooling like dusk. The girl looked half ground down by Yekase, nerves fraying like wet silk.

Was she really an interrogator?

No malice showed, yet Yekase’s quick-cut topics, misted identity, and airy calm dragged Akano Souu into a mire of shock and doubt.

The longer you steep in a Sinister Organization, the deeper the cold water. Those offhand secrets press like fog you can’t part with your hands.

Compared to a civilian blind to the backstage, Souu glimpsed a sliver of it, never the whole mountain. That sliver grew like mold in the dark.

It fermented, twisted, swelled. Her mind painted the shadow behind it, a hulking beast breathing in a cave, and she couldn’t stop imagining it.

Cadre-level… more than that. Maybe a local war-faction chief… the thought crawled like ants.

Ivaris had done all the fighting; Yekase hadn’t even triggered Infinite Power after landing. Yet Souu already filed Yekase as high-tier, a blade behind silk.

“—It’s late already. Aren’t you going to rest?”

Yekase’s voice rang like a bell, pulling Souu from her maze.

They stood on an ordinary road, neon washed out like tired stars. Plan: follow the street, find an apartment still sound, pop the lock, and crash.

Rest was king—though two of them barely needed it. That thought drifted like smoke.

The Chubu Technologies fighters around them had other plans. Their boots fanned out like crows.

“The girl with you is a Crimson Field cadre. Catch her, and we bag big points—leave her, and we won’t trouble you two neutral ladies.”

He leaned on “neutral,” a knife under words, hinting Souu might stab them in the back. A neat wedge, glittering like glass.

Too bad Yekase had never counted Souu as a teammate. Her heart stayed still as a lake.

Years ago, Japan’s anime-manga scene flooded with Death Game stories, a tide of rules and kill-switches. Everyone fought alone on paper.

Yet the protagonist always found friends worth dying for, with ease, like magnets snapping together—usually cannon-fodder bros or insta-girlfriends wearing flags.

Two strangers lock eyes and trust, as if betrayal never existed. Every time Yekase read that, it felt absurd, a sour taste like overripe fruit.

She’d joked with Liu RuoYuan about it and got mocked for having a too-dark heart. The old banter fluttered like kite-string in memory.

Real trust isn’t built with bright eyes; it’s forged under gunfire and rain, hammered by time, a bridge built stone by stone, not breath by breath.

Unless they’re all Soul Power adepts with empathy maxed out—that, maybe, could thread minds like silk.

“But I promised a friend I’d get her out,” Yekase said, face pinched like someone carrying porcelain. “How about you introduce me? I’ll talk to your boss.”

“Seems talking won’t work…”

The fighters lifted weapons, metal blooming like frost.

No, talking would’ve worked. Yekase really did want a bridge to Chubu. A sixteen-year-old wouldn’t swing the war’s wheel; Souu was worth points, not strategy.

Wipe Crimson Field’s divisions, and killing one more or one less wouldn’t tip the scales like a mountain. She wanted the meeting, straight roads over thorn-bushes.

But the fighters heard “talk to your boss” as “raid Chubu headquarters.” Someone barked, and the crowd surged like a cresting wave.

Things that don’t listen!

Ivaris liked direct types who opened with fists. Her floating cannons and staff took flight; lasers and iron bolts streaked like meteors through a wheat field.

She cut the mob, a storm in human shape.

Oh. Forgot to leave half the BITs to guard the lady…

She glanced back. Yekase and Souu were already ringed by fighters, pushed away by too many hands, like driftwood shoved by a tide.

“Save me—I’m going to be killed—” Yekase screamed, sharp as a gull over rocks.

Souu’s struggle was far more convincing. “Let go! HA☆NA☆SE! Let—what is that?!”

An engine roar drowned every shout, a thunderhead rolling over the street.

A five-meter mech, dull gray, burst from a ruin alley like a steel boar.

Five meters is an awkward beast. Above that, fifteen to twenty meters is the main muscle of any Sinister Organization. Below that, single-soldier armor hunts people.

Five meters can’t brawl the big boys, and it won’t mow single armor. Stuck between mountains and ditches, it hangs like a tooth in the gum.

Still, tearing out of rubble, grabbing a person like a chick, and sprinting off—great visual punch, a firework in slow rain.

If only the person in that fist wasn’t Yekase.

“Driver, where’s this bus headed?” she tried, voice bright as a paper lantern.

The pilot said nothing, silence heavy as stone.

Five-meter mechs were scrapped in Huaxia long ago, unwanted children. Yekase’s curiosity pricked like nettles. Who kept studying this size, and deployed it here?

Same reason the Japanese cling to fax machines? Or is this mech a master’s handmade piece?

Thunk!

The mech froze mid-stride. A figure in full-cover single-soldier armor crippled its right leg, making it kneel and lock like a statue.

He snatched Souu and ran, a shadow peeling off the street.

“Hey? What about me?!”

Yekase reached toward the shrinking figure, fingers catching nothing but air, the night a slick wall.

After all, she was just a delicate lady who couldn’t even truss a chicken. Her helplessness hung like a dropped thread.

She watched Souu get carried off by a mystery man, vanishing around the corner like a fish into dark water.

…

Ivaris finished the fighters, then followed boot-prints to the stalled mech—and to Yekase, a lone lantern by iron.

“Where is she?”

“Taken by a yokai.”

“???”

Playing the role this hard? Your protectee got snatched, and you didn’t move? Even a hidden wolf has limits.

But Yekase’s mouth curved in a smile, brief as lightning, then folded back into sorrow, hating her own weakness like a weight.

“The Representative War began on the 7th and ends on the 15th. Time is thinning like rice paper. Yet the battle looks loose, strategy improvised.”

“Won’t someone hear this?”

“No. I asked the underground vendors. Drones don’t get close enough to catch voices. They leave suspense for the outside audience, like a curtain.

“So even if someone watches us now, they’ll think I’m crying to you.”

“…Go on.”

Ivaris watched Yekase analyze with a face like rain and a voice like flint. Her mouth and mask fought, almost funny.

“The first time we saw Akano Souu, she pointed a gun at Chubu Risa in the factory. Chubu’s a mechanic and Alchemy prodigy, close to me, but unenhanced.

“A bullet to the head at that range is death, clean as a cut. In house clothes, it’s doubtful she wore a failsafe. Chubu’s focus is megastructures.

“I don’t know the War’s rules. But if you kill the opposing chief, you win, right?”

“So you think… they staged it?”

“The War might have a script. I said that before. Simple: if Souu truly was a first-timer, how did she slip past all those traps on the first floor?

“Who laid those traps? The questions stick like burrs.”

The feeling was familiar, like a path she’d walked.

When Yekase cracked a case, she’d give allies or enemies the full answer arc. Back then, Ivaris on the horizon needed her explanations to see the second layer.

They watched the same play, yet Yekase caught the backstage mirror, a lake behind a curtain.

“I think they were negotiating. The traps were pre-set, to screen out wanderers. We made it through, so they faked hostility.

“Chubu strutted with a big robot, then bolted, leaving Souu by us—to observe.”

“Were we used…?”

“No. Not yet. She led us to the underground street and bought nothing, testing how familiar we two crashers were with the War.

“Anyone with experience would restock at the mini-mart like it’s breathing. We didn’t. That lowered her guard a bit. Then came test two.”

“A combat test?”

“Yes. She’d seen your fighting, but wanted my hidden loadout, or at least my angle and system. She’s forced into the War.

“Then two helpers show up, supposedly called by her brother. Even if she thinks he’s a coward who fled home, he’s back now. You’d lower your guard a little.

“I kept fogging things up. Her impatience rose like steam—as if she’d already accepted that we’d be enemies later.”

Ivaris pressed her lips together, a line carved in snow.

If Yekase was right, Akano Souu had already become a full Sinister Organization fighter. Maybe her first trigger was forced, but gunpowder stained her hands.

“…I’m sorry.”

“Who isn’t.”

“How will you face Crimson Field?”

“She and Chubu have a deal. They won’t kill her. And—she will come back for us, just because of this.”

Yekase lifted her right hand. Between two slim fingers, she held The Tower.