Once Xinghen and Dewa slipped out of sight like minnows into murk, Ivaris leaned forward, eyes sparking. “That tentacle array looked wild. Can you whip one up?”

“I don’t like shapeless things.”

“Switch tastes sometimes. Bath’s done. Let’s go back and get down to business.”

Yekase rolled her eyes, a wave breaking against tired shore.

“Are you Jiang Bailu in disguise? Your brain’s nothing but smut!”

“Honeymoon’s supposed to be like this. Honeymoon!”

Ivaris jabbed Yekase’s spine all the way down the hall, like a cop marching a thief through rain, and pushed into their room.

The inn was pure Japanese style, a calm pond under moon. A classic washitsu: clean, dry tatami on the floor, a low square table in the center. In winter, a quilt would crown it into a legendary kotatsu—pity August has no snow to kiss.

Door shut, Yekase moved on habit, eyes like lanterns sweeping. She checked every corner, gave the sliding closet extra love, then exhaled only after finding no bugs, no microphones.

“…We’ve got a problem,” Yekase said, a chill creeping first, then thought.

“Why can we clearly perceive Dewa, even with a cognition-obstructing talisman?” Ivaris stepped in and her face tightened, cloud covering sun. No talk of mucous-membrane contact now.

“Right. I barely know Dewa. You know her even less. Yet we adapted fast and resisted. The blur from the talisman may be weaker than a Magical Girl outfit. So that ‘let tourists avoid enemies and enjoy hot springs’ pitch doesn’t fly. Enemies know each other better.”

“So is the proprietress too weak, or is there another purpose?” Her voice felt like a finger testing a tripwire.

— Too weak, right?

Yekase’s first impulse broke like a brittle reed. Fujiwara Ningning had left an impression not of a clown, but of a whole circus stampede. She started doubting the rest of the Fujiwara clan too.

“…No. Common sense says it’s the latter.”

Then what purpose? What aim needs a laughably weak cognitive blur to work, which fails if it’s strong?

“They…” Ivaris frowned, storm brewing. “They want to hide one person in the inn. This person isn’t tied to the tourists. A light Reverse Meme can mask them. Too strong would create holes.”

“Mm-hmm?”

“And that person is—the one we met in the hot spring!”

Pfft.

Ivaris had been solid; Yekase was nodding along. Then that line dropped like a fish out of bucket. “No! That woman was clearly Jixia. We couldn’t recognize her because she carries a Reverse Meme herself!”

Ivaris blinked, lost at sea. “Who’s Jixia?”

“…Huh?”

“I don’t know this onee-san you know.”

“No, Jixia is…”

Huaxia’s oldest Longlifer, strolling into a foreign inn like a breeze in lavender.

“You… on the Causal Horizon, you can’t see me going to that library?”

More fantastical than Yekase had imagined.

“What library? The one in Machinist City?”

“Yeah—no, wait. I found The Book of the Light-Car there. Then I crossed into a grand library built inside a Cosmic Bubble. I even stayed a night…”

Ivaris gave her a look like a wrench thrown into gears. “That day, I watched you the whole time. Didn’t you sleep all night in the empty slot on the bottom shelf?”

……

……

So Yekase finally understood: Jixia had dragged the Lucky Girl’s soul alone into the Library of Alexandria for a quiet, soul-to-soul talk. The whole thing slid past the Causal Horizon’s record, becoming a pure dream.

Her reach surpassed Alicia Alicia’s “polish a concept,” climbing to Zhuangzi and the butterfly dreaming each other, moon mirrored on lake.

So back then, she likely exchanged words with Zhuangzi. Learning a trick or two wouldn’t be strange.

An unexpected haul of intel, like finding a pearl in tide foam.

As for the talisman, Ivaris’s first-half deduction was sound enough. Yekase decided to trust it—for now.

The Fujiwara clan aims to hide one person inside the inn. This person slips among talisman-stamped tourists, becoming a nonexistent empty placeholder. A takes him for B, B takes him for A. Everyone thinks they saw each other—never noticing it’s five people walking the square.

It smacks of a “delicate puzzle” the Japanese adore, strings tight, bells silent.

Yekase had read a detective joke: in a sealed mountain villa, someone dies. A, J, K cards scattered. Blood writes a 0 in the palm. The detective arrests the lone Japanese tourist—only a Japanese would play that set.

It sounded reasonable to Yekase. Now all they lacked was a corpse with an eerie flourish.

Faced with that calm-before-storm hush, she chose…

To bail.

Come on. Who stays in this inn? Last time on the Ailian Qingcheng, Dorothy had to beg her to guard the vehicle. Otherwise, she’d have been on the shore watching fireworks.

Play detective with a roomful of Sinister Organization family members, everyone with a record? If someone loves that job, let them have it.

As for Dewa, her robot girlfriend won’t let her get hurt. That’s fine.

Yekase laid out her plan to Ivaris.

“Yekase, Yekase, how can you be this degenerate! Did you forget our Japan plan?”

The scolding hit like thunder over rice fields.

Yekase’s thighs trembled. Had her “let someone die” vibe crossed Ivaris’s line? She came off the One Year War’s battlefield. No baptism by Sinister Organization. Her mind still holds that bright banner of human solidarity.

“Wh—what plan?”

“Tourism! A close look at Japan’s fantasy-flavored orthodox mysteries. It’s rare. Don’t you want to see how strong their antisocial killers are? No normal motive, don’t even know the victim. They craft timelines and theaters just because ‘it’s beautiful’—super perverts!”

“I don’t want to see!”

Why would anyone want to?

Dewa’s solo combat power is so bad Akano Souu could steal chickens around her. Don’t expect Jixia to act. If killing starts, blood will flood the hall. Yekase and Ivaris do have the capital to spectate, but… what’s the joy in that?

“Just watch with me,” Ivaris said, wrapping Yekase’s arm, chest soft as cotton candy clouds.

“I could witness all things on the Horizon. I chose to come back and watch with you. Okay?”

“…Can’t say no to you.”

Since she said that, fine.

They prepped a little. Dewa was probably still in blazing kindling mode. First, check Jixia’s situation. Is she still in this inn?

Yekase went to the front desk and asked the proprietress, Fujiwara Nozomi. She learned guest information is sealed. Unless you registered together, they won’t reveal room numbers, friend or not. The inn wants neutrality. They can only do that.

Is the real aim to make hiding “that person” convenient?

She couldn’t ask that. Yekase just smiled, a leaf floating, and returned.

“Okay. We’ve got an alibi. Time to switch players!”

As her words fell, her silver hair flowed backward like frost melting, returning to sleek black. Her aura shifted. In a plain yukata, she became a far-east girl you’d see everywhere.

She smoothed the yukata and sat straight on the tatami, kneeling like a crane by water. She lifted a steaming cup of barley tea she’d snagged from a passing server. One hand under, one hand at the rim. She bowed and offered it to Ivaris, gentle as dusk.

“How’s this? Limited event character [Yekase Hiroyo (Yukata ver.)]. Cute? Want a photo?”

“Perfect—as long as you don’t talk.”

“So spicy…”

Ivaris loved teasing Yekase’s cosplay kink, yet didn’t care for it in truth. She’d said she’d cosplay Yekase’s maid, but her acts had zero maid. Such a waste of the outfit.

Yekase pouted, a cat flicking its tail. “I’ll be right back.”

……

……

Ivaris waited in the room for half an hour. Yekase didn’t return.

A wrongness pricked her skin like cold needles. Did the “mechanism” of Japanese mystery fiction snag even Yekase, just because she said lines like “I won’t stay with the killer!” or “I’ll investigate alone!”?

She left the room. The corridor held clusters of tourists, murmurs like cicadas.

The number had swollen. And they were all talisman users, faces pasted from two templates. Male default, female default. The hallway looked like background extras from a bargain school anime.

“What happened?” Ivaris asked a bystander, wearing ignorance like a veil.

“A body… they found a body in the restaurant…!”

!!!

So it happened. A killing.

She ran to the restaurant, following signs like stepping-stones. She saw people loosely ringed around an empty floor patch by the food case. Tables and partitions blocked sightlines—perhaps by design. From the entrance, you couldn’t see the ground there.

“Killing! There’s been a killing!” “In a neutral zone, even!” “Whose kid is that?” Voices crashed like surf.

Ivaris squeezed in. Through the gaps, she saw the body’s face of silence—

Yekase.

Face down on the floor, like a bird fallen mid-flight. Several shots in her back. Breath gone to smoke. Blood soaked the yukata, spreading across wood, pooling into dark red sleep.

Her right hand clenched something by her side—a yogurt bar lifted from the food case. Her left arm stretched unnaturally over her head, one index finger pointing straight ahead.

Blinding blood tracked along that finger, a red thread drawn tight into the distance…