I was talking to Kouta, who was occasionallystaring off into the distance, amidst the hustle and bustle of the pre-homeroomcla.s.sroom.

It was June 19th. Two weeks had pa.s.sed sinceMasato Yahara"s body had been found.

The murder, king of all scandals, sent ripplesthroughout the school. But contrary to my expectations, the ripples fadedwithin a week. The reason was that Yahara had always been something of anuntouchable delinquent, avoided by his schoolmates due to being perceived as anabnormal individual. Thus the event was simply perceived as an "abnormalindividual" becoming involved in "abnormal incident," allowing interest in theentire affair to quickly fade. It was like a gangster getting killed;insufficient to pique the interest of the public.

The school had already returned to its dailyroutine, everything working normally.

But there was one exception.

The fact that that exception was Kouta wentwithout saying.

Kouta, Yahara"s sole friend, was dragging outhis death.

"Looks like they still haven"t caught thekiller, huh."

It would be too sad for Kouta if he didn"tfeel that I least I felt sentimental towards Yahara"s death.

"Yeah. They still haven"t been caught."

But given Kouta"s abilities, he likelyrealized that my sentimentality was simply a pretense. But he nodded all thesame.

...To be quite honest, I couldn"t muster anysadness at Yahara"s death. Although I felt pity for him, that was the extent ofit. And I suspected most others would feel much the same way I did. Even hisparents didn"t look particularly sad. To the contrary, they seemed rather gladthat a nuisance had disappeared from their lives. Every way you looked, peoplewere simply feigning sadness, and most were doing a dozen times worse of a jobthan I was.

It seemed this fact came as a shock to Kouta.He was trying not to let it show, but... actually, knowing Kouta, he may nothave realized it himself.

"Kouta..."

"...hm?"

Even his responses were delayed. He had beenlike this a lot recently.

"Well, if you"re able to... I"d like you totry to stop thinking about Yahara.

"Why?"

"It might be dangerous."

Kouta"s eyes widened in puzzlement.

I wasn"t confident. But it looked to me likeKouta"s state was changing by moment to moment. And Yahara was no doubt thecause of that.

The dead can"t use magic.

But a person"s magic is most powerful in themoments before their death. In order to leave behind traces of themselveswithin another, they can use "agglutination" magic. People put down theirdefenses when faced with the dying. No matter how much of a sinner that personwas, people inevitably forgive them, stop resisting them, and accept theirinfluence. Depending on who their partner is, the living may evenunconditionally take on the will of the dead and agglutinate. It"s notdissimilar to succeeding the will of the departed.

And Yahara clearly left something in Kouta. IfKouta were a normal person, even if he agglutinated he would only extract theparts that were useful to him, so he himself wouldn"t change. But this wasKouta we were talking about. The pinnacle of indifference, not only would henot notice changes within himself, he wouldn"t even care whether they were forgood or for evil.

So if he kept thinking about Yahara, he was indanger of agglutinating.

He was showing symptoms already.

"Recently, my magic hasn"t been as potent."

Kouta wasn"t supposed to have an attribute,but he was beginning to take someone else"s on. He was drifting away from mine.As for whose attribute he was taking on, it should go without saying — MasatoYahara"s. If things continued on this way, at worst Kouta might end up becominga powerful, evil magus like Yahara was.

"Everyone, note that the bell has rung. Iwould appreciate it if you took your seats."

At the same time as the bell rang, their cla.s.srepresentative"s voice called out. Their cla.s.s"s distinctive routine.

Thinking it rather unpleasant as I looked atsaid representative, I somehow felt a sense of displeasure from him when oureyes crossed. Was he trying to tell my to get out of his cla.s.sroom?

"...I have to get going. Let"s give it ourbest this week, okay?"

"Yeah."

On account of Yahara"s incident, we hadpostponed his home visit until this week. I had until then to think of a way toresolve this situation. I shouldn"t be in so much of a hurry. My foe waspowerful, but he was also dead. Even if this situation continued, my foecouldn"t draw any more magic.

"See you later, then. Bye bye!"

Although my hand was trembling, I smiled assweetly as possible. A smile has the power to forcibly bind a person. That"swhy I made sure to never forget to smile.

My bedroom. It was both my territory andwithin a boundary. It was the place where my magic was amplified the most. Inthere, there should be no shortage of ways to dispel Yahara"s magic.

After I returned to my cla.s.sroom, I scowled asif I were glaring at a blackboard and thought about Kouta.

I had to rea.n.a.lyze the individual named KoutaHiiragi.

Kouta had low magic resistance. He took magicmagic in without resisting in. The reason for that lay in his efforts to avoidpossessing an attribute of his own. His entire life was makeshift. Changing hisattribute from moment to moment, he spent his days noncommittally. There wereplenty of people who lived like that. Heck, I had been that way once too.

But most people wouldn"t go so far as toforget their own attribute. Even if they changed themselves on the outside tomatch their partner, they would be loath to accept them inside their veryattribute.

But Kouta had no such reaction. He would takepeople in not just superficially but to the bottom of his heart.

What I was most concerned about was thatattribute taking hold after being accepted so.

It was practically a miracle that an attributehadn"t taken hold in him yet. As proof of that, he had already startedbecoming stained in mine.

Attributes are largely determined by one"sfamily environment. When you"re young, your family helps form the basis foryour attribute. Whether you try to rebel against your parents or ingratiateyourself with them, through that process your attribute takes its form.

But for whatever reason, Kouta never created abaseline personality. He wasn"t influenced by his family.

As for the reason no attribute had taken holdin him yet, it was likely due to the fact that he had never had anyparticularly deep relationships outside his family either. Given hisdisposition, despite his ability to make friends he was probably unable to makeclose friends or a girlfriend. In order to form deep relationships, people haveto lay themselves bare. But Kouta had nothing to lay bare. He was empty.He had no way of forming such relationships. Although he didn"t realize ithimself, he had a habit of keeping others at an arm"s length so as to avoidforming such deep relationships.

That was my hypothesis.

So with that to work off of, I contemplatedhow to save him from Yahara"s clutches.

I had to first discern how exactly he hadchanged. But understanding that, I could uncover the properties he didn"t havenaturally, correct them, and bring him back to normal. As long as I could dothat, everything would be fine.

I was left with a nagging sense of discomfort.

But what specifically made me uncomfortable?

In order to collect my thoughts, I focused myvision on the tip of my mechanical pencil. You often saw people in manga andsuch close their eyes to focus, but my approach was the opposite. I would openmy eyes wide and focus on a single point. It was even better if that point wassomething with traces of my magic in it. My mechanical pencil, which I usedevery day, fit that definition to a T. I stared at the tip for so long it gotburned into my retinas. With that as my signal, my thoughts sharpened.

But right in the middle of all this, someonepoked my back several times, breaking my concentration.

"C"mon, Sayuri! What do you want?"

Whispering so the teacher wouldn"t hear me, Iturned to glare at the culprit, Sayuri.

Her dyed-brown hair wash in a straight perm.Her loose sweater intentionally concealed her hands. And wearing a short skirtthat accentuated her universally-esteemed legs was my cla.s.smate Sayuri Taneoka.Her willful, almond-shaped eyes shone with self-esteem and strong intent. Fromthe first day of school I realized that she would be the center of attention incla.s.s, so I make sure to curry favor with her.

Sayuri"s personality was strict, which I wasfond of. And she wasn"t the type to put others down. So even though I calledmyself a magus, we still got along quite well.

"You haven"t taken any notes in forever.You"ve got something on your mind, right?"

She went on, grinning for some reason.

"It"s about a guy, right?"

...Well, she wasn"t wrong.

"Ooh, looks like I nailed it. If that"s thecase, did Makino confess to you?"

"...Makino?"

That wasn"t the name that was on my mind.

"Oh, that"s not it? It got out that he had thehots for you, so I figured he must have finally confessed."

Hearing this, I glanced at Makino"s seat. Hehappened to be glancing at me as well, and as our eyes met I returned hissmile.

Makino did act over-familiar at times, but...was that really the case?

"Besides, doesn"t everyone already know thatI"m going out with Kouta?"

"Yeah, but isn"t that, like, you know? Aren"tyou two one of those fake couple-type deals? You know, where you go out withsome random guy to keep the rest of the guys away? You know he doesn"t suityou, he"s like a background character or something."

While that wasn"t true, the fact that weweren"t a normal couple was. But getting into the details would be messy, so Ijust laughed ambiguously.

Although she seemed to want to drag theconversation out and began poking me again, I simply ignored her.

Good grief, Sayuri... or rather, allhigh-school-age girls seemed to love talking about romance. Perhaps that was asimple form of magic.

Kouta.

Kouta. Kouta.

I want to protect him. No matter what.

At long last, it was finally lunch break.

We sat in the courtyard as always, each eatingour own sandwiches. After my initial failure with the homemade lunches, Idecided that I would try again once I had practiced a little more. Granted, Ihad only practiced once since then, but... sooner or later!

With Yahara"s glare no longer present, I was alittle concerned that Yamazaki or whatever his name was would come ha.s.sle usagain, but in the two weeks since the incident had come to light he hadn"tshown up once.

I had decided that during this lunch period, Iwould take a different approach from this morning. In order to root out thecause of my discomfort, I wanted to see Kouta in as flat a condition aspossible. To do that, I had to hide my concern and act just as bubbly asalways. Given Kouta"s disposition, no matter how down he was over Yahara"sdeath, he would probably match my behavior and interact with me just as healways did.

Just as I expected, Kouta was talkingperfectly normally. As we conversed, we laughed together, and I wouldoccasionally unilaterally touch hom on the back or shoulder.

"So in other words, you really arecollecting lizard tails and hanging out with black cats, aren"t you, Miki?"

As far as Kouta was concerned, thisconversation didn"t particularly have any deeper meaning.

"I don"t, I"m telling you. I try to avoidfollowing any formal conventions or anything. Although, it is true that certainrituals can strengthen magic"s power."

"Are you saying that there"s things youwouldn"t do for the sake of magic?"

I was at a loss for words.

At my abrupt change, Kouta looked at me withworry on his face.

"Yup. After all, there are some things that ifyou go too far with, you become unable to go back."

...That"s right. Ever since "that mistake," Ihad been suppressing my magic. Compared to how I was back then, I had much morecommon sense and much less power.

Is Kou even theone you"re really tryin" to protect? ...Heh, you can"t even refute it. Whatyou"re tryin" to protect by force-staining Kou"s a.s.s Is your flimsy-a.s.s,brittle little closed world.

I suddenly recalledthe words Masato Yahara spit at me.

I had no retort forhim. After all, I couldn"t proudly puff up my chest and proclaim it to befalse.

Even now, I wasn"tcertain that staining Kouta with my magic was the right thing to do.

"What do you mean by"unable to go back"?"

After I had gonesilent, Kouta asked me a question as a follow-up.

So with all myeffort, I put on a smile.

"Well... you know howintegrating into everyday society is pretty tough, right? You know that it"snot something that just anyone can do, right?"

"You"re right. Mysister refuses to go to school, and a couple of my relatives are shut-ins, sowhat you"re saying kind of resonates."

"I see." You beingthe way you are makes me worried for your sister as well, but I"ll set thatissue aside for now. "The more a person holes themselves up in their closedworld, the more powerful their magic becomes. So if you"re completelycompatible with normal society, you can"t use it. But if you entrust everythingto magic, your closed world becomes all-encompa.s.sing. If that happens, thepeople around you will see you as a weirdo or a freak."

"LikeMatsumi-senpai?"

"...Ahh, maybe."

I had heard aboutRiriko Matsumi from Kouta. Although the scanning she used surpa.s.sed my interpersonal magic, I knew how to explain parts of it.

Shefixed her eyes in place and let out a strange voice that sounded like a machinenoise. It was self-hypnosis that let her raise her powers of concentration tothe extreme. A ritual designed to open her magical circuits. Normally toaccomplish that you"d have to draw a magic square, mutilate yourself, or dosome other form of large-scale preparation, but it seemed she didn"t need to.This was probably because she believed in her magic implicitly.

RirikoMatsumi had isolated herself from society.

Acommonplace worldview leads to relatively weak magic. Furthermore, it lacksappeal. Most people recognize that they"re going to die without accomplishinganything or leaving behind and notable traces. Because it"s so unappealing,some people want to discard it. There"s plenty of types of dubious, half-bakedkinds magic, like cults, that try to quietly drive away commonplace worldviews.

RirikoMatsumi is a person who discarded her commonplace worldview.

"Miki,do you know anyone who became unable to go back?"

I did.

I knewof someone other than Ririko Matsumi.

And theperson who drove her to that point was none other than myself.

"Nope.I just know this all in the abstract."

I lied.

Ididn"t have faith in myself to explain it right now.

"Huh."

Koutacasually saw through my lie. He had to have seen through it. But because he wasKouta, he didn"t follow up on it.

Andyet—

Discomfort.

Thediscomfort I had been looking for was right here.

"Miki,is something wrong?"

Koutagazed at me worriedly. He was staring at me. It was like he was trying topeer into me.

That"sit. Those eyes. Kouta"s eyes weren"t like that before. Kouta was a.n.a.lyzingmy responses.

Koutaexcelled at understanding others. But he never cared about their motives. Hesimply understood things as they were. It was precisely because he didn"t carethat he didn"t have an attribute.

"Miki?What"s going on? Is it something I [1]did?"

I knew.A man whose eyes looked like that.

A manwho called himself "I" like that.

MasatoYahara.

Ilightly touched the red hair band, which appeared completely ordinary, that waskeeping up my hair. It was an inexpensive hair band, the kind you could buyanywhere. But because it held up my hair, the place in my body most denselypacked with magic, almost every day, it had gradually changed into somethingspecial. Perhaps if the right person looked at it, it would appear to gloworange.

I had ameans to release him from the curse. For Kouta"s sake, I resolved to use thishair band in the most effective way possible.

But,why?

Eventhough I was doing it for Kouta"s sake, it felt like I was betraying him.