“Ah! Sis!”

Haru clung to my back as though her life depended on it, letting out a shrill scream. Even so, I never slowed, sprinting headlong toward the Academy. The cold wind clawed at my ears alongside the faint thud of my heartbeat.

It felt as though the world itself was whispering, asking why I was in such a hurry. In answer, I kicked a stone from the ground with enough force to shatter the window before me. Then, without a moment’s hesitation, I hurled myself through the broken gap.

Soon, a familiar stench bored into my nostrils. Even through the gas mask, the smell persisted—perhaps because what I sensed was not the reality before me but the terrible nostalgia of the past. Pain and loneliness belonging to neither human nor Elf. And amid it all, Roselia’s face surging forth. I gripped Haru’s hand tightly to shake off every last trace of it.

She couldn’t have understood the complicated feelings behind that grip, but Haru held my hand firmly in return. That moment, however, didn’t last long. Her small hand soon slipped from my palm and reached for the scabbard hanging at her waist.

“Sis!”

“…!”

“You… what the fuck are you bastards doing again!”

I turned to find a man hacking up a cough, pointing our way. In the chaos where friend and foe were impossible to distinguish, the gas mask clinging to his face must have served as a clear enough marker. The wariness in his eyes curdled into hostility, and a fist rose behind bloodshot eyes.

Once again, memories of the past seeped through my entire body with a chilling sensation. Those fragile, flimsy bodies crumbling beneath my hands and feet. The realization that beings with the same sentience as me possessed durability lesser than ants spread from shock into pure terror.

But the hardest part was always the first time. Before I even registered it, my foot had lashed out and caught the man square in the jaw.

“Ugh…!”

With the sickening sensation of bone breaking, the man’s head snapped at a right angle and he crumpled to the floor. I listened closely, worried he might be dead, and was relieved to hear shallow breathing. Yet the sight of his crumpled form contradicted every sense, floating the word “death” to the surface of my mind.

As I stood frozen in shock, Haru tapped my shoulder cautiously. She gripped her sword tightly and let out a tense breath.

“Um, Sis. Wasn’t there someone here? I think I heard a voice.”

“…No. There was no one.”

“Really? Maybe I misheard. Fighting in a wide open space like this is quite uncomfortable, you know. I know you’re fast, but from now on, if you could at least stay behind me…”

“Let’s go, Haru. We don’t have time.”

“What? Wait a minute…!”

Unconfessed secrets hung like sandbags around my ankles. That was why I had no choice but to ignore Haru’s earnest plea for now. I exhaled long and deep, then shot forward like an arrow.

The wind that had been still rushed at both my cheeks, howling cold. The malice that peeled back my eyelids as if demanding I clearly witness the scene of violence spread before me was cruel beyond resentment. I even entertained the absurd fantasy that I wished I too had gone blind like Haru.

But there was no folding away the spectacle already unfurled. Even amid the chaos, people continued to hate one another without end. They shoved the backs of those fleeing alongside them and tore at each other’s hair, fighting over better hiding spots. It was an ignorance that couldn’t be explained by mere selfishness.

“Why are they acting like that?”

“What do you mean? Why they’re running?”

“…”

“Well, they probably got scared watching that machine woman tear someone apart. Sounded brutal just hearing it. Works out for us, though. Nobody’s coming at us.”

Whether she truly couldn’t see and therefore didn’t know, or was deliberately ignoring it for my sake, I couldn’t tell—but Haru shrugged nonchalantly. Then she craned her neck in every direction, continuing to speak.

“Anyway, where are we supposed to find this Roselia woman? I can’t smell well through this gas mask. Plus, I don’t really know her.”

“Listen for a woman’s breathing. And look for someone who’s abnormally calm. If it’s Roselia, she’d be keeping her composure somehow, even in this situation.”

“Good grief. A woman’s breathing? Even I can’t distinguish something like that.”

“Then just trust me and follow. Keep your senses open.”

Under normal circumstances, she would have bombarded me with questions, but this time Haru kept her mouth shut. She must have noticed that something about me had changed.

I knew it myself. But I couldn’t help changing. The name Roselia held a deeply personal significance for me, just as it did for Lope.

…

How would I feel when I met her again? I would certainly feel the exact opposite of what I’d felt when I reunited with Lope. And that feeling would by no means be positive.

It isn’t that one must inevitably love those they cannot hate—but those they cannot love, they are bound to resent.

Of course, this was no time to indulge such feelings. As Lope had said, we needed Roselia to reach the mainland.

The moment that thought crossed my mind, my past self—swallowed by shadows—raised her head pitifully. I buried that lonely girl deep in my chest, if only for a moment.

But after running through the Academy for quite some time, Roselia was nowhere to be seen. Hallways, classrooms, even the restrooms. I pushed my senses to the point of piercing through the gas mask, but her scent never reached me.

Could she have hidden in the Student Council Room, as Lena had suggested earlier? But I couldn’t imagine her taking such an obvious course of action. The Roselia I knew would have twisted her thinking at least once. She had always opened the floodgates of torment that way whenever she spoke to me.

“Then where on earth…”

The thoughts spinning in my head finally leaked past my lips. Then Haru, who had only just found her footing and caught her breath, offered a new perspective.

“Sis. What if she’s not here?”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Come to think of it, she might not even be in this building to begin with. Everyone seems to have panicked from the gas and crowded inside, but the back door isn’t blocked or anything—there’s no reason she’d have to stay here. If she thought calmly like you said, she might have fled to an entirely different building.”

“Then the possibility of her not being on the Academy grounds at all… is unlikely. Roselia needs Lope too.”

“Right. So I was thinking… maybe she went to the Annex. It’s fairly close to here. There’s no one there. And most importantly, there are plenty of places to hide. I know that better than anyone.”

“Hmm…”

It was a fairly convincing argument. Heading somewhere other than this building—where everyone’s attention was concentrated—would be far better for hiding. And not to belittle Haru, but it was exactly the kind of shallow trick Roselia would have thought brilliantly clever.

“Alright. Let’s head that way.”

“Okay. Then let’s head out slowly now. My legs are getting wobbly and I’m getting motion sick…”

“Don’t worry. We’re going out through the window.”

“What? But we’re on the third floor…!”

There was no time. I grabbed Haru and hurled us both through the shattered window. Though I lacked the strength to support her entire weight, it wasn’t particularly difficult with the right use of momentum and body balance. All I needed to do was cover her mouth so she wouldn’t scream.

“Mmph…!!!”

“…”

Window sill, the trunk of a tree standing close to the building, the midway wall of the second-floor staircase, and finally the base of the tree—I touched down on each in sequence and reached the ground, where Haru dry-heaved, her whole body twisting. Then, her head apparently spinning, she opened her mouth with a thoroughly tangled tongue.

“Urgh… Sis… you’re definitely not human…”

“I’ll explain later.”

“And somehow your way of talking is starting to sound like Senior’s. Is it just my imagination… actually, you’re not really Saya, are you?”

Misunderstanding begat yet another misunderstanding. It seemed I would have a lot of explaining to do once today was over. Still, thanks to Haru, I managed to find a small margin to smile.

Of course, that feeling didn’t last long. As I headed toward the back gate and focused my hearing and sense of smell, the calm I’d recovered began to crumble. Scents I didn’t want to catch. Sounds I didn’t want to hear tangled together in an instant, slowly corroding my senses.

In the end, sensitivity was just another curse. Even so, as I maintained my concentration to the end, a map woven from smells began to take shape. At first, countless lines were drawn across it, but once I erased the scents of the unfamiliar and the non-human, not much remained. And if I added the Annex as a factor…

…

“…”

Just then, a familiar scent caught my nose. It was unmistakably the scent of a girl I knew, and her footsteps were heading toward the Annex. But she wasn’t Roselia. From her rose the sickly, blood-tinged scent of corruption—a fragrance that could never have emanated from Roselia.

And more importantly, she was still nearby. When I turned my head toward the source of the scent, a girl with red hair swaying pitifully in the distance came into view.

It was Lena. Even as she stumbled through the smoke, she was hurrying toward the Annex.

“Haa… haa…”

“…”

“Haa… uhh…”

“…Huh. That’s that woman’s voice.”

Haru must have sensed her presence too, for she muttered in a frigid voice. I didn’t harbor particularly fond feelings toward Lena either, but Haru seemed to carry something close to malice.

Still, her presence lent weight to the hypothesis that Roselia was in the Annex. After all, Lena was the one among us who had been with her most recently, so the possibility that the two had reached some kind of agreement couldn’t be ruled out. Leaning on that flimsy conjecture, I spoke slowly.

“You’re right, Haru. It’s Lena. She’s heading toward the Annex.”

“That woman heading that way, huh. Senior didn’t say anything specific about it, but that woman’s been plenty suspicious.”

“So I think it’d be fine to follow her. What do you think?”

“I agree.”

“Alright. Let’s go.”

Buoyed by her affirmative answer, I gained a measure of conviction and rose to my feet. I intended to sprint once more. As Lope had said, time was running short, and now that I was about to meet Roselia, urgency gripped my heart.

But right then, Haru stopped me in my tracks. She must have been frightened at the prospect of running again.

“Sis, wait a minute. Stop.”

“I won’t go too fast. Don’t worry.”

“No. That’s not it.”

But Haru shook her head at my words. Then, in a sudden, low voice, she whispered.

“I hear someone following us right now. Is it just my imagination?”

“…”

In that instant, a scent I hadn’t registered before drifted in. It was the trace of someone I had momentarily dismissed because I was too focused on Roselia’s scent. Just as Haru said, it was coming from directly behind us.

No. Was it that I hadn’t noticed, or had the opponent concealed themselves? No matter how scattered my concentration, I couldn’t believe I’d missed this. Indeed, within that stranger’s scent, there was no trace of human flesh—only the sharp, metallic smell of iron.

Sweat ran down my spine in an instant. Haru, oblivious to that fact, was already reaching for her sword. Seeing that, I urgently stopped her.

“Haru. Stop…!”

“…!”

But there was no need for me to say so. And not because Haru had noticed in time and sheathed her blade.

It was because the opponent’s blade had reached our throats far faster.

“…”

The cold-edged blade pressed firmly against Haru’s slender nape. It was a calm and merciless technique, devoid of any trace of humanity. Hoping that the absence of humanity was limited only to the swordsmanship, I addressed the opponent.

“We have no intention of fighting you.”

“…”

“So please lower your weapon.”

“…”

The opponent didn’t answer immediately. They clearly needed time to think. But in this place, no one had the luxury of sufficient time, so the response came before long.

“…It seems I’ve finally met someone worth talking to.”

He delivered those words in a voice as cold as his swordsmanship, then sheathed his blade. Only then did I turn to look at the opponent’s face.

Standing there was not the bumbling student I’d always known, but a sharp-edged man forged in the crucible of time. His solid build and ruthless eyes brought to mind Ms. Rebecca, whose entire body was sheathed in metal. He regarded us both with measured eyes, then revealed his identity in the same tone as before.

“I am Engermier, butler of the Anbert ducal family. Where is Lady Roselia?”