Touko's words went far beyond what Aoko had expected.
The reason Aoko Aozaki appeared in this year, 2001, in her past form was precisely because, if things were left alone, the entire world would be destroyed.
And now, her sister was suddenly saying that at some point in the future, the world had already been destroyed.
It was almost as if she were saying—
"Let me say this first. Even though you, Aoko, won't tell us the details of this Singularity, I can tell you that the destruction of the world I mentioned has nothing to do with this place."
Touko took off her glasses. In an instant, her voice changed, her tone turning cold, low, and almost masculine.
"After all, we're in the middle of dealing with the crisis facing human order itself, still in the process of uncovering the truth."
"Is that so…"
The tension in Aoko's body eased slightly.
Touko, however, smiled with clear interest at the reaction.
"Now I'm a little curious myself. If we leave this anomaly alone… what would happen to a world that's already been destroyed?"
"That really leaves me speechless," Alice said. "Are you planning to overwrite one destruction with another, Touko?"
Though she didn't sound especially invested, Alice still followed the implications of what Touko had revealed and found herself thinking it through.
If the world truly ended, what should she do as a survivor?
As a pure-blooded witch, Alice possessed an abnormal form of immortality. Unless certain conditions were met, she wouldn't disappear even if the planet itself died.
But on a planet where everything had vanished—where even Aoko and that person were gone…
"That's hard to say. I'm just throwing out a hypothetical," Touko said with a cold laugh. "Only the humans of that era can interfere with the Quantum Time-Lock and decide which future comes next. If the humans living in this era make a choice, wouldn't it be interesting to see whether the subsequent future disappears and gets reconstructed?"
"What part of using humanity's destruction as an experiment is supposed to be interesting?" Aoko asked, her eyes still closed.
Touko put her glasses back on. Her voice softened, returning to its usual gentle cadence, carrying the composed intellect of a mature woman.
"There's nothing interesting about it. I'm just explaining the situation to you."
She truly wasn't the type to worry about humanity's future.
Someone who wasn't even particularly attached to her own existence had no reason to obsess over the fate of humanity as a whole.
Still, when the moment actually arrived—when someone important reached out and asked whether she would fight alongside them to save the world—she found herself inexplicably stirred, her blood heating up.
Of course, Touko suspected that her sudden enthusiasm might be due to something else entirely.
"I see."
Aoko couldn't quite calm down, but there was nothing she could do about it.
Only those present at the time could deal with matters of that moment.
And if it was something even further in the future, all she could do was trust the unreliable older sister standing in front of her.
"But putting that aside, there's something I want to confirm with Alice Kuonji," Touko said, turning her gaze toward her.
"If this is about money, forget it. I won't lend you any," Alice replied flatly.
Touko let out a helpless, wry laugh.
"…It's not about money. What I want to ask is related to the guests staying here."
"Huh?" Aoko blinked in confusion.
"Leaving everyone else aside, did the Shiomi family—the ones who brought three girls with them—also come here to participate in the exorcism competition?" Touko asked.
Alice lowered her eyes and thought for a moment.
"As far as I remember, they were just here on vacation. But after hearing about the competition and realizing who I was, that man said exorcism would be good training for an inexperienced Magus."
"So they weren't involved at first, but since they happened to run into it, they decided to join in?"
Touko considered that for a moment.
It really did sound like Shiomi.
He didn't go looking for trouble, but he wasn't afraid of it either.
Judging from how he had raised Sakura and Caren in Chaldea, he had genuinely nurtured both girls into independent Magus without ever losing his basic human decency.
You could see just how much thought he put into things from that alone.
"Wait—this doesn't add up, does it?" Aoko realized there was a detail that wouldn't click into place. "Your… thing, big sis, isn't it from the future too, like you? Then what Alice just said—"
"So you noticed," Touko said with a smile. "Tenkei and his wife, who originally belonged to this era and came here on a family trip, have both vanished. According to the owner, they disappeared three days ago."
In other words, while investigating this Singularity, the Chaldea group also had to recover the missing Shiomi and Morgan.
After all, if those two from 2001 simply vanished, there was no way to predict how the Human Order Foundation Value would treat that outcome once the Singularity was resolved, or what kind of impact it would have on the present-day Shiomi and Morgan. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say their survival could be at stake.
"Is that so…"
Aoko kept one eye closed, like she was trying to work something out, but before she could organize her thoughts, she ran straight into a dead end.
"Anyway, if you find out anything else later, you can tell me, if you feel like it," Touko said with a casual wave. "If you don't, then go tell them directly."
"I will," Alice said, and turned away first.
They had only run into each other by chance on the way down to the hot springs. Alice didn't really trust Touko, so she'd come over with Aoko to "test the waters."
Aoko hurried after Alice. She'd wanted to complain to her older sister to her face about something, but she'd lost the chance.
Watching them leave, Touko pushed herself off the vending machine and considered going back to Shiomi to get some money for cigarettes—
Only for Shiomi to appear behind her, as naturally as a petal settling onto a tatami mat.
"Are you always that tense with each other?" Shiomi asked, worried.
"Well, we did fight back then, and we were both trying to kill each other. And I don't think we're exactly at each other's throats. We're just not that close—"
She answered without thinking, then paused. A beat later, her face brightened into an easy, delighted smile.
"When did you get here? I didn't sense your presence at all."
"Just a bit of Land of Shadows stealth," Shiomi said. "It's nothing compared to a proper assassin. I came downstairs to look for you, saw the two of you here, and stayed nearby to watch. If you started fighting, I was going to pull you into my Reality Marble so you wouldn't wreck the inn."
"If it came to that, I wouldn't be caught unprepared," Touko said with a laugh, shaking her head. "By the way, do you have any money on you?"
"I knew it." Shiomi held out his hand. In his palm were several five-hundred-yen coins. "Here."
Touko reached out to take them. The moment her fingers closed around the coins, Shiomi wrapped an arm around her waist and kissed her deeply.
"What was that for all of a sudden?"
"Because once you smoke, the kisses start tasting like tobacco. I didn't want to waste the chance."
"So you don't like the smell of smoke on me?"
"No. It's just… it feels completely different when it's there and when it isn't."
"You're pretty particular."
Touko kissed him back.
With her free hand, she fed the coins into the vending machine, and the cigarettes dropped into the dispenser slot.
...
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