"Are you sure you want to talk about these things here?"
Facing Yukino's sudden questioning, Kaguya didn't respond: "I think you shouldn't have forgotten what kind of power Hikage-kun has. He might be completely able to perceive the words you just said right now."
On the girls' side, their current understanding of Hikage was that under the power of fate, all actions aimed at Hikage would be entangled by the power of calamity. As long as there was even a trace of an intention put into action, one would immediately suffer the backlash of bad luck.
Perhaps Yukino hadn't seen these scenes with her own eyes, and her impression of Hikage's ability only existed in the chat group discussions.
But Kaguya had seen it with her own eyes, and more than once.
There was no need to mention the time in the Metaverse.
What left a deeper impression on her was a few days ago, when some unknown forces sent people to assassinate Hikage while he was shooting a video at night.
At that time, Hikage was going to a school that had recently spawned a high-grade Cursed Spirit and caused an extremely gruesome serial murder case. The school was still cordoned off by the police. She happened to go over and help a little, and incidentally filmed that video with Hikage.
Then she ran into a group of bounty hunters who wanted to kill Hikage for a high bounty.
Those guys obviously knew that Hikage's tricky degree was no worse than Satoru's back then. Therefore, they had prepared a lot of things for this assassination.
There were special-grade Cursed Objects and enough explosives to blow up a building. Even considering that Hikage had the ability of spatial teleportation, they specially set up a large barrier that could temporarily lock down space and temporarily suppress the supernatural power in the air.
From the subsequent investigation by Jujutsu High, there were traces of at least three or four supernatural factions mixed in.
These factions naturally didn't want a new Satoru to appear in the jujutsu world, much less a super powerhouse who could potentially surpass Satoru.
Especially since Hikage superficially had no special background, unlike Satoru who had one of the Big Three Families of the jujutsu world as his backing to protect his path before he fully grew up.
However, even facing such assassination methods, Hikage took no measures throughout the entire process. He continued filming the video as if he hadn't noticed anything.
It was just that in private, Kaguya still received Hikage's reminder not to stray too far.
Kaguya actually wasn't very clear about the events that followed. It was only after everything ended, looking at the miserable state of those people, and following the people from Jujutsu High to re-process the scene, that she roughly knew what had happened to these people based on the traces left behind.
First, the Cursed Objects inexplicably went out of control, not only affecting their ability to use their own powers but also attracting a bunch of low-to-mid grade Cursed Spirits. Then, those firearms misfired and injured themselves.
Wanting to deal with the low-to-mid grade Cursed Spirits before treating their injuries, they found that an accident suddenly occurred with the barrier they set up. It was supposed to suppress Hikage's power, but ultimately it all acted on them.
Those low-grade Cursed Spirits that could have originally been easily dealt with, for some unknown reason, suddenly managed to break through their defenses and easily inflict irresistible damage on them.
In between, there might have been some events that seemed purely accidental, but they were all pushing them step by step into the abyss.
In the end, out of the six people who came to assassinate Hikage, three had amputations, two lost their supernatural powers and turned back into ordinary people under the torment of the Cursed Spirits, and one was still lying in the hospital without waking up.
This was still Hikage subconsciously controlling the intensity of the calamity, otherwise not a single one of these people would have left that school alive.
It was also since then that Kaguya knew that no matter what she experienced, she could never stand against Hikage in this life.
The feeling of being tormented half to death by the other party's power without even seeing the person involved was enough to make one feel despair just thinking about it.
Even calculating the diary's early warning function, Kaguya had no doubt that if Hikage really wanted to toss them about, the Reading Value in their hands would probably only allow them to hold on for a little while longer.
In fact, it was also from that time that Kaguya's investigation into Hikage's "true identity" became more careful. She basically only probed further when she noticed that Hikage wasn't resistant to it.
She didn't expect this layer of relationship to be directly exposed by Yukino at this moment.
But thinking that the person who said this was Yukino, Kaguya didn't feel surprised.
Under the Mysterious Person's serialization, she had already read the Oregairu book long ago. Even if Yukino's own mentality had changed after obtaining the diary, her personality couldn't undergo overly extreme changes in a short period of time.
Judging from her action of still choosing to establish the Service Club early after knowing her original fate, the things she pursued had not changed.
She even became further resolved in her conviction to seek "something genuine" because she knew these stories in advance.
Thus, facing Kaguya's inquiry, Yukino just nodded: "Of course I know what kind of power he has, but I think he must have known about these things a long time ago."
"After all, he had completely gained Miss Mashiro's trust before he even met you."
"No, my statement might still be a bit inaccurate," Yukino said up to here, and shook her head again: "To be more accurate, it was Mashiro who joined our chat group last, after getting to know Miyauchi-kun."
Kaguya looked at Yukino in front of her. This girl who rarely spoke in the group, and whose emotions hardly fluctuated much even when the Mysterious Person posted the Oregairu novel in the diary, was indeed an exceptionally outstanding girl.
The relationship between Mashiro and Hikage was indeed a bit too close.
Even if Mashiro was ignorant of the ways of the world and lacked independent living skills, and Hikage also provided her with a lot of help in creation and life.
But this kind of thing wasn't something only Hikage alone could do.
Actually, Mashiro's daily life was mostly taken care of by her sister Mahiru, and at school by Hikage's sister Hikari.
Looking at it this way, the relationship between Mashiro and Hikage indeed felt a bit too good.
Even if there was also the fact that the Miyauchi family had once received help from the Breath Swordsman, and Hikage had the emotion of wanting to repay the favor, Mashiro still told Hikage too many things.
And Hikage also performed too excellently in these aspects.
An "ordinary person", able to save Honma Meiko, who died early in the original story, with perfect timing years ago, altering her fate.
In less than two months of contacting Hamon, he pushed this power to the peak, simply becoming a humanoid sun.
Including that Kusanagi-ryu ancient martial art, while they were still memorizing the names of the moves here, Hikage over there could already smoothly execute a full combo when facing a jujutsu sorcerer with Grade 1 strength.
Don't mind that Yukino just mentioned the phrase "an unseen background character in an ordinary light yuri work", which sounded like words that could completely rewrite a person's cognition.
But regarding this kind of thing, after seeing the Saekano novel, Hikage had probably already matched those characters with Utaha and Megumi. Later, as Mashiro continuously shared this intelligence with Hikage.
Even with many censored words from the diary in between, with Hikage's brain, he had probably analyzed the truth a long time ago.
However, after knowing these things, Hikage completely never mentioned them to them.
Including regarding that "Mysterious Person" from another world, after that brief wave of confrontation, and after the Mysterious Person claimed to have suffered a loss and ran away, there was no further follow-up.
Then came the time last month when they obtained supernatural abilities.
During that wave of Q&A, although they still didn't know the identity of the Mysterious Person, one thing could be confirmed.
After all, since the Mysterious Person claimed to have left Tokyo, why could those who filled in Tokyo for the second address receive an extra small reward?
Obviously, the Mysterious Person lied about this matter.
And since the Mysterious Person could appear in two places at the same time, that meant the Mysterious Person should have an ability similar to cloning. While going to Morioh Town, his other clone remained in Tokyo.
As for why a "clone" would remain in Tokyo?
Was it a smokescreen?
Or an ulterior motive?
In short, with so many things pieced together, it was indeed easy to make people suspect Hikage's true identity.
"So, after I obtained the Byakugan ability, I've always suspected whether Miyauchi-kun could be the Mysterious Person. At least for now, I feel there is no one more suspicious than Miyauchi-kun," Yukino frankly finished this analysis, and then looked at her own body, which had absolutely no abnormality.
Including the diary, which hadn't sent any danger warnings.
Hikage's calamity power didn't act on them.
"It seems he really doesn't care about us discussing these things. Sure enough, finding the other party's flaws isn't that easy," Yukino shook her head slightly.
Her tone seemed to carry a trace of subtle regret.
If Hikage's side really applied that bad luck to them because of their discussion, it would at least mean that Hikage cared about the things they just said.
But the other party's current reaction seemed to indicate that Hikage was open-hearted and didn't care about these things at all.
"Hikage-kun is just like this, he seems to be full of flaws all over, but if you really want to catch his weakness, it's not that easy," Kaguya gently shook her head.
But she also reached out her hand towards Yukino: "However, as the first person in our chat group besides me to have this thought, perhaps we can try to cooperate."
Yukino didn't shake hands with Kaguya immediately: "I am only interested in the truth. I don't have anything I need to obtain from the Mysterious Person."
"Even if I really met the Mysterious Person, I just simply want to say thank you to him, thanking him for letting me step onto this completely new path today. That's all."
Kaguya shrugged lightly.
"I'm not as open-minded as you, but I indeed also need to thank him. After all, the 'me' in my story, to be honest, really makes one very unwilling to admit that that person is myself."
A smile appeared on Yukino's face.
In her story, although her own weakness was exposed in the middle, she at least obtained a fairly satisfactory result in that story, and the process was also worth reminiscing about.
In comparison, Kaguya's story was indeed somewhat hard to evaluate.
But considering that Kaguya also had an idol junior in the group whose brainwaves were equally peculiar, it seemed less surprising.
"At least your current change is already the biggest among us," Yukino looked at Kaguya.
Compared to each other, the Yukinoshita family was still too insignificant against the Shinomiya family.
So currently she could only continue to stay at school, using her own way to change the stories around her, while Kaguya was already able to utilize the background of the Shinomiya zaibatsu to start recruiting and building her own faction in the Inner World.
"After all, I want to truly control my own destiny, and according to what the Mysterious Person wrote, our world's future will probably only become more and more chaotic. That's why I need to gain power even faster, so I will have the qualifications to choose what I want to do when that time comes," Kaguya's tone was very firm.
Listening to Kaguya's speech, and looking at the hand she still extended in front of her.
Yukino finally reached out her hand and grasped it.
"Although I still have no thoughts of cooperating to find out the Mysterious Person's identity, if you need my help, I'm still willing to assist."
Seeing Yukino hold her hand, Kaguya nodded as a matter of course.
"Your ability can play a big role. But for more detailed matters, let's talk privately later. After all, this is a 'surprise' specially prepared for Hikage-kun. I don't want to expose it prematurely."
Hearing this, a smile appeared on Yukino's face once again.
And in the cafe not far away, watching Yukino and Kaguya become an "alliance" to probe his true identity right in front of him in such a short time, Hikage couldn't help but sigh slightly.
It seemed that overly outstanding people would indeed be coveted by many.