Two hours, 30 minutes ago
Textbooks strain the table like a fault line. Nihon Shoki, Molecular chemistry. The works. A smile splits her face like an overeager pathologist with a cadaver before her. That, or a mad scientist who is seconds away from performing the world's first inverse lobotomy. Manic, yes; nigh threatening? Also yes. But at least she is smiling.
'The answer was C,'—she says—'once you understand it, the math is actually quite simple—'
***
POV: Hasaba Mimiko
The building, unbalanced as it now was, staggered like a drunken salaryman. As for the people within it? They were content to let the silence stretch. Each agonising second; each imaginary tick of the clock hand. Because each second was another second that she wasn't attacking. Tick, tick. There was no denying her intentions. There was no denying the rage that rode the bull of her cursed energy, that was filling their mouths with static, even as the girl's face remained entirely dispassionate. Tick, tick.
Mimiko pupils constricted as her eyes met Yuriko's from her place in the ceiling above them; she couldn't shake the dissonance. Mimiko had been angry before—of course she had been—she had a sibling; she had even caused other people to be angry before. Once again, she had a sibling. But not once had she ever seen someone whose eyes were so curious in spite of the apparent fury. 'Run? Run Where?' Mimiko felt her blood chill. Tick, tick.
She was waiting. Whether for an answer, or some other hidden agenda, Suzushina Yuriko was waiting. Like she was still figuring out what to do with them. Like she wasn't the one on the clock.
The girl in question sighed after a few more seconds went by. "That's it, isn't it? You're done?" She dropped from the ceiling, landing so softly, so gently, like the floor hadn't been turned into a chaotic slant mere moments ago. She started walking toward Mimiko just as easily. "Not a bad plan. I'd give you an E for execution, but that could easily become an A for alive if you tell me where you're keeping my friend."
Mimiko took a step back, which was harder than it sounded when the ground wasn't cooperating. "We—" she looked at her sister who was already preparing to raise her phone. Emboldened, she swallowed and reaffirmed her tactics. Time, keep playing for time. She wouldn't make good on her threats as long as they had Itadori. "We didn't attack you because we want revenge."
That got Suzushina to stop walking. Mimiko took that as a good sign and continued. Use that curiosity against her.
"You know our story. I was there when Suguru told you. We lived in the countryside. Our parents were sorcerers who gave everything they could to protect the village, until everything also meant their lives. We barely remember them, but what we do remember is how quickly the villagers turned on us when the curses started making it through. You have no idea how badly sorcerers are treated in a countryside full of jerks. Actually—" she watched Yuriko's fingers twitch. "No, I think you of all people actually might. Imagine that everyone around you behaved like your father."
"Do you want a hug, or something? I fail to see what any of this has to do with your final grade."
Mimiko became acutely aware of the sweat running down her brow. "Suguru...Geto was the first person who showed Nanako and I any kindness. We're not here for revenge—we're here because we need to save him, and we need your help. Yuriko. Help us save Suguru and we'll tell you where we're keeping Itadori."
For the next few seconds, the only sounds were the wind, were the inner creakings of the leaning structure. The only sounds were Nanako's laboured breathing as she held a free hand to her chest. For the next few seconds, Mimiko was allowed to think that her offer was being considered; that she had found a path that had not been determined by Kenjaku.
The seconds after that disabused her of such notions.
Tick, tick. She laughed. Suzushina Yuriko was laughing. Laughing so hard it might have been the closest thing to real damage that they had done to her since the 'fight' began. The white-haired girl had doubled over, was wiping a tear from her eye. God, she was even smiling. Mimiko missed the seeming indifference.
It took her a full minute to regain her composure, which meant that two minutes had been burned since Mimiko initiated her daring gambit. When Yuriko had finished laughing, she stood ramrod straight, with only a hint of that humour playing along her lips.
"I'm sorry," she said, in a tone that betrayed she was anything but. "Playing for sympathy, I can understand. It makes people hesitate; it wastes time, and that works great for your whatever your grand plan was—" Mimiko heard her sister take in a sharp inhale of air. She knew! Then why was she letting...
"I can respect that. But when you went off script? I don't know. It's just— I can't respect the fucking audacity."
Suzushina's cursed energy flared again.
"What makes you think you can order me around?"
Snap. And then she was gone. Or so she should have been. Suzushina Yuriko took another step forward still very much the behemoth in the room.
***
POV: Suzushina Yuriko
Snap! From a direction she would have to turn her head around to perceive, Sister_2 was frantically taking her picture. Snap, snap, snap!
In Japan, it was impossible to disable the shutter sound of phone camera, and Yuriko savoured every desperate ripple in the air as Nanako tried, and failed, to accomplish what some run-of-the-mill non-sorcerer boys had managed to do to her before the world changed—
"Your sister's ability," she said, "allows her to manipulate the subject of a photo, correct?"
—Secure a clear picture of the cryptid.
If Yuriko didn't want to appear on camera, she wouldn't. It was a simple as distorting the light around herself in a way that a human brain would naturally 'correct' for, but a camera would capture. Iguchi had helped her figure it out, photography nerd that she'd discovered he was. All it required was a slight increase on her processing load.
"And now that we're done talking about shit that doesn't matter..."
The ground spiderwebbed under her feet. Yuriko seized power from the forces around her and neither sister could even hope to react before she stopped perfectly in front of Mimiko. The girl tried to pull back, but Yuriko was already reaching out as she did so. Her fingers grabbed the older girl's hand, and her passive Reflection pulled the rest of her body back.
"Where's Yuji?"
"Suzushina, wait—"
Crunch. A beat of silence. Then whatever Mimiko had been about to say was lost to the scream that ripped itself from her throat. The doll dropped to the floor and rolled away. She tried, instinctively to look down, to incline her gaze to the source of the pain—her mangled fingers—but the One-Way Road held her head in place.
"That didn't sound like an answer to my fucking question."
The shutter noises increased in tempo. A plea in every snap that went entirely unheeded. Yuriko ignored still the sound of shoes smacking across the concrete.
With a reverence, an almost-sense of care, she gently placed a hand on Sister_1's head. The girl's jaw locked. She could neither talk, nor scream. Instead, like a newborn begging the world to be gentler on her, Mimiko was whimpering.
With her other hand, Yuriko set her fingers on the girl's carotid artery, and her own breath hitched. She could feel the numbers. The air-delivering, life-sustaining numbers that ran from the girl's heart to every which organ in her body. She could feel the life holding a life in her hands. And with just a little squeeze—
"A pity," said, Yuriko turning to address Nanako for the first time, her eyes caught the other girl mid-swing, before reality asserted itself and cast the effort asunder. A number pinged off her Reflection, before a loud thud and a separate clang hit the ground. A metal pipe, and a dumbass sibling.
Yuriko took a moment to examine Nanako as she writhed on the ground. Broken wrist. Broken ribs. She was doing better than her sister. Barely. Blood ran down Mimiko's nose, but she was otherwise not a smear on the ground. For now.
"You see, I was trying to make a splash on a much larger canvas than her dumb face, but those pesky curse vectors deviated my brush at the last second. I won't fuck up a second time. Bring him back."
The implication caught up with Nanako as she scrambled to her feet. Her phone whipped out in what should have been a practised flourish but almost fell through her fumbling fingers. The gal tapped away at her device.
"No— no way!"
"Did you just say no?"
Yuriko grabbed a lock of Mimiko's hair and relieved it from her scalp mechanically. The scream that followed was something she permitted.
"Are you weak, and stupid? Or is it—" Glee. Yuriko smiled the kind of smile that encapsulated total, and perfect understanding. With a soft chuckle she snapped her—Mimiko's still healthy—fingers. "I get it, I totally do. Family sucks. Were you planning to kill her yourself?"
"No! Fuck, please stop! I meant—he's gone!"
"Gone?" Her eyes seemed to smoulder in the darkness. "Choose your next words very carefully."
"He ran away!"
Yuriko's face froze, before dissolving into genuine amusement. "Ran away? Itadori Yuji?" she laughed, then suddenly, the hair in her hand shoot shot past Nanako's face, reappearing embedded in a distant support pillar. Blood dripped down a shallow cut under Sister_2's cheekbone.
"Not while I'm here. That idiot wouldn't run away unless he was sure I was safe."
"That's not what I—" Nanako was, at this point, the very image of supplication as she pointed her phone screen at Yuriko. "Look!"
Yuriko snapped her fingers, and the phone flew into her hands. She remained crouching in front of Mimiko as she partially diverted her attention to a livestream of an empty room. Jumper cables lay on the ground; it was immediately clear to her that they'd been tied around something but were shorn off with what could have only been clumsy and immense physical force. Duct tape had been stripped off what was a window overlooking the construction site itself.
She wasn't just gonna take the terrorist's words at face value. Yuriko navigated to her camera roll and scrolled through the most recent photos. She paused on one of the images her power had distorted—she looked like a silhouette from an indie horror game, with a patchwork pair of black wings—before scrolling to confirm that she had indeed sent Yuji to the same room on the livestream.
A little tension bled off Sendai's top student. Enough tension for her to realise the situation she was in. Fuck. Yuriko dropped Mimiko's head like it was a hot pan. The girl started to sob as soon as she was able.
It would be best to just murder them and atomise the evidence, but there wasn't enough time left. The distance. When she factored in his measured running speed, she only had—
"I didn't hit either of you."
"What?" Nanako's eyes widened. Confusion. Given the poor decision-making skills on display, it was no doubt an expression that wore her face frequently.
Yuriko threw the most frigid glare she could manage through the creeping shame and panic. She even considered breaking her own arm to make the whole thing look like a funny accident, until—ping— something soft and insidious registered on the peripherals of her perception. It was getting closer, greed rippling off its cursed energy.
Oh. It had been five minutes, hadn't it? She looked at the two older girls who were currently holding one another. Each of them shivering. Each of them watching her the way... the way she used to watch her father years before she got used to it. One way, or another, neither sister looked like anything close to a mastermind in that moment.
"Yuriko!"
And there he was, Itadori Yuji, who had somehow made good time up the now-hazardous terrain.
Yuriko made a show of dropping her guard; of relaxing. Her shoulders fell. The cursed energy fuelling her technique abated, even if it remained in her limbs. Her calculations on the other hand stayed primed.
"Yuji," she sighed.
The boy seemed to mirror her pseudo-catharsis, but like everything else he did and expressed, his relief was genuine.
The presence grew closer.
Yuriko ran several decision trees in her head concurrently. Would they go for the girls, me, or potato?
Yuji slowed down when he saw the twins, his eyes widening a little when he saw Nanako kneeling next to her sister. "Oh, super saver?" he muttered.
"Wait, you know her? How?" Yuriko didn't need to fake the confusion.
"Yeah! She uhm." Whatever he'd been about to say, he immediately thought better of it. "Hm. We met in December."
Ah. She also did not need to fake the anger that creased her brow.
"Is that so?" Yuriko said, her voice like an avalanche sliding down their spines. The twins shivered. She felt the presence, likely capitalising on her 'distraction,' when it drew closer. "The day after I came to your place, correct?"
'The day I met Geto' went unsaid. Those bastards were evaluating his worth as a hostage, even then.
"Yeah! Wow. Wait, how did you—"
Like a spring, suddenly relieved from enormous strain, the presence shot toward...her. How laughably predictable. The decision trees narrowed. The presence had gone for the most obvious approach: strike hard and fast when they thought she was vulnerable.
Yuriko leaned her head to the side. An arm missed her face by millimetres. Vector Manipulation reasserted itself, as Yuriko's hand shot up, catching her assailant by the face. Numbers danced along her mind, before she killed the music, and made them stop like a game of musical statues.
The aggressor's cursed energy became somewhat compliant—it was more slippery than Mimiko's—and whatever process they'd been running through their arm faltered completely.
"Sensei." said Yuriko. Unsurprisingly unperturbed.
"Oh."
***
POV: Itadori Yuji, a few moments ago
The cables fell to the floor.
Yuji was having a weird day. Well, maybe it wasn't fair to say the entire day was weird when the weirdness only started at lunch. Miss Redacted Kaori. A strange last name, but stranger still was...he didn't know. He couldn't quite put his finger to the pulse; there was just something about her.
Now this?
Yuji put his entire weight behind his foot, and the kick blew the door right off its hinges and into the street. There was no time for restraint. Yuriko was alone again.
'I get it now. You're the type that learns best by doing.'
After a beat, Yuriko raises her fist to her chin and continues. 'It's more accurate to say that you learn best under environmental stressors, oddly enough. It would explain how you've managed to coast for so long without studying. You thrive under pressure. That's good to know. I can create so much pressure that you'll enter that top half for sure.'
The boy in question is seeing stars the shape of benzene rings. His head spins as they lecture him on their electron domains.
'But,' Yuriko says, there is something else in her voice. An unexpected lilt of vulnerability. 'I won't force this on you.'
The girl looks towards the clock and scowls. It is almost Gojo-o'clock.
'Nobody has the right to force you to do shit. I'll help you if you want this, but only if you want it. I know I certainly didn't at first...'
He shook his head and began to run. Where? The awful sound made it obvious, like someone had given a building the vocal cords it needed to scream. The construction site didn't become visible until he felt himself cross some kind of unseen threshold, and despite its newfound instability he was running toward it.
Was he really making the right decision? Probably not. Truthfully, Yuriko wouldn't need him. She didn't need him. She was smarter than he was, so he couldn't outthink her out of any trap that was designed to contain her. She was stronger than he was, so he couldn't carry any burden that was designed to make her knees buckle.
There was no reason for him to be running to help. Nothing forcing him to get involved—quite the opposite, really. They'd put him in the timeout box. Yet, none of those thoughts stopped the soles of his sneakers from hitting the unstable flooring of the derelict staircase. Not even as his steps sent shockwaves through its entire structure.
Yuji didn't stop until he stumbled onto a moment that made his whole day... get even weirder.
Yuriko, the konbini girl, and the kobini girl again (this time in black?)
All three girls looked worse for wear, but if he hadn't already known that Yuriko couldn't teleport him to a random building whenever it caught her fancy—she would have done it a lot more if she could—he wouldn't have been able to guess that those twin girls had been the aggressors from the scene in front of him alone.
"Yuriko!" he said, relief washing away the cortisol in his brain. Having seen his fair share of regular people brawls, he could recognise when a fight was over. The twins didn't have any 'fight' left in them at all.
"Yuji," she replied. A sigh, but then she did something that caught him off-guard. She relaxed.
Yuriko rarely relaxed. Not in the time he'd known her. Certainly not around other people. The only times he had seen her relaxing were:
A. When he caught her humming along to her Walkman (she was also reading).
B. That Christmas special featuring Takada. Now that he thought about it, he'd seen her relaxing on the rare occasions her songs played whenever they went shopping.
C. Whenever she needed to fake it, so everyone else would play their plus fours before she did.
"Oh, super saver?"
Yuriko latched onto that line of conversation immediately. Suspiciously so. The answer was C, then. After all, once you understood it, the math became quite simple. That was why Yuji decided to play along.
***
POV: Suzushina Yuriko, now.
"Sensei."
"Oh."
Pindrop silence. Even Mimiko stopped her pathetic snivelling, as the winds shifted.
Yuriko, with her fingers still digging into the cheekbones of Kaori, rose to her feet. With a quick flurry of numbers, she lifted the older lady into to air without applying the resultant strain to her vertebral column. All things considered, Yuriko kept the woman far more comfortable than she deserved to be.
She could feel the Kaori's cursed energy fighting her all the way. Vectors swam under her fingertips, desperate to contradict her calculations and escape her influence, but Yuriko remained persistent. More processing power was allocated to the task—not enough for her to pull a (Sister's arc) Accelerator, but certainly enough that it felt taxing. It seemed that one flash of inspiration wouldn't be enough to fully comprehend it all.
"Redacted-san??" Yuji was the first to break the silence.
"You don't seem surprised to see me," said Kaori, though she directed that statement at Yuriko.
"I did wonder why there was another sorcerer at my school."
"And?"
"I guess Satoru set my standards too high. I didn't think you were anything special."
"Ow. Well, I'm glad this became a teachable moment for you, Miss Suzushina." said Kaori, looking as unbothered as anyone being held aloft by their face could ever be. "We may not all be gifted like you, but you should never underestimate another sorcerer."
"A teachable moment?" Yuriko chuckled. "More so than you think. Looking at you now. My. My. My," she said sardonically. "You're far more fascinating, than I gave you credit for. Your cursed energy, just a spark of it really, is both slightly elevated behind that scar and ever so distinct from the rest. I can only tell the difference with One Way Road. Why is that? As far as I know, that shouldn't be possible."
"Well, you barely know what's possible. I must say, you continue to impress me. But I'm afraid that's a trade secret." Kaori winked. "Unless you're willing to tell me what your new time limit is?"
"Fuck no, you factoring hectopascal."
Yuriko felt and dismissed Kaori's attempt to shrug. "Aw, Yuji, are you gonna let her talk to me like this?"
"Yeah," he said. "I guess so."
"Unfilial brat."
"Enough." She caught the implication. And as much as she wanted Kaori to elaborate, it was more important to her that she didn't talk to him at all. "Why the fuck did you even attack me?"
"Well, you've caused quite a splash, haven't you?" Kaori finally replied after making a show of pondering on her response. "Everyone's talking about the mysterious Shinjuku sorcerer, and because Mr. Strongest is keeping you his little secret, nobody even knows anything about you. Did you know the higher-ups even had poor Hokaze-san's granddaughter investigated? Luckily for her, little Junko was just an ordinary girl, but these days it seems like just about anyone could become a sorcerer."
She expected the deflection, but fucking hell Kaori could tal— "Wait—" not important, investigate later.
It was unfortunate that Yuji was there to watch her do this, but for the sake of both their safeties, she couldn't continue being as courteous to Kaori as she was. Yuriko dismissed the calculations that alleviated the strain on her body.
The effect was immediate; the discomfort on Kaori's face was apparent.
"I asked you a question."
"R-right," she managed to choke out. "W-would you prefer the professional answer, or the personal one?"
"Yes."
"W-well I can't tell you the personal one."
In that moment, Yuriko considered that killing Kaori would probably be the greatest thing she could ever do for the world. And Kaori must have seen that rationale on her face, because she quickly clarified.
"I. Took. A-a binding vow, but I can tell you the professional reason..." Yuriko could feel the pain signals shooting like through Kaori's nervous system.
From the corner of her eyes, she saw the twins crawling away. One look fixed them back in place.
"Yuriko, maybe we should just call Gojo-san?" A suggestion she ignored. "You're... Hurting her." His voice. His damn voice.
A brief flicker of shame made her ease the pressure.
"The professional, then."
Kaori took in a grateful gulp of air. "Ah, that's better." She flashed Yuji a quick smile. "Well, you see, Suzushina-chan. For the sake of my plans, you cannot be allowed to exist."
A rumble ran through the construction site.
"...What?" She didn't know what she was expecting really.
After all, before today, she was certain she had never even known anyone named 'Kaori,' let alone this one with her one-sided vendetta. Why couldn't people just mind their own goddamn business?
"See, I've thought about it, and no matter how many times I turn the possibilities in my head, I see you getting involved no matter what. It was fine when you were just a particularly powerful island, but then you started making connections. I bet you only decided to mess up Geto's plans because of them, right?"
Yuriko's silence was taken as confirmation.
"Right. Truly, I was hoping for your alignment be closer to his than to his. That would have been far more convenient, but as it stands? You're already messing things up for me. I doubt I would be able to recruit you, so killing you was just the next best thing."
"What?" She felt her blood pressure spike despite the presence of her ability.
"What can I say, really? You've messed everything up, Suzushina-chan. You'd be better off dead. I've already had to reveal my hand in places and tip some dominos earlier than I expected." Then Kaori's face lit up like she just thought of a satisfactory compromise. "Hey, couldn't I just convince you to kill yourself? Maybe that would have been easier?"
For the first time since Yuriko halted Kaori's advance, the arm that was holding her face trembled. The tremble moved to her shoulders, and then her lips started to quiver. That all stopped when she felt Yuji's hand on her shoulder.
She would have appreciated the gesture—if she was sad. But all Yuriko could feel was a festering irritation that couldn't even mature into anger. "Why the fuck are you all on my case?" She spoke with heated confusion.
All around them, the support pillars trembled. Debris continued to slide to the other side of the building.
"I haven't done anything to or interfered with anyone who wasn't already begging me to get involved. Leave me alone, and you get to keep your fucking dominoes. Is that so hard?"
Kaori paused for a second, before laughing. "You would do...nothing? With all that power? I'd be disgusted by your indolence, if it wasn't so funny. Do you even know how badly you could—"
"Stop. I've already decided that what I could do, and what I choose to do will be two different things entirely."
A rant was coming on, and Yuriko could do nothing to stop it. These thoughts had been building up in the back of her mind since she was attacked at the park; since even longer before that.
"No one, and I do mean no one gets to tell me what I should be doing, and who, or where, I should be either. If people wanted a say in what I did, they should have found that snivelling coward when she was getting her face grabbed, and her hair pulled by daddy-dearest. Me? I'm going to read whatever the fuck I want; I'm going to go to as many concerts as I want. I'll even hang out with those..." The tension in her eyebrows relaxed. "With my friends, when that's what I want to do. So, stop telling me what I could do, because that's irrelevant to all you fuckers. I'm going to do what I will, and not a damn thing more."
Kaori's laugh faded behind a sneer. It seemed the novelty had run dry. "What you will..." she said, running the words under the contours of her teeth. "This volatile world doesn't give a damn what you 'will.' If it did, I would have changed it years ago." Kaori sighed. "Oh well. Whatever. Just know this, reticent girl. Whatever you choose to do, whoever you choose to be? None of that matters as much as what you are."
"You don't get to tell me that either."
"I don't. Okay. But who told the spark it was a spark before it fell onto the powder keg?"
The shaking began in earnest. Kaori's cursed energy spiked. What had initially seemed like an attempt to merely escape her control, now became an apparent play at activating a cursed technique. Yuriko felt everything but her and Yuji—whose hand was still on her shoulder—accelerate even faster downward.
"Gravity? Really?" Yuriko scoffed. "Cheating that shit was the first trick I learned. You think bringing this building down on my head will even tickle me?"
"Wasn't. Aiming for. You."
Before Yuriko could retort, or even pop her like a grape, she felt Yuji's hand leave her shoulder. Her pupils shrank. The good-natured moron was running toward the pair who had attacked them. The very vulnerable, extremely vincible twins who didn't even have Nanako's phone anymore.
Yuriko siphoned some of the chaotic momentum sent Kaori sailing through concrete. But that distraction had cost her. Itadori Yuji had already grabbed the girls and started running. No!
The ground powdered beneath her as she threw herself in their direction. She could see a fragment of roof fall toward him in real-time. A man-made boulder crawling toward her friend with an almost agonising slowness. But the numbers didn't lie. It was falling hard; it was falling fast. She wasn't going to make it.
Then an image flashed through her head.
Maybe it was because of all the devastation around her, but in her mind's eye, Yuriko saw Accelerator propelling himself through the air with wings made of wind to land a haymaker. Brownian motion. She understood the logic behind what he did, but she wasn't good enough to do that yet.
The best she could manage was a little push.
The building fell as the very tip of her middle finger brushed Yuji's back.
***
Karaoke Bar
"I swear, the next black-haired sorcerer I have to fight...I'm kicking their teeth in."
You'll never see it comingggg!
The screen lit up, as the singer on stage scored point after point.
"Oookay," Iguchi's hand subconsciously went to his head, before he remembered that he was neither fighter, nor sorcerer. "What about Kaori-san?"
"If that was even her real name. She got away in the chaos."
"Bummer, and what about...?" Iguchi angled his head toward the visibly injured, but otherwise alive pair of sisters.
"Dumb, and dumber?"
He nodded.
"I've made them both take a few 'binding vows'." A concept she had just learned, that a quick call to her mentor easily confirmed the veracity of. She found it a little worrying that there weren't any inherent rules that nullified them when taken under duress, but in this case that worked in her favour. "They're fine to stay with us until Satoru picks them up. I think Yuji's singing is punishment enough."
It was remarkable. Somehow every syllable was off-key, but he was still getting points. His experience was showing. The pink-haired boy belted out the final notes of Last Surprise, putting him in the lead followed by Sasaki, Iguchi, and lastly Yuriko who hadn't gone yet.
"Didn't you say you'd only booked for three?"
"We had," he said with a grin. "You can amend the booking for up to an hour before."
"Tch. Where's Sasaki?"
"Hm? Can't you see her? She's getting food." Iguchi pointed to the till as he said this.
"Couldn't be her, that girl's got way more... Cursed energy than..."
The words fell off her tongue before she had the chance to say them. Sasaki Setsuko, the only person she had ever known by that name turned to meet her. The same blue eyes, the same bob-cut hairstyle; the same squared-rimed glasses. And yet she wasn't the same.
'These days it seems like just about anyone could become a sorcerer.'
"Fuck!" Yuriko shouted, loud enough that it made the others jump. "Sasaki..." she said, amending her register.
"Yeah?" The girl smiled with the same easy-going kindness that Yuriko was still growing accustomed to.
"Can you see this?"
Yuriko's hand ignited with cursed energy, and Sasaki—only Sasaki Setsuko—jumped out of her skin.