Toyokawa Sakiko walked along the stone path of Haneoka Girls' School.
The early autumn sunlight passed through the tree crowns on both sides, casting mottled patches of light across the stones.
The morning breeze brushed against her cheek, lifting a few strands of hair. The slightly cold air carried the scent of earth.
Too much had happened over the past two days. She needed to use the everyday routine of school to adjust herself a little, lest her mind become filled entirely with things like the cognitive world.
She entered the main school building, passed through the corridor, and arrived at the shoe lockers.
Creak.
The metal locker door was pulled open, producing a faint scraping sound.
Sakiko's gaze fell on the upper surface of her indoor shoes. A pale blue sticky note had been pasted there.
She reached out, pinched one corner of the note, and peeled it off.
The handwriting on the paper was written stroke by stroke with such force that raised impressions were left on the back of the note.
Sakiko could practically imagine Takamatsu Tomori repeatedly agonizing over it in her mind.
Nothing urgent was written on the sticky note—
Yesterday, on the way home, I saw a bug I'd never seen before.
Sakiko read every word carefully.
Then she did not immediately change shoes. Instead, she turned her head slightly and swept her gaze toward the stairwell on the right.
Takamatsu Tomori was standing with her back to the shoe-locker area, rigid as a wooden post.
Her body faced the window, but her neck was secretly turned backward.
A few strands of gray hair hung beside her cheeks as she cautiously, expectantly watched Sakiko's direction out of the corner of her eye.
The instant Sakiko's gaze swept over, their eyes briefly met in the air.
Tomori's shoulders shot upward, and her whole body trembled.
She hurriedly turned her head back around, staring fixedly at the window directly in front of her, hands clasped behind her back, slightly rising onto her toes as she pretended to be fully absorbed in admiring the scenery outside.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
Tomori's head began turning back again, little by little.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Sakiko once more.
She discovered that Sakiko was still standing in front of the shoe locker.
Still looking at her.
"Ah!"
Tomori immediately turned her head toward the window again, almost hitting it in her nervousness.
Sakiko quietly watched this scene. The corners of her mouth rose uncontrollably, and she smiled soundlessly, without exposing Tomori's clumsy disguise.
Sakiko withdrew her gaze.
She slipped the strap of her schoolbag from her shoulder, unzipped it, and took out a notebook.
She could already feel Takamatsu Tomori secretly watching her from the corner of her eye again, that gaze pricking at her back.
So, under Tomori's watch, Sakiko opened the notebook.
Inside the notebook, dozens of sticky notes had already been neatly pasted.
She smoothed out the corners of today's note, aligned it with the edges, and carefully pasted it beneath the previous one.
Then she closed the notebook, put it back into her bag, and zipped it shut.
After that, she changed into her indoor shoes and closed the locker door.
Sakiko did not look toward the stairwell again. She turned and walked down the corridor on the other side, heading toward her classroom.
At the stairwell, Takamatsu Tomori finally turned her head completely.
She watched Sakiko's receding back until that figure disappeared around the corridor corner.
A trace of confusion flashed through Tomori's eyes.
She stood there blankly, feeling that Sakiko seemed different from before.
What exactly was different?
Tomori could not say.
It was a feeling very difficult to concretely describe in words.
It was as though… a feather that had originally drifted in the air, ready to be blown away by the wind at any moment, had suddenly grown roots and sunk deeply into the soil.
Strange thoughts intertwined and reassembled inside Tomori's mind.
"Ah…"
Takamatsu Tomori trembled all over, and her eyes suddenly lit up.
She abruptly clenched her fists and hurried toward her own classroom.
She had inspiration for a new song.
The classroom air was filled with chalk dust and the faint scent of perfume.
The scraping sounds of chairs being pulled out, the plastic rustle of snack wrappers as classmates traded food, the exclamations of the girls in the front row discussing some band…
After not coming to school for around ten days straight, these somewhat noisy sounds actually gave her a long-lost sense of familiarity.
It was a strange feeling. Perhaps it was because her current perspective had become completely different.
However, that sense of familiarity came quickly and vanished just as quickly.
When the class bell rang and the math teacher began writing long formulas on the blackboard, Sakiko's gaze returned to calm.
The injection of knowledge was always dull. In less than ten minutes, Sakiko grew bored.
She propped her chin up with one hand, her gaze somewhat unfocused as she stared at the symbols on the blackboard.
With her aptitude, she only needed to see the derivation on the blackboard once to instantly infer everything related to it in her mind. She had no need to take notes at all, nor did she need to worry about the exams that would follow.
The reason she had chosen to attend Haneoka Girls' School in the first place had been very practical—
Money.
With her deviation value and comprehensive academic record, she could effortlessly receive the highest-level full tuition waiver here, and every semester she could reliably obtain the maximum scholarship.
She did not need to spend a single yen to attend school, and she could even use the scholarship to support her household.
Out of boredom, Sakiko summoned the Persona 5 subgroup interface before her eyes.
A translucent screen instantly unfolded in front of her, and the center of the group interface was divided by a vertical line.
Whether the text input area, the central chat area, or the member list, everything was split into left and right sides.
On the left were Toyokawa Sakiko as group owner, Shinomiya Kaguya as administrator, Hayasaka Ai, and Shirogane Miyuki.
On the right were Toyokawa Sakiko as group owner, Wakaba Mutsumi/Mortis, and Nagasaki Soyo.
Within a chat subgroup, the group owner possessed permissions almost on the level of underlying code, allowing her to modify the entire group chat to a considerable degree.
Now, the two sides divided by the line could not see each other's chat records or member statuses.
The reason was simple. She did not really want Shinomiya Kaguya and the others to come into contact with supernatural powers such as the cognitive world, to prevent their probability of encountering danger from increasing.
At the same time, she also did not want Soyo and the others to come into contact with the commercial wars between wealthy families. Those dirty adult-world business games were far too filthy for Soyo and Mutsumi.
She would protect everyone.
After all, they were companions of destiny for life.
However, in essence, this was still the same group chat. The total member limit remained the same as the main group's and could not exceed the quota.
Sakiko first focused her attention on the chat box on the left.
Hayasaka Ai: Miss, regarding the medical research institute mentioned earlier, all relevant procedures and asset liquidation have been completed. The buyout contract has taken effect.
Hayasaka Ai: Through anonymous channels, I have already sent employment invitations to several top medical researchers in the field whose current research funding is limited.
Hayasaka Ai: The laboratory is expected to begin operations within the next two days.
"Looks like Little Shinobu will be getting busy soon."
Sakiko calculated silently in her heart.
The moment she thought of Shinobu Kocho, a trace of worry involuntarily appeared in Sakiko's eyes.
This morning, after Shinobu woke up in the hotel, she entered Mementos.
After yesterday's cognitive breakthrough, her way of thinking had changed somewhat.
Her cognition was no longer limited only to Insect Breathing. Instead, she now had the possibility of exploring other fields.
She wanted to turn other breathing styles into nourishment for herself, then unify and sublimate them through Feathered Molting Mirror-Splinter Realm, using that to continuously make herself stronger.
Sakiko had clearly expressed opposition to this.
Breathing styles were too closely linked to a person's cognition. Every breathing style corresponded to an extreme state of mind and spirit.
If Shinobu forcibly learned and absorbed them, her thinking would suffer irreversible influence. It might even completely change her original personality.
If one forgot who they were, what meaning was there in gaining greater strength?
Sakiko leaned toward conservatism, toward preserving the self.
Between strength and the self, she believed the self was the most important anchor.
She would rather grow stronger more slowly than fail to ensure that she was still herself.
But Shinobu's attitude was completely different. She seemed extraordinarily radical.
She believed that no matter how she changed, that was still the true her.
Before Feathered Molting Mirror-Splinter Realm, other breathing styles were merely nourishment for her to absorb during her metamorphosis.
After breaking out of the cocoon and becoming a butterfly, she would still be Shinobu Kocho, no matter how many changes occurred.
Regarding this, Sakiko could only sigh and say nothing more.
She knew very well that this was the result of the different social environments the two of them came from.
Sakiko was born in modern society. What she pursued was still stability and happiness, and she had an instinctive resistance toward extreme behavior.
But Shinobu was different. The cruelty of the Demon Slayer world had given Shinobu a faint madness that would push forward even if her body were shattered to pieces.
Sakiko knew she could not use the logic of modern society to measure an avenger who had crawled out from a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.
Shaking her head, Sakiko moved her gaze away from the chat box on the left and turned to the right-side column belonging to Soyo and the others, sending a message.
Toyokawa Sakiko: Has everyone used their possibility avatar today? How were the avatars you summoned?
A reply popped up only a few seconds after the message was sent.
Wakaba Mutsumi: I used it.
Wakaba Mutsumi: The possibility avatar I summoned this time was not from the cursed energy system, nor from any supernatural system of another world.
Wakaba Mutsumi: It was only an ordinary person avatar.
Nagasaki Soyo: Same here, same here. What I summoned wasn't a possibility avatar that uses cursed energy like before either. It was also just an ordinary person.
Looking at their replies, Toyokawa Sakiko nodded slightly.
Then she replied in the subgroup, explaining that the possibility avatar she had summoned today was likewise an ordinary person.
As for the ordinary person avatar she had summoned now, Sakiko did not let it sit idle for nothing. Since it did not need to attend school in her place, it had now been sent to the shallow layers of Mementos to farm money by releasing the solidified Word Spirit: Royal Fire.
If she wanted Shinomiya Kaguya to overthrow both the Shinomiya family and the Toyokawa family, the funds she had previously farmed from Mementos would definitely not be enough for a conglomerate conflict of that scale.
For a long time afterward, she would need to continuously provide cash flow to support the operation.
Then Sakiko continued speaking in the group.
Toyokawa Sakiko: Combining all three of our situations, the conclusion should be the same as our previous guess.
Toyokawa Sakiko: When we use possibility avatars at the same time, resonance occurs between them, interfering with the summoning result and causing us to draw relatively fixed possibility avatars.
Toyokawa Sakiko: But when we summon them separately, the summoning becomes completely random again.
Toyokawa Sakiko: As for whether, after summoning separately, you can randomly obtain avatars involving other worlds and mastering different systems, the current sample size is too small.
Toyokawa Sakiko: Based only on this one result, we cannot draw an absolute conclusion. We need repeated experiments to verify it.
After the message was sent, Wakaba Mutsumi replied with "Okay," while Soyo responded with a cute "Understood" sticker.
Sakiko closed the group chat and leaned back against her chair. Although her eyes were watching the teacher's writing on the blackboard, her mind was racing.
For the next while, as long as she did not encounter a situation where combat was necessary, she did not plan to summon possibility avatars together with Nagasaki Soyo and Wakaba Mutsumi to increase combat power.
On one hand, it was basically like gacha.
Summoning separately would most likely produce ordinary people, but perhaps one day, a miracle single pull would happen, summoning an avatar even stronger than Gojo Sachi or Odin Sachi that could serve as a trump card.
On the other hand, she temporarily did not intend to let Wakaba Mutsumi summon Geto Mutsumi, who possessed Cursed Spirit Manipulation, again.
Cursed Spirit Manipulation was still far too overtuned in Mementos. It was like keeping a nuclear launch button beside her. Even if she wanted to ignore it, she could not.
As for the distorted desires extracted from Shadow Mori Minami earlier, to prevent them from going out of control after Geto Mutsumi disappeared, Wakaba Mutsumi had forged them into a cursed tool.
It was a pair of exquisitely crafted plano glasses.
This cursed tool did not possess direct offensive power. Rather, when the user wore it, it could greatly enhance the wearer's observation, analysis, and summarization abilities.
And the most frightening part of this cursed tool was its second-layer mechanism.
As long as the wearer completed a summary of the target, regardless of whether that summary was objectively right or wrong, as long as the wearer subjectively believed it was correct, they could use the abilities they had summarized by imitating the target's appearance, behavior, and various methods.
The more similar the imitation, the closer the ability used would be to the original.
However, this cursed tool's limitations were also obvious.
It did not come with any ability to directly alter the body or let someone change outfits in a second.
It merely gave you a key. As for how to open the lock, that depended entirely on you.
Whether it was changing appearance, or imitating tone, movement, personality, and other aspects, the cursed tool could provide no assistance.
The wearer could only rely on their own acting skills to bring it out.
After learning the cursed tool's properties, Sakiko felt that it had practically been custom-made for Wakaba Mutsumi.
Although Wakaba Mutsumi in ordinary circumstances was always silent, looking like a piece of wood, Sakiko knew that was only because Mutsumi felt there was no need.
As a Shadow born from other people's expectations, Wakaba Mutsumi was a natural actor.
As long as she wanted to, she could adjust herself at any moment and slip into any role.
She was like a mirror, able to reflect everyone's joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness. Her grasp of human nature and replication of emotions were instincts fused deep into her soul.
This was a talent that even the Mori Minami of the real world, and even Shadow Mori Minami, the source of the distorted desire that had forged this cursed tool, would feel jealous of.
join here to read ahead.
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 210)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl 285
"Is this chat group even serious?" (This matter is completely finished.)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (This matter is completely finished.)
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 77
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 280
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 240
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass Volume2/20
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 305
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer (This matter is completely finished.)
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 154
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player Volume5/8
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 135
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 67
Uma Musume: From Beginner 160
Becoming a Horse Girl, I Will 85
Uma Musume: I Want All 120
I Can Copy Unique Skills 125
Summoning an Evil God, but the 75
Supernatural Multiverse 180
My Harem Is Indescribable 110
Jujutsu Kaisen: Heroic Spirit 115
Uma Musume: Today Is Another Romantic Battlefield 120
Still playing traditional Honk 105
The Most Filial Son Under Heav 120
What Should I Do After Switchi 70
Reincarnated as a Demon, Skill 80
Hell-Difficulty Dungeon? 55
Transmigrated as Sukuna 140
Checking In in Demon Slayer 100
The Reincarnating Trainer of Tracen Academy 115
I Refuse to Become a Heroic 95
My Best Friend Into a Slime? 90
A Saiyan Stands Above Marvel (This matter is completely finished.)
What Do You Mean by Using a Lab Mod to Be the Hero? 95
Tanya Starts from Re:Zero 90
Why did they assign me to Uma 95
MYGO Beauties 80
DanMachi: Emiya the Giant Hero 100
The Gacha Merchant Who Started 135
Honkai's Otherworld? Wait—Who Are You People?! 150
Emiya Shirou, Determined to Slay Every Curse and Evil Spirit 70
The Uma Musume Who Became 75
I'm Definitely Not the King of 130
After Maxing Out Every Class 135
Honkai: World Modulation Mode 120
I, the Elden Sword Saint 70
Dio Brando Is Challenging FGO 65
No One Knows Pokémon Better 65
I, Sakazuki, Won't Go Down Tha 69
From Trilobites to Titans 65
Chainsaw Man: Contracted with 105
DanMachi: My Party Members Are 120
An Anime Heroine Darkened 60
Yu-Gi-Oh!: Duel Links 80
Honkai: The Fire Devil 115
Honkai Transformation Cards Volume2/70
Age of Heroes, I'm Just a Back 85
Uma Musume Has No Weird Fan Le 80
At age 8, she co-starred with 80
Honkai: Schicksal Media 81
An Extremist in a Slice-of-Lif 70
Chainsaw Man, but I'm Aatrox 60
Honkai Apocrypha: Are the Valk 60
An Extremist in a Slice-of-Lif 45
Morgan Shirou's Journey in Dan 43
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