Chapter 186: Reflection of Reality

There was a powerful sense of deja vu about it. Speaking broadly, if they dug along that thread, they might even trace information about the Black Sphere and the presiding god back through him.

But in truth, not one of them actually took the initiative to probe.

After all, however real the odds were, Chris — judging by everything he'd shown so far — genuinely "couldn't remember" what he'd been through.

With the man himself amnesiac, poking at him would get them nowhere. All they could do was wait for the exams to open again, go see whether the Mystery Merchant stocked a corresponding item, or wait for some specific trigger capable of unlocking those memories.

Of course, they could also try going to the Black Sphere and asking whether S Points could buy "Chris's past memories," and measure the accuracy of their guesses that way.

But that wasn't a decision for anyone other than Chris himself to make.

Crossing that line would be like stomping on a landmine, and every clever girl present understood it perfectly.

Besides, this was a leftover question from the past — knowing sooner or later made no practical difference.

And everyone here had their own thoughts, their own business to attend to.

Setting aside Ryuuen and Kouenji Rokusuke, who couldn't have cared less.

Nanase Tsubasa's head was entirely taken up with brainstorming the fact that Tokinari Tsukishiro and Atsuomi Ayanokōji knew each other.

Shiraishi Asuka and Shiina Hiyori were the reserved sort who, until something urgent came along, stayed quiet and watched the tides of the world rise and fall.

Really, only Arisu Sakayanagi and Honami Ichinose had the standing to put the question to Chris directly.

Unfortunately, Honami Ichinose's heart was full of love for everyone.

The moment she caught the odd look on Yotsuya Miko's face, she deliberately let it pass, choosing to believe in Chris unconditionally, and turned instead to comfort her shaken companion.

As for Arisu Sakayanagi, she preferred to sit calmly on the fishing terrace and wait for Amanatsu Kazuha to move first before deciding anything herself.

As the undisputed princess of the Advanced Nurturing High School, she was well aware of Amanatsu Kazuha's little maneuvers.

Since this little mouse out of the White House was willing to play cannon fodder and scout the road ahead, Sakayanagi didn't mind making some use of her, then stepping in personally once the picture cleared.

And as for Amanatsu Kazuha, on whom Sakayanagi had pinned such hopes...

Bold as her methods were, she'd reached the same conclusion: now was not the time to probe. Moving rashly would only make her look like a girl who enjoyed overstepping, and that got tiresome fast.

Plenty of boys ate up the whole "little devil underclassman throwing herself at you" routine these days.

But most of them were just ordinary guys spinning fantasies because nobody loved them.

Whether they could actually stomach a real landmine girl or a full-blown yandere storyline was another matter entirely.

And Amanatsu Kazuha didn't think Chris was a man starved for affection.

Her strategy, for now, stayed the same: observe from the shadows.

And wouldn't you know it — lying low actually turned up something curious.

Shiraishi Asuka, from Arisu Sakayanagi's class, wasn't shadowing him as brazenly as she was. But the girl seemed unusually fixated on Chris's voice. She'd even planted miniature recorders in certain corners where Chris tended to linger!

Hmm... some strange voice fetish?

Amanatsu Kazuha stroked her chin, eyes glinting with interest.

Should she pay Shiraishi Asuka a private visit, the way she'd once leaned on Karuizawa Kei?

That was a question worth some thought.

And while everyone was busy with their own calculations.

It was Chris who went looking for Karuizawa Kei.

Night had already fallen.

Chris glanced up at the cold moon hanging high and silent overhead, then broke the quiet first. "Hirata's dead."

"Everyone's still riding the afterglow of the exam, so it hasn't hit yet. But a class needs someone to hold the reins, or it turns into a body without a head."

Chris looked at Karuizawa Kei. "Any good suggestions?"

Karuizawa Kei blinked, visibly thrown.

She clearly hadn't expected Chris to seek her out at a moment like this just to discuss that.

She pressed her lips together, pulled out her phone, and glanced at the string of unread messages on the screen.

Then she looked up and ventured, "How about Kouenji? He's strong on his own, and he's got points and equipment. If he wanted to, at a juncture like this he could take over Hirata's spot on raw power alone."

Chris thought it over and shook his head. "You said it yourself — the premise is that he has to want to."

"He's capable enough. But personality-wise, he's the same as me. Neither of us has any patience for pointless hassle."

"With only the midterm Uninhabited Island exam on the schedule as a large-scale joint exam, babysitting the newcomers' petty squabbles would be nothing but a thankless chore to him."

Karuizawa Kei conceded the point and offered another name. "Then... how about Kushida?"

"She's always been popular with the boys, and her reputation's good enough. And... the Black Sphere seems to favor her. She keeps getting picked as an Intruder." Karuizawa Kei paused there. "She's actually like me. She's afraid of dying. In terms of her own survival, this probably isn't a bad deal for her."

Chris considered it for a moment. He knew exactly how two-faced Kushida was underneath.

But there was no denying she had the touch for keeping a class looking harmonious on the surface.

So he nodded. "Fine. Let her try."

Business concluded, Chris turned on his heel, clean and brisk, as if he really had come only to say those few sentences and was already leaving.

Something lurched in Karuizawa Kei's chest, and she called after him almost on instinct. "Chris...!"

Chris looked back, a faint question in his eyes.

But with his gaze on her, the words she'd meant to use to close the distance — the coaxing, the sweet little wheedling — lodged in her throat like a fish bone and refused to come out.

It made sense, really.

She'd only just been through a violent swing between life and death.

At a moment like this, drained in body and mind, there was no heaven-sent "hero saves the damsel" scene to spike her dopamine.

All she had left was exhaustion and delayed terror. She truly couldn't slip seamlessly into the role of the girl who knew how to please her host, the way she usually did...

She was too tired. Too tired to fake even a scrap of liveliness.

Watching the girl struggle to speak.

Chris sighed, and didn't hurry her.

He just turned around and stepped closer.

Raised a hand, and gently ruffled her soft blonde hair.

"Don't put yourself through it."

His voice drifted on the cool night wind. "Just live like yourself. There's no need to force yourself to cater to anything when you're worn out body and soul."

Karuizawa Kei felt the warmth on the crown of her head, and her nose stung. She nodded, faintly.

To keep from looking completely useless, she drew a deep breath and changed tack. "I'll get myself back in shape as fast as I can. I definitely won't hold up the schedule for contracting Contract Beasts with the [Blank Card Box]."

Chris shook his head. "That kind of thing can wait until you've rested."

"No matter how urgent it gets, I'm not going to shove you all onstage while you're this exhausted. Unless..."

Chris paused, then said, half joking, "Unless the presiding god loses his mind and drops the upperclassmen's advance exam on us tomorrow. And if that really happened, the more important thing would be trading information with them first."

Karuizawa Kei said nothing more.

She hesitated a moment, fingers twisting hard at the hem of her clothes, then gathered her courage.

"Then..."

"Could you hold me one more time before you go?"

Strictly speaking, she'd been protected well the whole way through and had never truly tasted death, so she had no business looking this fragile, this in need of coaxing.

But... girls are creatures of feeling.

And short on any sense of safety, aren't they?

So even knowing the request overstepped, she said it anyway.

Chris looked at her, with no sign of refusing.

He simply opened his arms and gathered the trembling little bird against his chest.

He felt her hug back with a little force, arms locked tight around his waist, and caught the faint scent rising from her hair.

Resting his chin lightly on the top of her head, Chris asked softly, "Feeling better?"

Buried against his broad chest, Karuizawa Kei let out a heavy, emphatic "Mm."

"Holding you is like water dissolving into water."

The girl murmured it under her breath.

So enchanting. So perfect.

Her arms were full, and the heart that fear had riddled with holes filled up right along with them.

And yet, faced with that supremely romantic bit of girlish poetry.

Chris, with all the sensitivity of a steel girder, just patted her shoulder lightly.

"If you really like this feeling, then work hard and survive."

"I'm not fond of watching the people around me exit the stage one by one until I'm the only one left standing there."

Karuizawa Kei went still for a beat.

Just like before, she hadn't expected Chris to say anything like that.

So he was afraid of being alone too?

The girl's lashes trembled, and the tips of her pale ears quietly flushed red.

The sorrow that had clung to her from staring death in the face drained mostly away.

She loosened her arms, stepped back half a pace, and tilted her head up to look into his eyes.

"Then I'll stay by your side. I'll never leave."

Faced with Karuizawa Kei's double-edged confession.

Chris kept his eyes lowered, his expression giving away little under the moonlight.

"Let's hope that once we've passed the presiding god's real test, we're still here to stand around talking about nothing."

Karuizawa Kei clenched her small fists and answered at once, "I'll do my best!"

Chris gave a slight nod by way of reply, then turned and walked off into the night.

But to Amanatsu Kazuha, watching from the tree shadows not far off, those words carried an entirely different weight.

Given the formidable "Ki Refining" talent Chris had displayed earlier, his perception was certainly no joke, so Amanatsu Kazuha had chosen a position that wasn't especially close, to avoid blowing her cover too soon.

Which meant she couldn't fully make out the murmurs the wind carried over. She had to fall back on the lip-reading skill she'd mastered in the White House to work out what the two of them were saying.

On the crucial piece of information, of course, Amanatsu Kazuha refused to be sloppy.

Only after running the mouth shapes through her head several times did she piece together an answer that was close enough.

"The Black Sphere's... real test for us?"

Standing in the shadows, Amanatsu Kazuha mouthed the words without a sound.

Was that line of Chris's just something he'd tossed out to soothe that pretty vase of a girl?

Or... did he already know something from behind the curtain, and was hinting at it?

The Black Sphere had, after all, said that every exam existed to give them the power to "protect their own world."

But the situation and the context of Chris's words kept dragging Amasawa's thoughts somewhere further.

That tone, like a man in on the secret. It was hard to believe it wasn't deliberate.

As for what the truth actually was...

Amanatsu Kazuha had no way of knowing yet. She'd simply have to keep watching for a while before drawing conclusions.

Though in the end, true or false, none of these guesses changed Amanatsu Kazuha's own goal in the slightest.

Her purpose was simple.

Just as Ayanokoji Kiyotaka had once spent 100 S Points on a leaving-school experiment, driven by curiosity and by testing the edges of his freedom.

As a child who'd come out of the White House with no self, no family, none of the ordinary joys and sorrows a normal child should have, everything arranged for her by the White House.

Amanatsu Kazuha, too, longed to feel what it meant to truly be "alive."

Back in his single room.

Chris stretched lazily, then sank his consciousness into the system space.

He looked up at the three-dimensional projection of Godzilla glowing above the beat-up little watch in his item slot.

True, this particular specimen from the "Shin Godzilla" world had still been in its ordinary state when he extracted its DNA, capable of nothing beyond the Atomic Breath, so its combat power wasn't especially outrageous.

But it was Godzilla, after all.

The famed King of the Monsters. Strong or not right now, that standing in the pecking order spoke for itself!

When he had time later, he'd go grab a King Ghidorah from some other universe.

Chris was already planning to use the beat-up watch's "DNA Fusion function" to see what kind of stitched-together abomination he'd get if he merged the two kings of monsters into one.

Speaking of which, Chris had been curious about something else: with so many different versions of Godzilla scattered across the multiverse, did the watch's system count them as genetic mutations of a single species, or as completely separate individuals?

Now, seeing that nothing in his gene library had changed at all.

Combined with the watch's underlying setting of "automatically optimizing to the finest specimen of that species"...

Clearly, the different versions of Godzilla were judged to be entirely different species.

There'd be no such convenient shortcut as "scan any Shin Godzilla and pull [Planet Godzilla] or [Singularity Godzilla] straight out across versions."

"Never mind."

Given Shin Godzilla's own "infinite evolution" premise, and with no shortage of heavy-firepower items on hand.

If he really raised this one for a while, with all sorts of items stacked on top, this Shin Godzilla's ceiling might not be any lower than a mature Godzilla from another universe!

With that, Chris shifted his gaze from the watch face and swept it across the empty presiding god space, where the chibi [Clockwork Wraith] was spacing out in boredom.

Sensing his attention, it seemed, little Clockwork gave a small shiver.

She turned her head, snapped that oversized head of hers up, and clumsily raised her tiny hands to unfurl a long, long invoice in midair.

Trying to show Chris the sales record she'd racked up as the "Mystery Merchant."

"Not bad. Very capable."

That got a laugh out of Chris.

He reached over and gave little Clockwork's head a light pat as encouragement.

Then he opened the system's back end and started building a dedicated skin system for his diligent little employee.

Clockwork's default look had a certain retro-punk charm, sure, but as the "Mystery Merchant" who'd be meeting examinees face to face, it wasn't exactly the friendliest thing to look at.

"Let's put in a few nice-looking ones."

"Something like Star Guardian, the Snowdown holiday limiteds, or Dark Star..."

Whether it was sheer looks or the lore-based power bonuses that came attached once worn, both were guaranteed.

It took him no time at all.

Chris set simple prices for the skins, then packaged the brand-new skin trading panel and handed it over for Clockwork to manage herself.

Watching the little Clockwork receive her new panel.

First a huge "?" popped up over her head, as if she were baffled.

Then, once she got a clear look at the skin catalog, it flipped into a sparkling "!"

Chris found himself grinning.

Say what you will: however thoroughly her emotions had been tampered with, once something got the chibi treatment, every little gesture picked up a bit of cuteness.

"Maybe... I'll find a chance later to let Ichinose, Sakayanagi and the rest try out a two-heads-tall chibi item too."

"I don't think I've ever actually used that one. Feels like it'd be pretty entertaining."

Chuckling, he shook his head and shelved the faintly deranged idea for now.

Chris turned his attention instead to Tokinari Tsukishiro and Atsuomi Ayanokōji, the two old geezers already back out in the world.

At that moment, in a secret conference room somewhere.

Having survived the Godzilla disaster by sheer luck, the two old men hadn't chosen to rest.

After a brief discussion, they'd already sent the phone footage they'd saved of Godzilla's rampage straight up to the higher-ranking politicians of this country.

It served both as proof of their informational value in the incident and as a veiled warning, and a bargaining chip.

After all, the secret that Ripple Breathing could extend a lifespan and preserve youth had long since stopped being a back-alley rumor.

To the old men perched at the summit of Neon's power structure, already half in the grave, getting their hands on an art that bought them more years was like finding buried treasure. They'd started practicing that very night.

But now, learning that cultivating a technique handed down by the Black Sphere would most likely get them flagged by the Black Sphere's system, and might even see them hauled into an exam as "Intruders"...

How could that pack of life-clinging politicians not panic?!

So naturally, under the fear of death.

They were certain to work through Tsukishiro, Atsuomi Ayanokōji, and even Arisu Sakayanagi's father to hunt down an answer.

Whether that meant finding a way to spread Ripple far and wide to lower their own odds of being selected.

Or going straight at the Black Sphere system pulling the strings behind it all.

The starting point, first and last.

Was nothing but saving their own skins!

Watching the panic-stricken faces of the higher-ups on the surveillance feed.

Chris shook his head.

"Looks like the Flying Squirrel instance has fresh volunteers."

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