A certain man’s tale

"I-I'm exhausted…"

Sounding faint, the girl sank down right where she was.

She sang and danced to exhaustion on a regular basis, so she had to be stronger than the average person. If she was whining this much, she really must be close to her limit. In that case, I didn't have much choice.

"Let's go for another hour, then take a break." "How much stamina do you have?!"

Shaking her streaked hair until it was a complete mess, Yui Saikawa howled like a dog. "Break! Break! We're taking a break right now! I'm exercising my authority as the family head!"

Then she sprawled on the floor of the dojo, kicking and flailing with every ounce of energy in her little body. Apparently, she was determined not to move from that spot.

"I'll wait five minutes, then."

We'd left Fuubi Kase's condo, then met up at the martial arts gym at the Saikawa residence the next day. We were now on our third day of special training to awaken Saikawa's left eye. She hadn't improved enough yet, though. As things stood, she really wouldn't be able to go toe-to-toe with Seed.

"Listen, the amount of visual information you get from that left eye is astronomically greater than normal humans. Use that to watch your opponent's movements and—"

"No lectures during breaks! You rest, too, Bat!"

Getting scolded by a little girl is a pretty rare experience. Savoring the novelty, I retracted my tentacle into my right ear. At the very least, I had to train that left eye until she could completely avoid my attacks.

"I just assumed you'd train me to produce one of those," Yui said, sitting up. "You know, since there's a seed in me as well. I thought maybe a tentacle would sprout from my left eye… Although that would be a little grotesque," she murmured, looking rather repulsed.

"Ha-ha! You don't need to be able to sprout one of these. In fact, you probably shouldn't."

Laughing at myself, I started to explain how mine worked. "It may look like a tentacle, but it's more like a fully grown shoot that sprouted from the seed. I can change its hardness and flexibility at will, and no matter how many times it's cut off, it'll grow back. As a weapon, it's definitely handy."

"In that case—"

"Problem is," I interrupted, "if there's a sprout, it's proof that the seed's taken your whole body as nourishment."

Yeah. These seeds gave humans astounding physical abilities and healing capacity, and some sort of superpower, but in exchange, they demanded a vast quantity of nutrients from their hosts. You gained something, you lost something; Seed's seeds were a double-edged sword.

"So that's why your eyes…"

That's right. The seed had taken my sight as the price for my bat ears. There had been others in SPES who'd become half-pseudohumans like me, lost most of their life spans to nourish the seed, and had withered away and died… Really, dying normally might not be the worst option. If the seed ate through its entire food source, and even then, your body couldn't die…

"But in your case, young lady, I doubt you'll have to worry about that." I wasn't saying it to comfort her. It was unrelenting fact, and that's how I delivered it. "For better or for worse, Seed singled you out as a candidate vessel. Before that seed—your left eye—was planted in you, proper steps were taken to head off side effects. It's hard to imagine that thing could sprout after this long." The eye disease she'd suffered from when she was tiny had been completely healed by the astonishing powers of recovery the seed had given her. The possibility that she'd develop side effects from it at this point was nearly

nonexistent.

"…I see. So that's why Siesta and Hel couldn't produce tentacles, either, even though they had seeds."

"Yeah, you could say that's a condition for being a candidate vessel: whether or not you can keep the seed from going out of control and avoid side effects."

Meaning when the seed sprouted, you'd get some sort of side effect. Or maybe that was the sign that you already had one.

"I wonder if Kimizuka will be all right," Yui said in a little voice. He wasn't even here.

"He probably had a wish he wanted granted so badly that the risk didn't bother him."

In that case, there was no room for other people to butt in. And even if he was

on a path leading straight through hell, he wasn't allowed to stop. Not as long as that was the future he'd chosen.

"Right now, worry about yourself." I'd said she didn't need to stress about side effects, but that also meant Seed would keep targeting her as a vessel. Until we took him down, her safety would never be guaranteed.

"Heh. You're surprisingly overprotective, Bat." For some reason, the sapphire girl smiled at me. "Oh, but no matter how important I am, you shouldn't fall in love with an idol. After all, you're not Kimizuka."

What the heck is she saying? Don't talk to me like you'd talk to your friends.

"Ha! You keep bringing him up." However, the next thing I knew, I was teasing her, too.

"…Don't hit me where it hurts, please. I specialize in playing dumb, attacking, and joking around."

I see. Communicating is hard. During the years I'd spent in the villa, I'd completely forgotten how it was done… Nah, I guess I've been like this since I was born. Ha-ha.

"Still, why are you so protective of me?" she asked, abruptly changing gears.

That's a subject I don't want people looking at too closely, but if I had to say…

"You probably seem a little like her," I murmured.

…It's not so bad I need to avoid it, either. I was remembering how she'd looked, so long ago.

"Huh? But I'm Japanese."

She probably understood who I was talking about.

Yui had mentioned that because she'd realized she didn't physically resemble my sister.

"Right. Of your friends, the agent girl probably comes closest in appearance.

She has blond hair and emerald green eyes, right?"

"Oh, yes, you mean Charlie… I see. So your sister's eyes and hair were the same color as yours."

Yeah. It had been a cesspool of a family, just rotten all around. In the midst of all that, though, that little kid's blond hair had shone in the sunlight, and her eyes had sparkled like jewels when she smiled. And she'd smiled at me. —That was more than twenty years ago.

"So you mean I resemble your sister on the inside?"

"Yeah, that's about the size of it." As I spoke, I was retracing old memories. "You're both really brazen, for example."

"We don't resemble each other at all, then!"

"What are you talking about? You're identical." Including her genuine puzzlement at that remark. "She was impudent and spoiled, and she knew I had a soft spot for her smile— But deep down, she was straightforward and kind, a strong girl who knew how to care about others."

Because she'd been that sort of little sister, I'd— "Okay, break's over."

Before any more little revelations could escape me, I pushed her to get back to training.

I hadn't meant to ramble on like that. However, I still had a ton of things I needed to teach the sapphire girl if we were going to be squaring up with Seed before too long. I reluctantly got to my feet—and just then…

"Bat," Yui called to me. "Is it all right if I talk about him just one more time?" "…What's up?"

What she told me next determined our fate.

"Kimizuka sent a text. Seed's going to come to us soon."