Chapter 23: Trust Me!

Knock, knock, knock.

A rap on Kotori bedroom door, followed by her brother's familiar voice.

"Kotori, are you awake? Lunch is ready."

"I'm awake! Be right there!"

Kotori scrambled out of bed, hastily tying on her white ribbons. A quick trip to the bathroom to wash up, and she was sitting primly at the dining table.

She ate her lunch, but her eyes kept darting toward Shido. Something was off. He was acting completely normal, as if nothing had happened last night. 

But that couldn't be right. If she hadn't come home on her own, her brother, with his chronic worrying, would have stayed up all night waiting for her. 

The possibility that she had won the fight and returned on her own was dismissed before it even formed.

So why was he pretending?

She gnawed on her chopsticks, her brow furrowed in frustration. Today was a weekend, no school. Shido was home all day.

"Onii-chan..."

"What is it, Kotori?" His voice was as gentle as ever, but she wasn't in the mood for it.

"Last night," she began, and though she wore the white ribbons of his innocent little sister, her voice carried the weight of the Commander. "How much do you know?"

"..."

Shido took a deep breath, setting down his own chopsticks. His expression turned serious, and he met her gaze.

"Everything."

….

I was in a world of black and white. A monochrome, featureless void. In the center of this nothingness stood a single, colossal tree, and on its trunk, a fissure in the shape of a young girl.

The Adjoining World. The Ain Soph Aur. A reality-warping ability unleashed by the Spirit of Origin's Angel of Law. It overwrote the real world, trapping its victims inside.

My Dimensional Engine was still functional. I could leave. But I wasn't ready to concede.

In this space, its creator was a god, capable of rewriting the rules of existence itself. The only way to resist was to be imbued with the power of the Spirit of Origin.

And as it happened, I could arrange that.

[Host request acknowledged. Initiating energy conversion...]

[Conversion complete. 5% of total energy reserves converted to target [Spirit of Origin] spiritual power.]

The Dimensional Engine, my all-purpose power source, could replicate any form of energy it analyzed. With this new, borrowed power flowing through me, I was now immune to the passive reality-warping effects of Ain Soph Aur.

At that moment, the world attacked. Countless branches, sharp as swords, shot towards me from every direction.

" Aeterna Defensio "

My golden shield flared, deflecting the barrage. My sensors picked up something else hidden within the storm of branches small, fist-sized flower buds.

They struck my shield and exploded.

BOOM!

A cloud of shimmering, pollen-like particles rained down. The moment they touched my shield, my energy consumption spiked dramatically. I can't let that touch me.

I had to move.

" Velocity Override "

" Zafkiel Aleph "

I pushed my speed to its absolute limit, becoming a streak of golden light that weaved through the endless rain of branches. The world itself was my enemy, but my power source was limitless. My high-energy consumption was sustainable.

My scanners swept the empty void, but I couldn't find her. Tch. She can't rewrite me, so she rewrites the world to hide herself. How troublesome.

But even as I dodged and weaved, appearing for all the world like a desperate fugitive, my systems were working.

The analysis of this Adjoining World was proceeding without a hitch. And it was almost complete.

[Analysis Complete.]

" Endo Armament: Activate "

" Pseudo-Endo: Ain Soph Aur "

I unleashed the incomplete, counterfeit Angel I had just copied. A ripple of colorless energy pulsed outwards from my body, an anti-reality wave. It expanded for a full kilometer before dissipating. 

Every branch, every flower bud it touched simply vanished, erased from existence.

By replicating her power, I had temporarily wrested a small piece of this world's control from its creator.

For the first time since I arrived, the world was silent. I skidded to a halt, the sudden quiet almost deafening.

"You truly are an unstable element."

The voice was like static, a sound without pitch or tone that resonated through the very fabric of this non-space. The entity that had brought me here materialized before me once again.

The walking blur of censored data. The living mosaic.

Seeing it in person was still deeply unsettling, like my own optical sensors were being gaslit. It was a perfect cognitive filter, an absolute block on all forms of observation.

But despite the visual scrambling, I knew who and what I was facing.

The Spirit of Origin. Mio.

….

When Shido admitted he knew everything, Kotori quickly realized that Kannazuki and the others had told him, against her wishes. 

She was annoyed, but she understood they had done it out of concern for her. She couldn't stay mad at them for caring.

With her seal broken from the fight with me, there was only one thing to do.

"Since you know I'm a Spirit," she said, her tone shifting, "then you know what you have to do, right?"

"Do? What do I have to do?" Shido asked, genuinely confused.

Kotori's temper flared. "A date, you idiot! A date!" she snapped. "Just like with Tohka and Yoshino! You have to take me on a date, make me fall for you, and seal my powers!"

"But... but that's..." The request sent Shido reeling. Kotori was his sister. He'd always seen her as his sister. To suddenly have to date her, romance her, and then... kiss her...

Even though he'd been mentally preparing for these situations, this one hit different.

He glanced at the faint, fading cut on her cheek and saw an escape route. "We don't have to rush! After a fight like that, your body needs time to recover. We can wait a few days, right?"

He was stalling. Not because he didn't want to help, but because he needed time to convince himself he could do this.

His hesitation only soured Kotori's mood further.

"Onii-chan..." She placed her hand on his, her head bowed, her voice small and fragile.

"I don't want that to happen again..."

"Kotori..."

She was talking about the fire, years ago. The one she had caused when her powers first went out of control. 

In her mind, she was a monster who had killed countless people. It was a wound on her soul that had never truly healed. 

Now, with the possibility of another rampage looming, she was terrified of hurting someone again.

Shido, having had his own memories of that day restored by Reine and Kannazuki, understood her fear completely.

He reached out and placed his hand on her head, his expression firm and resolved.

"Trust me," he said.

….

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