When he returned to the room, Shiomi was met with a scene that made his jaw drop.
Scáthach and Skadi each had Sakura and Caren sitting in their laps, while Artoria was holding Rin Tohsaka, who looked like she was cooperating only under protest. All of them were gathered in front of the large television in the hotel room, playing the fighting game console provided by the inn.
"What is all this supposed to be?"
By sheer coincidence, on the way back with Touko, he had jokingly swiped her glasses and put them on to amuse himself. As he spoke now, Shiomi instinctively reached up to adjust the glasses on his face.
"What else would it be?" Morgan said calmly from the long table behind them, peeling an orange. "They're not in a hurry to go to bed, so they're keeping the children company. I don't recall our family having a habit of conducting nighttime Magecraft training while traveling."
"Even so…"
Shiomi saw a hand wave in front of his face. Touko reached over and reclaimed her glasses.
"It's probably a kind of compensatory behavior," Touko said softly after putting them back on, her tone perceptive yet gentle. "After all, the only one who truly stayed by your side and raised children with you was Morgan."
"Oh…"
Understanding dawned on Shiomi all at once, and he let out a sound that was equal parts resignation and acceptance.
Opportunities like this really were rare. Whether it had been his mentor, or Artoria and Skadi, by the time they met Sakura and Caren, the two girls had already grown into adults capable of standing on their own.
Now, within the Singularity, they were seeing Sakura and Caren still young, still inexperienced. As Shiomi's partners, it was only natural that a bit of curiosity would arise—a desire to see what it felt like to get along with children and play with them like this.
Since he hadn't had any strong objections to begin with, once he understood, Shiomi simply settled down. He leaned against the table and watched Morgan peel her orange at an unhurried pace.
She was attempting to remove the peel in one continuous piece while keeping the fruit itself intact.
Staring at her hands as she worked, Shiomi gradually felt his tension melt away.
The television filled the room with the sharp impact sounds of the fighting game. With Scáthach and the others accompanying them, Sakura and the rest alternated between stubborn shouts of refusal to lose and carefree, happy laughter.
Amidst all that liveliness, the noise slowly wove itself into a kind of harmony. Shiomi's mind naturally grew empty, and his eyelids began to droop.
"Want some?" Morgan asked.
Noticing his gaze fixed on the peeled orange, she broke off a segment and fed it to him.
Already half-asleep, Shiomi jolted slightly at being fed like that. He shook his head faintly, the fruit still held between his lips.
Morgan leaned in again and reclaimed the piece he hadn't swallowed.
Shiomi was left speechless, unsure how he was supposed to feel about that.
"If you're tired, you can go to sleep first," Touko said. "There's no need to force yourself to stay up with everyone else. It's already past eleven—normally, you'd be in bed by now."
"No, I'm fine," Shiomi said, propping his chin up with one hand. "I just suddenly feel this hard-to-describe sense of relaxation. Not thinking about anything, not doing anything, just sitting here and letting time slip by."
As he spoke, he lay down, resting his head on Morgan's thigh and wrapping his arms around her waist.
"You really are completely relaxed, aren't you?" Touko clicked her tongue lightly and reached out, idly stroking Shiomi's soft hair.
"Ah… are you dissatisfied because I'm not sleeping in your arms, Touko?" Shiomi teased in a muffled voice, though he made no move to distribute his attention more evenly.
Touko propped her chin on one hand and turned to look at Shiomi, eyes closed as he lay in Morgan's embrace.
"I wouldn't get worked up over something like that. What I'm more curious about is whether, deep down, you actually want to see a scene where we fight over you."
"...Don't say things that terrifying…"
Shiomi shuddered. "...I tried imagining it for just a moment, and if it really came to that, the world would probably face a crisis no less severe than the Bleaching of human order. That would be a truly unforgivable sin on my part."
"Honestly, why does your imagination run that far?" Morgan said, unable to hold back a laugh.
Fighting over him wasn't something Morgan found objectionable.
But there was no need for it in reality.
Because he was right here, unmistakably hers—and theirs.
"The world of Magecraft is also a world of imagination. Without enough imagination, you can't create anything truly new," Touko said, smoothly shifting the topic.
It was precisely that imagination and creativity that had allowed her to create puppets whose Mystery surpassed their era.
"But you know," Shiomi said, "when you do things, you don't really care about things like equivalent exchange, trouble, or money, do you? I think you once said that just to recreate a pizza you saw on TV, you used up three chickens and a whole cow, and in the end you only got a single pizza out of it."
That was Touko's way of doing things. Results mattered more to her than the process.
It had been the same with the Twin Towers incident. To achieve the result of "obtaining the foundation of the Primordial Runes," she'd accepted BB's temptation and challenged Shiomi directly.
She hadn't even bothered thinking about how to win. She'd just fought him head-on.
"These days, I don't waste things to that extent," Touko said with a laugh. "If you want to eat it, I could try using the inn's kitchen."
"Let's spare the inn," Shiomi said, gesturing lightly. "I'd rather not have it show up in the Human Order Foundation Value as having lost a bunch of supplies. Cooking isn't really your strong suit anyway. I'll make it for you."
"Speaking of the Human Order Foundation Value," Touko shot back with a smile as she withdrew her hand, "aren't you being rather extravagant with 'your past self's money' right now too?"
Morgan set down the orange she still hadn't finished peeling.
"Extravagant? It was our money to begin with. It's just a question of when we use it, isn't it?"
"Hey…" Shiomi couldn't help but protest.
"That way of thinking really does suit Aoko… no, I suppose it suits the Fifth Magic," Touko said, shaking her head.
Morgan raised an eyebrow slightly.
"You once fought your younger sister, the one who inherited the Fifth Magic. Is that perspective something you arrived at from that experience?"
"You could call it understanding," Touko replied, her expression growing a touch more academic as she looked at Morgan. "Since we have such a rare opportunity, let me ask you something personal. By making use of the peculiar nature of the Lostbelt and two thousand years' worth of magical energy, you recreated the Third Magic to save his soul after it was tainted by a sacrificial god's curse. When you touched the Root during that process, what did you feel?"
"Nothing at all," Morgan answered. "Especially after learning that Magus throughout Proper Human History exhausted countless generations of their lives just to pursue that thing. Knowing that only reinforced the feeling."