No matter how she looked at it, Soga Yura just couldn't get over the unfairness of it all.
Why was it that whenever Tsukiyomi Fuya addressed Yuzu, she called her plainly "Yuzu"—but when it came to addressing her, it suddenly became "Little Yura"?
But——
Judging from the reactions of the other girls, none of them seemed the least bit surprised.
Soga Yura's gaze slid in turn across Yuzu beside her, then Akiyama Yo, then Sakura Mai.
And then... after it landed on Saotome Yukina and Tsukiyomi Fuya—a pairing that could only be called a clash of the titans—she was utterly defeated.
The girl's lips puckered into a pout; in the end, the only one who got hurt was herself.
Why, oh why!
They were twins, born of the same birth, and yet... and yet why was there such a gulf between herself and Yuzu?
Yuzu was so full-figured... so soft...
She had never laid eyes on Mother / Mrs. Sakai in person.
But going by the photographs, Yuzu had flawlessly inherited Mother / Mrs. Sakai's superb genes.
Whereas she herself... was practically like a foundling picked up off the street.
Soga Yura pursed her lips, and over in [Operator Development], the Soga Yura Q-version chibi went so far as to have its very eyes morph into a sobbing, whimpering, poached-egg-shaped display of exaggerated facial theatrics.
She could only console herself inwardly.
So... so what if Yuzu had snatched away every last bit of the potential in that department!
In the end, the one who got to enjoy it would still be herself.
Night gradually drew in.
Beneath the veil of night, the seawater was rising with the tide.
The black waves slapped against the jagged, interlocking tidal wall, leaving fine white foam on the even darker reefs and concrete pillars.
Akiyama Yo and her colleagues were professional researchers.
They had carefully surveyed the extent to which the tide would rise, and confirmed that—barring landslides or tsunamis—the embankment where they were stationed could absolutely never be swallowed by the waves.
The girls had only to sit at the dainty white table and chairs, watching the tide surge up, and then enjoy a fairly decent dinner.
Turning to gaze back toward the direction of the Tokyo metropolitan area.
In the night... one could faintly make out the brilliant blaze of the great metropolis in the distance.
Su Yuzu was struck, unexpectedly, by a serene sensation of gazing upon an entire civilization amid the dusk.
Because there was so much data to be observed,
and in order to avoid too many parameters interfering with it—while at the same time avoiding drawing the attention of large numbers of Catastrophe Beasts or Aberrants—this stretch of the mobile research campus had only a sparse few warm-colored lamps lit.
Enough to see the road by, to see the lost crickets that bounced now and then among the reefs, to see the small crabs with their brightly colored red shells scuttling nimbly sideways past.
Yet not so much as to be glaring.
Su Yuzu was cutting into the crust of her pizza.
She suddenly lifted her head and gazed out toward the sea.
"What's wrong?" Soga Yura—the one who paid the most attention to Su Yuzu, and between whom the bond was also the closest—was the first to notice the girl's odd behavior.
"I get the feeling..."
"Like there's something watching us?"
Su Yuzu gazed out toward the direction of the sea.
Beneath the night, the pitch-black waves slapped out fragmented sounds along with the rising tide.
With her superb eyesight, Su Yuzu searched for any anomaly that might exist in the dark of night.
But the girl still failed to catch sight of anything out of the ordinary.
That gaze, hidden away within the darkness, seemed to vanish the moment the girl's guard went up.
Drawing her woolen overcoat tighter about herself, Tsukiyomi Fuya rose to her feet and gazed out toward the direction of the sea.
Under the glow of the warm-colored lantern swaying in the sea breeze, the lines of the woman's bare calves beneath her woolen overcoat shimmered with a faint warm light, lustrous to the point of dazzling.
Tsukiyomi Fuya knitted her brows.
At the very moment Yuzu sensed someone watching her... she herself felt nothing out of the ordinary at all.
Tsukiyomi Fuya did not for a moment suspect that the girl might simply be too sensitive.
The girls of the Soga clan were all remarkably excellent mental-type Espers.
Though... Yuzu's ability seemed to be nothing more than the most ordinary Psychokinesis.
But Tsukiyomi Fuya still chose to believe Su Yuzu unconditionally.
After searching to no avail, Tsukiyomi Fuya could only sit back down, hugging the cat blanket the girl had already given her.
In truth, Tsukiyomi Fuya was not the sort of person who liked small animals.
Compared to cats, she preferred rabbits or hamsters.
Because the mere thought of those pesky little animals throwing her observatory into utter chaos was already enough to give Tsukiyomi Fuya a headache.
Rather than vigorously taking in a pet on impulse, only to discover all its many troublesome aspects afterward and come to regret it, Tsukiyomi Fuya chose to nip the very idea of keeping one in the bud from the outset.
But... if there were a girl who could help her take good care of a cat,
then having a cat curled up obediently in her lap while she worked might not be such a bad thing after all.
Perhaps she ought to give it some thought—taking on a couple of graduate students.
It never once occurred to Tsukiyomi Fuya to wonder what it might be like, apart from a cat lying obediently in her lap, to have a girl lying in her lap instead...
Still,
it would probably be rather nice as well.
"It's probably just something from the sea coming out——" Tsukiyomi Fuya said breezily, light as drifting clouds.
"The object of our investigation this time was this very bay to begin with... wasn't it?"
"Judging from the earlier monitoring data, ever since that last great earthquake, the bay's Aberrant aura has been completely thrown into disorder."
Tsukiyomi Fuya fixed her gaze toward the direction of Tokyo Bay.
"The ocean..."
"For humankind, it has always been something akin to a taboo."
"Even to this day, humans dare not sail by night."
"But if it's merely an investigation... there shouldn't be too many problems."
She looked at the several girls before her.
"The reason the academy dispatched you all here..."
"Apart from the intent to temper and train you... there's another very important reason, and that is that the chaotic Aberrant aura of the nighttime ocean is far too heavy a burden for ordinary Espers to bear."
"Only mental-type Espers, or... special Espers like Student Sakura who have a certain resistance to mental-type abilities, can properly withstand the interference the Edge of Aberration / Abyss inflicts upon you."
"But mental-type Espers tend to be rather frail in constitution——" Tsukiyomi Fuya cast a glance at Soga Yura.
Soga Yura understood as well.
The main force of this operation was, in fact, Yuzu and Sakura Mai.
But the little rabbit suddenly went blank for a moment.
If that was the case... then why was her own name on that list?
Wouldn't it have been better to bring Student Lyudmila along?
If the little rabbit had known that the fundamental reason Sakura Mai had picked her rather than Lyudmila was... that Sakura Mai wasn't actually all that familiar with Lyudmila, and had always harbored a few suspicions about her—would she have blurted out a cheer of "hooray"?
It was precisely because of this comedy of errors that she was able to appear here in Lyudmila's place.
"Have you all noticed?" Tsukiyomi Fuya turned her head to look toward the black bay.
"Noticed what?"
"There's no fog——"
"..." As though recalling something, Su Yuzu was suddenly on her guard.
"It's the time of the sunset high tide..."
"And yet no white fog has risen over the sea's surface—that fog which, ever since humanity first observed the descent of the Catastrophe Beasts, has perpetually shrouded the nighttime ocean."
The girls turned in unison to look out at the sea.
Beneath the night, the bay's tide surged turbulently, yet there was not the faintest wisp of fog.
It was as though... it had all been devoured by something.
Whoosh——
The sound of the tide welled up.
Dark golden vertical pupils, beneath the water, gazed faintly and silently toward the base lit with its warm-colored lamps.
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