Sakuya finally opened the door, her expression a mask of neutrality, but her eyes promising a very, very long, detailed lecture on decorum at a later date.
Nowa entered with a casual air, as if the previous minute had never happened. She stepped aside without a word. Every ounce of her being was focused on the monumental task of not smacking him on the head right then and there.
Remilia greeted him. "Ah, Mr. Beckitzer, so glad you could finally join us!" She gestured to the vacant chair opposite her. "Please, have a seat."
"Thank ya," he said, offering a lazy two-fingered salute before slouching into the indicated chair, the pink crocs starkly visible against the dark, polished floor that made Patchouli's eyes twitch.
His gaze drifts over the assembled group before landing back on Remilia. 'How to not butcher anyone's title and hierarchy? Just don't mention their name at all.'
"So," he stated. "What's the occasion?"
As he spoke, Sakuya took her place behind her mistress's shoulder, her quiet, intense glare into Nowa's.
Remilia gestured elegantly to the artifacts on the table. "The 'occasion' is a shared curiosity. It seems you've left some fascinating puzzles in your wake."
Before the words had fully settled, Patchouli pointed a finger at the recipe.
"This. Explain the metaphysical principle behind its continued existence. It was conjured, yet it possesses a self-sustaining conceptual 'life.' How?" She immediately shifted her aim to the revolver. "And this runic language is non-existent. It defies all standard decipher protocols and predates all languages within my library. What is its foundational grammar?"
"Chillax, one question at a time," Nowa smirked, but he leaned forward. His gaze swept over the table, briefly pausing on his own shed obsidian feather before locking onto the revealed runes of the revolver. "What I conjure is real. Permanently, for example. You wrote something, and that something was transported to your layer of existence. It now shares a similar existence as the rest but felt by only heightened senses or magical search of whatever its otherworldlyness. That's why it feels 'alive' to your senses. It is."
His gaze shifted towards Patchouli, then dryly chuckled, a note of genuine appreciation. "Impressive, Miss Rune Lover. You managed to break the rune concealer. How?"
A small, victorious smirk touched Patchouli's lips. "It required the entirety of my concentration across multiple tome sessions to lock-pick this artifact of yours, Mr. Beckitzer." Her expression returned to a deadpan. "Now, explain the foundational grammar." Her finger glided over the cold metal, tracing the ancient, swirling symbols.
"Mana usage, control, purpose, self-ammunition, multi-ammo type, wielder adapter," Nowa listed off, his tone matter-of-fact. But there was an unmistakable, proud glint in his eyes. "And lastly, a unique skill: Bullet Inverter." All while his thoughts are, 'More skill, depending on who wields it. It connects directly to the wielder adapter that I won't be bothered to explain all the mechanisms of my Zweiwar.'
The librarian's assistant gasped softly at the intricate functions, but Patchouli, deadpan as ever, pressed on. " 'Bullet Inverter.' Define the actual thing. Does it rewind the projectile's direction, or does it manipulate probability to create a new, successful trajectory?"
Sakuya, connecting her earlier observation, asked, "The energy requirement for permanent mass-energy creation and such sophisticated runic scripting must be enormous, is it not? What is the fuel source? It cannot just be ambient mana."
Nowa looked from Sakuya to Patchouli and sighed. "It's just a lot of mana, really," while in his private thoughts, 'I'm too tired to re-explain all of quantum physics and metaphysics at once. The water-wheel analogy I gave Reimu and Marisa was already enough to summarize it, dammit. Shut the fuck up already, woman, ask me something other than what I can do.'
Patchouli muttered in a deadpan. "That doesn't answer anything, Mr. Beckitzer."
"Then when I used it during the chase," Sakuya countered, "it did not draw on my mana. It just fired with immense force, as if I were wielding a cannon."
Nowa met her gaze. "It is linked to me. That is why it is a symbiosis craft to begin with. The cost is mine."
Remilia's voice was deceptively light. "To create something truly permanent... that is a power that touches the domain of gods and the fundamentals of reality itself. Yet you wield it for things like pizza and recipes. Why? What happened to make you treat such a divine gift as... a mundane tool?"
Nowa held Remilia's gaze, the room falling into a heavy silence. The smirk, the sarcasm, disappeared from his face, leaving only a raw, weary honesty.
"...A divine gift?" he finally said. "Tsk. This is a god-forbid gift. If it was a gift at all." He leaned back in his chair. "These words are not aimed at you," he clarified, though his eyes held a distant anger, "but to the god who forcibly gave it to me five years ago." A long pause. "...I could not find that fucking god after that to give it back."
The librarian's assistant was visibly shaken, her hands pressed over her mouth.
Sakuya's anger evaporated, replaced with a cold understanding. The puzzle pieces snapped into place. His lack of self-preservation, his refusal to be called "Master", it all makes sense. He sees himself as a cursed object, not a person.
Remilia's eyes widened slightly, not in shock, but in fascination. This was the tragic core of the story she had been waiting for. She leaned forward, her voice a whisper of expertly feigned empathy.
"And in your search for this... absent god... what did you lose along the way?"
Nowa paused for a long moment, the silence stretching tight. Inside, his mind was a storm.
'...More hell… stubborn evil… and despicable gods… For five years there was nothing but solitary, constant walking… Saving world after world… Constant battle after another, ever since the aftermath of my crusade at age twenty-eight… All I ever did was to atone for what I've done and make use of the remaining years I only had left… And now, at thirty, this god-forbid entity gave me this... cruel joke of a gift. The 50ms Author… This is bullshit… It should have been given to me when I was fourteen. I wouldn't be here if it was. Everything that happened wouldn't happen if it was the power I received at fourteen… They would still be alive with this absolute reality control... Not just this Voidflame, this god-forbid innate ability...'
He looked down briefly, unable to form an answer to Remilia's question. The pain was too heavy, the loss too vast to put into words.
Then, he looked up, his eyes deliberately skipping over Remilia's gaze and Patchouli's stare. He fixed his sight on the safest, least threatening person in the room, the flustered girl with small wings.
His voice was deliberately casual, a stark contrast to the heavy silence he had just created. He pointed a lazy finger at the small-winged girl.
"You. Who are you anyway?"
The librarian's assistant jumped, startled at being directly addressed after such a heavy moment.
A slow, knowing smile spread across Remilia's lips. She recognized the deflection for what it was: a confirmation that she had struck the motherlode. She gracefully changed the subject.
"Ah, where are our manners? This is—"
"I-I'm Koakuma! I'm Lady Patchouli's assistant!" she squeaked, bowing frantically.
Nowa waved a lazy hand, the gesture building his defensive walls back up brick by brick. "Koakuma, huh. There's no need for title exchanges." He tilts his head. "Ko. Koa." A pause. "Seems like the right name, Koa."
"K-Koa?" Koakuma blinks.
"Unless you prefer something else. Bookie. Inkhands. Little Red." He waves a hand vaguely. "Your pick."
Patchouli's eyes narrowed. "She is my assistant. Not a stray you can rename on a whim."
"I already got a name!" Koakuma puffs her chest slightly, then immediately deflates. "B-But Koa is fine, I guess..."
Remilia's smile curved. "How quickly you fold, little assistant."
Koakuma's face reddened. "Lady Remilia, please!" She then returned her gaze to him. "Um... Mr. Beckitzer? Can I ask a question?"
"Shoot."
"When you looked at the feather earlier... you looked really sad. Why?"
The room went still. Koakuma shrank under the sudden attention. "I-I'm sorry, that was—!"
"No." Nowa's voice was quieter now. "Don't apologize. It's a fair question." He glanced at the feather. "I don't know what I am. That thing grew out of me. That's the whole answer. I'm just as lost as everyone else."
Koakuma blinked. "Oh."
He then snapped his fingers.
In an instant, without a shimmer of light, his knee-length pants and pink crocs were seamlessly replaced by the attire he wore when he first arrived: dark leather boots and long dark-grey pants, now paired with his white sweater as he stood up.
All eyes were awestruck. Patchouli instantly stood up, her composure shattered by sheer wonder. "What did you just do? There was no conjuring, no chanting, no noticeable power flux!"
Nowa's smirk returned, full and confident. "The power of Framework Rune craft." He let the term hang in the air. "I crafted my clothes to fit my needs at any moment. Especially the jacket I gave that saved your Time-Keeper's life." But in his thoughts were, 'my jacket was a gift to begin with. I just repurposed it into battle's need… It is what it is.'
His gaze flicked to Sakuya. "A one-man army requires all the anti-meta-build, after all. It has defensive runes, but I usually don't activate them. But good thing it was there to begin with. You people would've lost her."
Sakuya met his gaze, and that imperceptible smile, a blend of deep respect and profound gratitude. "I see," she said. "That explains why it was so impossibly hard to wash the blood off from your jacket."
Nowa waved a lazy hand as he turned to leave towards the door.
"Wait!" Patchouli's voice rang out, halting him mid-stride. She pointed a finger at the shed black feather lying beside the revolver. "This feather has null energy embedded in it when I analyze it. Explain the presence of null energy."
Nowa paused, his back to them. He glanced over his shoulder. "Like I said," he stated, "is the only thing I do not know. Either I'm a bird, or something else. Who knows. But my DNA says I'm human." He finally met her eyes, and in that fleeting contact, there was a silent plea buried beneath the cynicism. "So I'd appreciate it if you could learn more about that feather for me."
He walked back to the table. He held out his empty hand. There was no shimmer, no chant, no runic glow, neither Framework rune nor his 50ms Author. The air simply conceded. An ordinary long iron sword manifested into his grip.
Patchouli stared, her mind short-circuiting. "What is this…? There's no mana... no anything... it just appeared."
"I just discovered that at the age of twenty," Nowa said as he lifted the sword a little bit more. "That I happened to be able to will it into existence. I tried other items and concepts via the same will method. Nothing goes, just this sword for some reason. And also this,"
He bent the sword tip. Then he dismissed the sword. He willed it again.
"The bent-up part is still there?" Patchouli asked as she pointed at the sword.
"Yeah, no matter how many times I will it into existence, this sword remains with its damage or whatever happened to it and is the same sword over and over."
He handed her the sword. She took it, already examining it.
"Maybe it's connected to that feather and my strange biology. Can't give it to mushroom kid either, I doubt she has the knowledge for it."
With that, he turned his back on them and stepped through the door. Before he closed the door.
"I'm just going for a walk. For fresh air, of course."
And then he was gone.
In the silence he left behind, Remilia's delight was palpable. She leaned back in her chair, a slow, triumphant smile spreading across her lips. Her eyes gleamed with grand, terrible designs.
'He is even more valuable than I imagined,' she thought. 'Not just a dangerous weapon, but an artisan and a living mystery. I must acquire him. Permanently. The Scarlet Devil Mansion's power and reputation will be unchallenged for eons.'
Remilia's gaze shifted from the closed door to Sakuya.
It was not a look of command, but a simple meeting of the eyes. No word was spoken; none were needed. The slight tilt of Remilia's head, the subtle shift in her posture, it was a complete and detailed set of orders written in a language only the two of them shared.
Watch him. Ensure he doesn't leave. See where he goes. Make sure he returns.
Sakuya gave a single, deep bow.
"By your will, Milady," she said.
Then turned and exited from the room, her departure as silent as the shadow at dawn.