The way she saw it, the Higher-ups gained nothing from this. If anything, it would drain manpower, resources, and money. Getting sincere backing out of them wouldn't come easy.
Even ventures that paid well got stalled and shuffled around when the payoff wasn't big enough. Something with no return at all would never get off the ground.
"Depends on whether they still want to learn magic."
He waved it away, certainty behind it, a smile pulling at one corner of his mouth.
He wasn't the one asking for favors. They were.
In an age overrun by Gastrea, in a world this dangerous, who wouldn't want real power in their hands? To protect themselves, or grab more control? And what he taught was exactly what those men lay awake wanting.
Kisara read the confidence on him and let it drop, giving a small nod. He'd clearly worked it out already. Adding more would be noise.
"That reminds me. Tomorrow the government's calling in every Civil Security company in Tokyo for a meeting. Word is they're handing down something big."
Her eyes brightened as it came back to her, and she turned to him. "Are you coming, Gojo? With you there we might land a better assignment."
"That thing?"
He scratched his head, hesitated, then shook it. "I'll pass. Seitenshi brought it up today. She gave me the gist of what it's about."
"What?"
Kisara set her cup down and slid closer, questions tumbling out. "Spill it. What's the assignment? Is it serious? Does it pay?"
For a Civil Security company, taking jobs was business. Whoever got the intel first got the edge.
At minimum you could judge, ahead of the competition, whether a job was worth taking, how dangerous it was, and what came back for it.
"Something vital to Tokyo's survival went missing. A Stage 4 Gastrea carried it off."
He said it lazily, reaching for another piece of dessert, flat as a weather report. "They're pulling the companies together to hunt the thing down, kill it, and get the item back. And that Gastrea is the same infected source Rentaro and I ran into the day we met."
Rentaro stiffened, his brows drawing tight as he sank into the memory.
Their first meeting had started as a misunderstanding and turned into an argument, and afterward everything else had piled up until investigating that infected source stopped being an option.
He'd written it off as an ordinary Stage 4 Gastrea. Nothing about it had hinted at layers like this, let alone at the fate of the city.
"Hang on, that's got to be an exaggeration."
Kisara frowned, hands going to her hips, thoroughly unconvinced. "What does 'vital to Tokyo's survival' even mean? The city's enormous. We have security forces everywhere, Initiators and Promoters. What object could possibly threaten all of it?"
She turned it over, sifting through every secret and rumor she'd brushed against growing up, and came up with nothing that fit. However long she worked at it, her mind stayed blank.
"I'm not clear on it either. Seitenshi said it has something to do with the legacy of Nanase Village."
He spread his hands. He didn't have much more than that.
"The legacy of Nanase Village?"
She repeated it under her breath, more confused than before, then looked over at Rentaro, still lost in thought. "Rentaro, have you ever heard of it? Maybe something from an old job?"
He surfaced slowly, thought it through, and shook his head. "Never heard of Nanase Village. No idea about any legacy either. It's not something I know anything about."
Gojo's eyes went to Sumire, silent in her seat. Her head was down, fingers twisting the hem of her clothes, something complicated working across her face. She knew. And she wasn't offering.
He let it go rather than push her.
"The government will probably lay out the details at your meeting tomorrow."
"Speaking of tomorrow, if you're all sitting in a meeting, the 39th Area is off, isn't it?"
He looked at Rentaro. They'd agreed to go see those children together.
"Right. The timing doesn't work. The meeting runs straight over it."
Rentaro nodded, apologetic, though he looked considerably better than he had the day before. A faint smile had returned to his face. He'd climbed out from under whatever had been sitting on him.
"No problem. We'll go once you're free."
Gojo brushed it off, unbothered. As long as those children got help, a few days made no difference.
Dinner wound down over easy conversation. The dishes came back empty, and everyone looked comfortable.
Aii's arrival meant Sumire, who'd been staying here, had to spend the night over at Rentaro's place.
The girl was new here and didn't know any of them. Leaving her alone among strangers would have unsettled her.
Sumire didn't care in the slightest. She'd never been one to keep score, and one bed was as good as another.
She didn't leave after dinner, though. She doubled back, walked to his door, and knocked.
"Something wrong, Miss Muroto?"
He was sitting on the edge of the bed working through the ice cream that had been delivered that day, sprawled and unhurried. Her appearance drew a puzzled look.
"If you're after the bathroom, Betty and Aii are in there. Going to be a while."
He pointed with his spoon, then dug out another mouthful, the cold spreading across his tongue until his eyes narrowed with it. "There's more ice cream in the freezer if you want some. Every flavor. Help yourself."
"I thought you'd ask me about the legacy of Nanase Village the second we got back."
She ignored all of that, crossed to the window, and stood with her back to him. Her voice gave away nothing.
"You didn't look like someone who wanted to bring it up. So I didn't ask."
He smiled, understanding in it. She had reasons for keeping it buried. "Besides, a handsome guy shouldn't come on too strong. Some restraint is important."
"That's not it."
She shook her head slowly and turned around. Something dark sat behind her eyes, weighted and tired, and her voice dropped with it. "Some things do nothing but pile worry onto people like Rentaro. Telling them helps nobody. It might put them in danger."
"You knowing how bad this is stands a better chance of going somewhere. You're the one who could actually deal with it."
His spoon stopped. The grin faded, replaced by something studying her closely.
Whatever came next wasn't going to be simple. It might rearrange what he thought he knew about this world.
"Congratulations, Miss Muroto. You've got my attention."
He set the carton aside and leaned forward, teasing on the surface, serious underneath. "So I'll carve a little out of my precious dessert appreciation hours and hear all about what this legacy of Nanase Village is, and what it's hiding."
Sumire rolled her eyes, the exasperation plain.
She understood now why that small blonde girl who followed him everywhere wore the same expression so often.
The man had a talent for saying things that were irritating and impossible to argue with, delivering the gravest matters in a tone better suited to picking a restaurant.
She was quiet for a moment, then reached into her pocket and produced a pack of slim cigarettes and a small lighter, the movement easy from long practice.
"Mind if I smoke in here?"
The room belonged to him. Some consideration was owed.
"Don't mind at all. Used to the smell long ago."
He waved it off, then paused as something occurred to him. "Secondhand smoke's bad for kids, though. Betty and Aii are still in the bathroom. Let's take it to the balcony."
Standing, he collected the half-finished ice cream carton to serve as an ashtray and headed for the door.
She followed him out onto the narrow balcony.
The lighter cracked, and a blue flame leapt up and caught the end of her cigarette.
Smoke curled around her fingers and unraveled fast in the cool night air, blurring her face.
She held the thin cigarette between two fingers and tapped ash into the carton he held out, eyes on the skyline, her expression adrift and unreadable.
Tokyo at night had gone quiet under the shadow of the Gastrea, but scattered lights still burned in the distance, sketching the shape of the city and somehow making it lonelier.
"Do you know why I walked away from the New Human Creation Plan? I ran the whole thing."
Her voice came out low and rough, exhaustion running underneath it, and something closer to despair, the sound of a story that had been sealed away a long time.
"No idea."
He leaned against the railing and spooned up more ice cream, calm, asking nothing. He let her have the space.
Whatever this was, it had left a deep scar. Opening it would hurt.
"In the beginning I knew about as much about Gastrea as anyone else does."
She drew hard on the cigarette, held it, let it out, her gaze drifting somewhere far off. "I was a researcher and nothing more. Structure, genetics, maybe a little deeper than most. All of it aimed at finding a way to fight them."
"The further I went, the more the origin of the Gastrea Virus started to bother me."
"It arrived out of nowhere. No warning at all. It erupted across the entire world at once, swept over everything, killed people beyond counting, and left the world in ruins."
"Plenty of academics floated theories back then."
"Some claimed it was an ancient virus sleeping under the ice, released when the glaciers melted."
"Others said it rode in on a meteorite. A gift from somewhere out past the sky."
"And some called it nature punishing us."