"Replacing the people in charge changes part of the picture. But ordinary people only hate these kids, only push them away, because they're afraid. I can't exactly kill off most of the human race, can I?"
Satoru reached out and ran a hand over Betty's small head. There was something resigned in his voice, and underneath it, something that didn't allow for argument.
"So I thought about it, and I decided the place to start is the Cursed Children themselves."
"If they can be made harmless, if they can never turn into Gastrea again, then the most immediate threat to ordinary people disappears."
"Whatever's left after that, the prejudice, the disgust that came from the Gastrea, we can mend slowly."
"It's the only way I can see to solve this at the root."
He paused, and his gaze hardened. "Otherwise, even I'd find this a tough one."
"We're passing through this world, that's all. However long we stay here, it won't be long enough."
"Maybe while we're here we can shelter these kids. Give them warmth. Give them safety."
"But what happens when we leave?"
"I don't want to let them feel warmth and then shove them back into the freezing dark, make them carry all that suffering and rejection a second time."
Betty listened without speaking, and something too serious for her small face settled onto it.
She'd always known what he was. Lazy on the surface, flippant, never taking anything seriously, and underneath all of it a stubborn tenderness he refused to admit to. He acted like nothing mattered to him, then quietly stood between the people who needed help and everything that wanted to hurt them.
A long while passed before she muttered, and the grudging approval in her voice was almost too faint to catch, "A grand ambition, I suppose."
"Not that Betty has any interest in it."
Her tone flipped back to its usual prickliness. She fixed him with a stare, and there was a warning riding under it. "The rest of them can do whatever they like. But if you ever pull a stunt like today's again, going off alone, Betty will never forgive you."
"All right, all right, message received."
Both hands went up in surrender. A placating grin spread across his face as he swore, "I promise. No more reckless nonsense. I'll tell you beforehand next time, deal?"
Looking at that shameless smile, most of the heat drained out of her. She let out a small huff and turned her head away, refusing to look at him, but the complaints stopped.
The red had faded from his eyes and his voice had slid back into its familiar drawl, and the cluster of children who'd finished their examinations finally let themselves relax. They swarmed around Aii, chattering over each other, the open delight back on their faces. Someone grabbed her hand and the whole group went pelting off toward the empty stretch of ground to keep playing.
Noise filled the yard again. Bright laughter chased off whatever tension had been hanging there.
Off to the side, Sumire had just finished examining the last of the children and was squaring away the records when the commotion reached her, along with the children's chatter.
The phrase "Satoru's infected with the Gastrea Virus" landed like a stone in her chest. She dropped the files and broke into a run.
She moved fast enough that sweat beaded along her hairline, her face tight with alarm, one thought crowding out everything else. He couldn't be in danger. Not just because he was her employer, the one who'd handed her the funding and the freedom to research. He carried too many secrets, and his strength ran past anything she could measure. If the Gastrea Virus ate through him and turned him, the results didn't bear thinking about.
And somewhere beneath that, she suspected he might be the key to the virus itself.
"I heard you were infected?"
She skidded to a halt in front of him, breathing hard, the question out before anything else. Her eyes swept over him, cataloging.
"No, no. The kids just misunderstood."
He waved it off, easy, without a trace of concern, as though the person under discussion had been someone else entirely.
Then he extended his hand toward her, palm up, a secretive smile playing at his mouth. "Actually, I think you should examine me too."
"It'll help you understand what's going on with me. Should be useful for your research later."
"Understand?"
Her brows drew together. She didn't follow. He wasn't infected, so why insist on a test?
The confusion didn't slow her down. She spun on her heel and hurried off for her equipment. Any anomaly connected to the Gastrea Virus was worth studying, and an anomaly in him doubly so.
Measuring corrosion rate was simple enough. One drop of blood into the analyzer, a few minutes' wait, and the number appeared.
She was back quickly, drawing out a fine needle and pricking his fingertip. A bead of red welled up. She transferred it into the machine with careful hands and then locked her eyes on the display, expectation and bafflement warring across her face.
Satoru, Betty, and Aii crowded in to watch. Betty's worry hadn't quite left her; Aii just looked curious, eager to see what the machine would say.
Minutes crawled by. Then a soft chime.
"Ten percent."
Sumire stared at the figure, her expression twisting. Her brows knotted tighter. "That's not possible," she murmured.
She remembered yesterday clearly. She'd seen him then and he'd been perfectly normal, eyes and all, nothing out of place.
Which meant that twenty-four hours ago there had been no trace of the virus in him. Clean.
And now the readout claimed ten percent corrosion.
Something was badly off.
An ordinary person hit with ten percent all at once would have been overrun, reduced to a mindless Gastrea. Even someone with a stronger constitution would be flat on their back with a raging fever, unconscious, drained of strength. Nobody walked away from that with nothing but red eyes and a lazy grin.
"Is my equipment broken?"
She picked up the analyzer and gave it a light smack, frowning at it. She'd never seen anything like this, and the only explanation she could reach for was a malfunction.
He leaned over to glance at the reading, still perfectly relaxed. "That number fluctuates, doesn't it?"
She nodded, though she sounded uncertain. "The variance is small. Small enough that the reading's reliable. If you want something more precise, though, you'd need a full workup on a proper machine."
"No problem." He waved a hand, confidence radiating off him. "Test me again in a bit. See if you get the same result."
The certainty in his face only deepened her confusion. "The way you're acting, it's like you've got some kind of surprise waiting for me."
"You're not wrong."
His smile turned mysterious. "It is a surprise. And it won't disappoint you."
She hesitated, then nodded. She'd play along. She wanted to see what this so-called surprise amounted to.
Ten minutes went by.
She drew a second drop, loaded it, and watched the screen. This time there was anticipation mixed into her nerves.
The result came back.
Ten percent.
Sumire's mind went blank. She stared at the number, eyes wide, disbelief written across her face, seriously doubting her own instrument now.
Impossible. Ten minutes and the corrosion rate hadn't shifted by a fraction? That ran against everything the virus did. Corrosion either climbed, or Suppressants slowed the climb. It never sat still like a stone.
To rule out a fault, she called toward the children playing nearby.
"Aii, come here a second. Would you help me with something?"
Aii stopped mid-game and trotted over, that guileless smile on her face. "Sure. What do you need, Miss Sumire?"
Sumire stroked her hair, gentling her voice. "I'd like to test your corrosion rate again. Is that all right?"
"Okay!"
She nodded and held out one small hand.
The draw took seconds. Sumire loaded the sample and silently begged the machine to behave.
A few minutes later the result appeared.
"Thirty-eight point five six four percent."
Three decimal places. She let out a breath, and the confusion thickened.
"There's nothing wrong with it. The machine's fine."
She said it half to herself and sank into thought.
The instrument worked. Aii's reading was precise and entirely normal. So why did his come back at ten percent twice running, without a hair of variation?
She lifted her head and jabbed a finger at the screen, at both identical readings, her voice rising.
"But why? Why is your result ten percent both times, without the slightest change?"
Watching her wind herself toward the edge, he let a smug grin spread and didn't answer. He just beamed at her.
"Well? Are you satisfied with the surprise?"
"Surprise?"
Her brows pulled down, exasperated. "You call this a surprise? I haven't figured anything out. There's nothing to be surprised about..."
She grumbled and gave the analyzer another irritated pat. The confusion had knotted itself into something she couldn't untangle.
Then, mid-sentence, she stopped.
Her head snapped up. Her eyes found him, and something sharp flashed behind them, like a door swinging open.
"Surprise... a surprise..."
She repeated the word, gaze unfocused, tearing back through the details at speed.
He wasn't infected, yet he registered ten percent corrosion.
The rate held at ten percent. No fluctuation. No side effects.
He'd called it a power he'd acquired, the same as the Ten Shadows Technique.
And earlier he'd told her to study him, to see whether the enhancement could be replicated, whether it could free the Cursed Children from their corrosion rates.
The pieces linked together one after another, and a reckless theory took shape.
What finally broke it open for her was the line he'd given her before. I'm only trying to acquire this power.
Her body went rigid. Her eyes went wide and fixed on him, and her voice shook with excitement as she asked, careful, barely daring:
"You... you're not infected. You've mastered the Gastrea Virus?"
"Just... just like you said before?"
Her heart slammed against her ribs, her breathing gone shallow and quick.