"Gai Tsutsugami!"
Inori dropped to her knees beside King Crimson, sobbing — then whipped her head around, eyes red and blazing with grief and fury, fixing Gai in her glare.
Tears tracked down her face and glittered in the dim light. Her lips — just a touch of gloss — were pressed tight, trembling. Her voice broke through the sobs like something caught in her throat, raw and ragged, like a girl who'd just lost her father.
"I'll kill you for this! How dare you hurt Diavolo-san!"
She said it, but she didn't move.
Gai treated the words as if he hadn't heard them, as if she wasn't even there. He simply raised the gun again and aimed it at the figure on the floor — firing round after round into it without pause, not stopping until the magazine ran dry.
"No — don't — stop—"
Once Gai confirmed that Diavolo was decisively dead, he let out a long, mournful exhale.
"Inori. You're free now."
"..."
"You don't have to endure him anymore. I know he was the one who saved you — but all you ever were to him was a tool. Inori — come to my side. I'll protect you. Everyone in Funeral Parlor, they're your family."
Gai moved closer and crouched down to her level. The tight lines of his face rearranged themselves into something that approximated gentleness, and he spoke quietly.
"...Family?"
A trace of something like wonder crossed Inori's delicate face.
She'd been crying — devastated, a picture of it — but in this moment her eyes were clearing, refocusing. Her lips moved softly around the word, as if testing its weight.
Gai felt some of the tension leave him. He had genuinely feared whether Inori would go berserk after he acted. But this — the bond between her and that man clearly hadn't run as deep as she'd let on. Which made sense, really. Who would grow attached to someone who used violence against them so readily?
"That's right. From this moment, you're truly free."
He expected that to be the end of it.
It wasn't.
The world rearranged itself.
Inori was still there, still composing herself — but then the air behind her buckled and tore open. A purple crack split the space, and a fair-haired boy in white stepped through. The silver-white Void-light blazed as he reached toward Inori's chest without a word. The distance closed; an opening appeared in her chest, warm silver-white light spilling from its center. Gai lurched to his feet — and in the single blink of an eye, Inori ceased to exist where she had been.
She was simply gone, the way you delete a layer.
The boy who had ripped open the dimensional seam was equally stranded — he could only stare at his still-glowing hand. Even he, something beyond human, could not account for what had just happened. His script had been simple: reach in, remove the Void, carry the unconscious Inori back to Shuichiro Keido — who would then use her to propose to Eve, triggering the Second Lost Christmas.
"Where is she?" Yu — Da'ath's Gravekeeper — demanded, looking around.
"That's my question!" Gai pushed off the floor and leveled his gun at the newcomer. "This was not part of our arrangement. My target was Diavolo. Why go after Inori?"
"You're naïve."
Yu shook his head, a faint smile on his face, thick brows rising.
"Do you honestly believe Keido would sanction what you intended? Our original agreement — the one that was always the agreement — was for Inori Yuzuriha to lose the King's Power, because she is Eve's vessel. She cannot become Adam."
Yes: reproduction requires two sexes. For the Apocalypse Virus to fully accomplish the world's unmaking, it needed both Eve and Adam.
"You told me that removing her power was the method for freeing Inori and Mana!" Gai's composure fractured. "That is the only reason I did this!"
"Enough talk." Yu had no sympathy for the man he'd deceived. He turned and scanned the room. "Where did she go? There's nothing to hide now, Tsutsugami. I'm taking her back."
"...I don't know."
Gai's voice had hollowed out.
The guilt on his face before they'd set out — that had been real. By that point he had already reached his arrangement with Keido: he would yield the Origin Stone, and in exchange, they would cooperate in eliminating Diavolo and liberating Inori from him.
But that had always been a fantasy. Because Inori was Mana — which meant Gai's true plan had been to receive the King's Power himself, once it was removed. Just as he had always resolved: he would obtain that strength, embrace Mana again, and free her from the Virus's hold.
Diavolo's physical appearance had thrown everything off. He'd hastily renegotiated with Keido: he would kill Diavolo himself, then extract Inori's King's Power himself. But Yu's actions just now — it was obvious he had been moving to take possession of that powerful Void by taking Inori. If she was removed from the picture, Gai lost his only remaining chance.
What now?
And Diavolo — he was dead. Wasn't he?
Gai turned his head.
The body was gone.
Step. Step. Step.
From a corner of the room — clear, unhurried, precise footsteps.
"This is a trial."
A girl's voice.
Both men turned.
She had moved, during those fractured seconds, to the far side of the room — standing now by the stacked cubes, walking toward them slowly, her face lost entirely in the room's layered shadow.
Behind her: the man who should have been dead. A full magazine had been fired into him. There was no physical justification for him to be standing.
And no blood.
"I believe this is a trial — imposed on me so that I might overcome my past."
Inori kept walking. Her hands rose to her jacket zipper and pulled.
"Inori — what are you saying?"
She emerged from the cover of the retracted prisms, jacket gone, wearing only the white midriff bandeau. And behind her, "Diavolo" — for the first time in anyone else's presence — let its true form show itself.
The Void-light swept across it and receded. What remained: crimson skin, silver metallic joints, a face of silver and cold steel. It mirrored Inori's movements perfectly, every action matched. This was King Crimson's first physical manifestation in this world — the moment when even ordinary people without Stands could finally see it.
"A person can only truly grow by overcoming that childish past."
Inori spoke again — and what came out was a deep, resonant, unmistakably masculine voice.
"Isn't that right?"
"Gai — Tsu — tsu — ga — mi?"
She ended on Diavolo's register. Then, without a gap, she cut back to her own voice and called his name aloud. The instantaneous, seamless shift between two completely distinct voices — it left no room for interpretation. Her identity was bare.
She stepped back into the light.
The Funeral Parlor jacket was gone. The light caught her shoulders — pale as the first snow, seeming to gather the dim glow and return it as something luminous, a thin film of silver-white.
She tilted her chin up. Her gaze moved across both men, settling nowhere in particular — calm and stern.
For the first time, Gai felt like he was looking at a stranger. And that voice — it had been unmistakable. It was still ringing in his ears.
It was Diavolo's voice.
The understanding arrived.
Diavolo had been shot. There was no blood. Which meant Diavolo was not a person.
He was Inori's Void.
A man who had never existed. Every word, every gesture, every presence Gai had attributed to him — all of it a performance by one person. An act sustained entirely by Inori Yuzuriha, start to finish, entirely alone.