Labyrinth of the Blue Witch (11 page)

“Your cheeks are red, Kojou.”

Kojou turned his face as he spoke in a faint voice.

“That’s ’cause you’re too close.”

Yuuma gently narrowed her eyes.

“I’m glad.”

“About what…?”

“I thought you’d act exactly like you used to and wouldn’t be able to see me as a girl. I put a fair bit of work into it, you know.”

Kojou felt quite surprised at Yuuma’s unexpected confession.

“You sure caught me by surprise, though. You wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing that outfit way back.”

Yuuma’s smile seemed to carry disappointment as she slumped her shoulders. Kojou didn’t understand the reason that’d deflate her.

“Well, that’s not really true, but anyway…”

“Well, you’re you, I mean.” Kojou couldn’t think of it any other way so he just said it. “I mean, you’ve been cute since way back, Yuuma.”

For a moment, Yuuma was at a loss for words, looking at Kojou with her eyes wide open. A very lonely expression came over her. “That’s just like you, Kojou. So, for example, if I stopped being human anymore, would you be able to say the same thing?”

Kojou answered Yuuma’s joking words with a decisive declaration. “Don’t worry about that, I know lots of people who aren’t normal folks. One more ain’t gonna surprise me.”

In just the room next door was an apprentice Attack Mage from a special agency, a homunculus, and a former angel. More important than all of that, Kojou himself had become the monster known as the Fourth Primogenitor. He didn’t think Yuuma was gonna turn into anything stranger than
that
.

Yuuma murmured in visible satisfaction as she moved her hands around Kojou as if to embrace him.

“That so… This is a Demon Sanctuary after all… Now I know for sure. You really are the only one for me, Kojou.”

Kojou was in shock at the sensation conveyed by his cheek.

“…Yuuma?”

Yuuma was licking Kojou’s wound. She was licking the blood of the vampire called the Fourth Primogenitor.

Then, just like that, she pressed her own lips against Kojou’s.

“Wha…?!”

The space behind Yuuma swayed, wavering like a ripple. Something from the other side gently showed its face as if rising from the bottom of a deep lake.

It was a giant blue malevolent silhouette—

Yuuma’s voice gently echoed into Kojou’s ear.

“Now, let the festivities begin, Kojou.”

As if responding to that sweet echo’s invitation, Kojou’s consciousness gently fell into a haze, and then, deeper and deeper into the darkness…

There was once a girl who lived alone in a small castle deep in a forest.

The castle had everything she needed. It had clean rooms and an uncountable number of exquisite pieces of clothing. Her diet was completely controlled. Her compulsory education had a tightly packed curriculum. In that castle, the girl felt like even her dreams were being controlled.

The girl did not know the faces of her parents. She was separated from her mother immediately after birth and was raised by maidservants dispatched by the organization. The girl felt no emotion whatsoever when she was told she would meet her mother in a place far away once she turned sixteen.

The girl awoke at the appointed time, dressed in the appointed outfit, and went to study at the appointed school. She had no close friends; she did not think any were needed. She had been taught that school was where one learned to deceive others. Even there, the girl’s performance was perfect: Her classmates doted on her, and the teachers recognized her as an excellent, trouble-free pupil.

Then, at the appointed hour, the girl returned to the castle within the forest. Every day passed like this without a single thing going awry. They were days that passed exactly as planned—

The small tear in the seam of that plan was formed in the afternoon of a day just before summer.

A brother and sister had come into the girl’s forest to play.

They were far from perfect beings. Their skin was sunburned, their hair was disheveled, and the brother’s front teeth were missing. They argued over the smallest things, made each other cry, and then held each other’s hands, laughing as if having more fun than anyone else.

The young siblings had apparently built a secret base inside the forest. It was a grand cottage built from a discarded cardboard box and tree branches they had gathered together. It wasn’t something that should have existed on private land controlled by the organization.

However, the girl did not report it to the maidservants who administered the land, for she wanted to watch the siblings at a distance while they played.

Finally, the girl cropped off the long, beautiful hair she had been granted. It was quite some time later before she realized that she’d done it out of her fondness for the young siblings.

A short time after that, the girl exchanged words with them.

Outside the forest, when the girl just happened to be passing close to them, the brother of the two called out to her without warning.

“Hey, you! Hold my hand and don’t let go!”

“Ah…?”

When the bewildered girl firmly gripped his hand, the boy held on as he went right over the edge of a precipice. Without any idea what was going on, the girl desperately supported his body, for if she had not, it was possible she would fall right down with him. The cliff was not so high, but pointy tree branches were sticking out all over it. It was unlikely she’d escape unscathed.

Finally, the boy clawed his way back up from the precipice. His hand was gripping a small hat that had fallen below, blown away by the wind.

The boy put the dirty hat right on top of the head of his moist-eyed little sister.

“Here, Nagisa.”

A beaming smile came over his little sister’s face. The sight gradually gave the girl a sense of accomplishment. It was the first time she’d been enveloped by
emotion
. It was the only thing she’d ever obtained that defied the plan.

The boy tried to talk with a cheerful, smiling face, missing front teeth and all.

“Thanks, you were a huge help. You’re stronger than I figured, er…”

Drawn in by that look, the girl’s lips subconsciously formed a smile.

“—I’m Yuuma. Yuuma Tokoyogi.”

“Nice to meet you, Yuuma.”

Even now, the girl had not forgotten the warmth his hand conveyed when pressed to her own.

However, now that the girl had betrayed that warmth, it continued to torment her soul.

It was a perfect plan, and it would be executed perfectly, heedless of the girl’s wishes.

Kojou opened his eyes atop the bed. It was the very familiar sight of his bedroom.

It was a bit past eight in the morning. He felt like sleeping in late, but he felt fresher than he normally did; perhaps he just felt excited about the morning of the festival.

“Morning…huh?”

Kojou remained in bed lying faceup as he murmured absentmindedly.

He felt like a lot had happened the night before. He’d been caught up in spatial distortions, had a reunion with the Lotharingian Armed Apostle, and he…thought Yuuma had been crawling all over him.

But his memory was oddly vague right around that point. Kojou hadn’t engaged with Eustach again since his vanishing like an illusion. And Yuuma had been behaving oddly. He’d seen the illusion of a ghastly shadow emerge from her back, too. He didn’t think it had occurred in real life. Indeed, it was far easier to accept as something that he’d thought up in some dream.

“Guess I saw a…pretty weird dream, huh?”

So Kojou told himself as he rose up from the bed.

His sudden sense of unease was likely due to the odd lightness of his body. The chronic morning lethargy and sense of fatigue that had plagued him since becoming a vampire had vanished. It was rare that a morning felt so good.

“Nagisa’s…still asleep, I guess?”

Thinking that the apartment was oddly quiet, Kojou went into the living room. But he saw no sight of Nagisa anywhere. He knocked on her bedroom door just to be sure, but no reply came. The bathroom light was off, too. There was only food for one person prepared in the dining room.

“Did they go out, just the two of ’em…?” Kojou murmured without any special concern. Maybe she’d just gone out for a stroll; it was also possible they’d gone to play in Yukina’s apartment. That surely didn’t merit much thought.

Since she’d gone through all the trouble, Kojou sat in a chair to help himself to breakfast; that was when he felt something was
really
off.

Kojou’s slender, shapely legs stretched beyond the hem of the short skirt.

“Wha…?”

What am I wearing girls’ clothes for?
thought the shaken Kojou. The little black dress was surely the one Yuuma had worn the night before.

But Kojou finally realized that it wasn’t just clothes that he’d swapped with her.

As he raised his hands before him, his fingers were surprisingly thin and delicate. The view down low was obstructed by an unexpected swell of his chest. The curves of his bare legs had baby-like skin, lacking leg hair or any other unsightly marks. He also realized he was ten centimeters or so shorter than he ought to be.

“Wha…?”

Kojou flew into the washroom and looked at the mirror within.

The graceful visage of a girl was reflected by it, paired with somewhat disheveled bobbed hair.

The eyes displayed within were wide with surprise. The eyelashes were long; the bridge of the nose was delicate. The face within the mirror, reminiscent of what she looked like when she was younger, was that of his old friend, Yuuma Tokoyogi.

Kojou did pantomime over and over. He confirmed with his own eyes that her body was moving according to his will. He no longer had any room for doubt. Kojou’s mind had been put into Yuuma’s body.

Kojou and Yuuma had switched bodies.

And Kojou’s body had vanished somewhere, with Yuuma’s mind in it.

“What the
hellll
?!”

The shout that came out of Kojou’s mouth was in the clear, high-pitched voice of a girl.

Rushing into the corridor, Kojou headed straight for the entryway to the apartment next door. The doorplate indicated it was room 705. It was the apartment Yukina had moved into some two months before. He couldn’t think of anyone else he could discuss an emergency situation like this with.

“…So what happened last night wasn’t a dream, then?!”

Kojou pushed the buzzer and roughly thrust both his hands against the wall.

He remembered the sight of the giant shadow that had floated up from Yuuma’s back. It was an ominous blue shadow, its body clad in armor like that of a knight. There was no face under its mysterious, skull-like helmet, only a dark, unfathomable void. Perhaps Yuuma had used the power of the blue shadow to swap bodies with him.

But Kojou didn’t understand
why
Yuuma had that kind of power. Nor did he understand why it was necessary for her to do such a thing.

Yukina opened the door halfway and poked her face out of the gap.

“…Good morning, Yuuma. Has something…happened?”

She seemed a bit suspicious as to why Yuuma would suddenly visit her all by herself. That fact rocked Kojou all the more.

So Kojou really did look like Yuuma, even to Yukina’s eyes. Kojou had entertained the possibility that it was just some sort of hypnotic suggestion affecting him alone, but it was not to be.

“Himeragi. Sorry, it’s me.”

Kojou spoke while pointing to “his” face. Yukina blinked her eyes as if finding his behavior odd.

“Ah yes…?”

“Er, ah, just calm down and hear me out, okay?”

“Yuuma, I’m sorry… Can you come inside? Here is a little…”

Yukina gently extended her hand through the gap of the door and led Kojou in. Kojou followed through the entry door, thinking Yukina’s behavior to be unexpectedly friendly of her.

His eyes went wide as he saw what Yukina was standing there in.

“Huh?”

Yukina made her bashful-seeming apology while wearing nothing but a pajama top.

“I’m sorry, I can’t really have a conversation through the doorway dressed like this.”

The hem just
barely
covered her hips, but everything from the top of her thighs on down was completely bare; she’d apparently let her guard down thinking that they were both girls.

When he looked harder, Kanon and Astarte were changing clothes in the middle of her living room, too.

“Everyone was trying to pick what costumes to wear for the festival. Nagisa prepared a whole bunch of them, but they’re all quite exposing, you see…”

“I-I see…”

Apparently Nagisa had procured costumes not just for herself, but for Yukina and the others, too.

No doubt she really wanted her friend to fully enjoy her very first Hollow Eve Festival. It was a very meddlesome, Nagisa-like thought.

Kanon had picked out a nun outfit. It was a trim, adorable design, with frills adorning the collar and sleeves. But it seemed that her hands couldn’t reach the fastener; her back was fully open, with her bare snow-white skin looking extremely exposed through the gap. It was a mix of the solemn and the erotic.

Taking great pains to pull his eyes from Kanon’s back, Kojou noticed the presence of the other girl in the room. Her presence stood out
so
much that he hadn’t consciously registered it.

If he had to describe it, her silhouette was like that of an oversized Buddhist monk.

The small girl wore a bodysuit with an orange cape coat and a stupidly huge pumpkin on her head. It certainly was
cute
, but it was the kind of cute where if you got too close, the girl might start bawling like a child.

“Are you…Astarte?”