Though... the girl who appeared in Soga Yura's memory — barefoot, white sundress, bare legs — carried an aura that seemed utterly unlike the girl Su Yuzu had once encountered inside the erosion domain.
The girl Su Yuzu had met back then in the erosion domain had been pure. Unblemished. Like an adorable little white rabbit.
But the girl who appeared in Soga Yura's memory was unsettlingly wicked — wickedness in excess.
That tone she used to coax little-girl Soga Yura into making a wish — it was exactly like those mysterious creatures in anime that looked child-friendly on the surface but were rotten to the core underneath, wheedling magical girls into sealing contracts with them.
If the Su Yuzu of today had witnessed someone using that kind of tone to sweet-talk her hopelessly dim-witted sister... she absolutely, absolutely would not have let them off the hook.
But the past was fixed. Unchangeable. Su Yuzu could only watch as Soga Yura lowered her head, looked down at her own small, filthy hands, then lifted her face again — eyes brimming with pitiful desperation — to gaze at the familiar... yet unfamiliar... little sister standing within the black thorns.
"Yu... Yuzu..." Soga Yura wailed toward Su Yuzu amidst the briar thicket, sobbing her heart out.
In young Yura's childhood understanding, Yuzu was all-powerful. Yuzu always doted on her. Yuzu was... Yuzu was the most brilliant presence in the world — the one who would always stand before her, shining.
If this had been any other time — if she had cried like this in front of Yuzu — Yuzu would have already come running, swept her up into her arms.
But... Soga Yura stared at the Yuzu standing within the thorns — the Yuzu who looked as though she might grind the entire world to dust.
Why hadn't Yuzu come to comfort her.
Yuzu looked so strange. So unfamiliar. Like an entirely different person.
"She's become the Abyss now~" The girl in the white sundress softly wrapped her arms around Soga Yura's head from behind, and together they gazed out toward the thorn thicket — toward the small figure seated upon the Throne, punishing the Beast.
"She can't hear your voice anymore."
"The... Abyss...?" Young Soga Yura didn't understand what the Abyss meant at all.
But one thing she understood perfectly — Yuzu becoming the Abyss was most certainly, certainly a very bad thing.
A Yuzu who couldn't hear her voice — that was not a Yuzu that Soga Yura wanted.
But... but...
Yuzu had become like that for her sake.
Soga Yura lifted her head and looked into that girl's dark-golden vertical pupils.
"Can any wish be granted?"
The girl suddenly flashed an evil smile. "As if~"
"It's not like I'm some all-powerful wishing machine."
"However——"
"Your wish — I might just be able to make it come true~"
"Then what's the price..." Still choked with tears, Soga Yura looked up at the girl. "What's the price?"
"The price?" The girl tilted her head. "Are you afraid of the dark?"
Wha... what?
"I cannot directly grant your wish... I can only give you a path toward fulfilling it." The girl lowered her head with sorrowful compassion, gazing at the pitiful little child cradled before her.
"The price you must pay — that is for you to decide."
"Saa——"
"Tell me then... what is your wish?"
"I want Yuzu back." Soga Yura hiccupped through her tears, gazing at the girl with absolute sincerity.
Through Soga Yura's eyes, Su Yuzu gazed at that girl with equal sincerity.
She was turning over in her mind just who this girl might be.
Actually... it wasn't hard to guess, was it.
"I want to bring back the Yuzu who belongs to me." Soga Yura screamed it with all her strength.
"Ahahahaha——" As though she had heard the answer she had been hoping for, the wicked girl pressed her right hand over her face, threw her head back, and laughed.
"Just as I thought."
"Yuzu, hm..."
"What a charming name."
"Well then——"
"Contract established."
She pressed both hands onto Soga Yura's shoulders, dropped to one knee, and met the girl at eye level.
Soga Yura — and through her eyes, Su Yuzu — stared into those dark-golden vertical pupils that seemed to breathe in and exhale living flame.
Completely unlike the vertical pupils of ordinary Aberrants. Beyond the difference in color, the depths of the woman's eyes were a pure, absolute black — dark as... the Abyss itself.
"You truly are the most pitiable, adorable little wretch, aren't you."
"Count yourself lucky..."
"If there is only one person in this entire world who can pull someone who has become the Abyss back from the Abyss itself——"
"Then that person... is only me."
"Oh my, goodness. It's been so long, I'd almost forgotten — I'm not quite human anymore, am I."
The girl rose to her feet and looked toward Su Yuzu and the Beast — that creature like a mermaid.
She extended her hand, and the world began to shift.
White weapons seemed to slowly congeal from nothing. Countless fine threads grew through the mist, like the hyphal network of some strange fungus spreading through the fog.
Those threads coiled around the mermaid woman.
The Beast — who had done nothing but wail pathetically under Su Yuzu's thorn-lash — suddenly let out a howl of agony that shook the heavens.
Terror flooded Soga Yura's eyes.
She watched as that towering, massive woman shriveled, slowly, like something drained of all its blood — all the moisture wrung from its body — until she was nothing but a desiccated Walking Husk.
And before that woman, the small girl enthroned upon the Throne suddenly turned her gaze — regal, imperious — in the direction of the mysterious girl. Her eyes burned with fury.
Like a sovereign who had caught sight of a treasonous subject defying her will.
"Don't be so cross~"
"My young... no, my little successor."
"The world still has so much wonder in it. This little wretch here... it seems she can't bear to part with her older sister."
Soga Yura's expression shifted instantly into something far more interesting. She grabbed at the girl's sundress hem. "It's little sister!!! LITTLE SISTER!!!"
"Oh my oh my... terribly sorry, I couldn't tell at all." The girl's manner was downright rotten as she lightly patted Soga Yura on the head — her expression carrying something distinctly peculiar about it.
She suddenly felt everything around her beginning to distort.
"Even in the first moments of falling into the Abyss, you still held onto your impression of this girl, hm?"
"What a shame..."
"You nearly killed her, you know." The girl snapped her fingers, and the strange distortion that had begun to spread around her was immediately erased before it could fully take hold.
She bent down, leaning close to Soga Yura's shoulder, and murmured softly, "Are you ready?"
"The road ahead... is very dark, you know."
Soga Yura nodded — hard.
Bang——
The vision of that world shattered before Su Yuzu's eyes.
She was back inside the private room of the barbecue restaurant, and before her sat Soga Yura, eyes cast downward, lashes low.
Su Yuzu understood now... what came next was the process by which young Soga Yura had brought her back.
That path must have been difficult to walk. Dark. And deeply, profoundly lonely.
Soga Yura had walked it in despair — but she had known... that Yuzu, at the very bottom of the Abyss, must have been even more alone. Even more desperate.
She had walked that path herself. And she refused to let Yuzu walk it again alongside her.
The girl's eyes, as they gazed at Su Yuzu, were soft — and shy.
Su Yuzu leaned forward, and gently pulled Soga Yura into her arms by the shoulders.
"Idiot."
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