by Yuu Miyazaki
As she dodged low to the ground, Ayato leaped up high to dodge her, countering just as she began to lay into the pursuit, and giving her but an instant to scrape past under his blade and then meet the attack.
“Arghhhhh!”
“Nngh!”
Ayato deflected Kirin’s downward strike, aiming to cut all the way from shoulder to waist, before spinning around in an attempt to knock her off her feet. Kirin, however, bent backward, letting it sweep right past her. Vivid lines of purple lightning flashed across her eyes before gradually fading away.
If he was being honest with himself, Ayato had to admit he was in a bit of a bind.
With his full power now freed from the seal that Haruka had placed on him, he should have been able to easily overpower his opponent.
He might not have been able to match her in skill or technique, but if worse came to worst, he should have been able to gain the upper hand through brute force alone.
There was no doubting it was her clairvoyance that was preventing him from doing just that, but there was something else, too.
Kirin knew him intimately.
His sword techniques, his movements, his timing, breathing, movements—she knew his fighting style down to the very last detail.
Since the Phoenix, the two of them had trained with each other countless times over, enough for her to gain a full knowledge of what he would instinctively do in any given situation.
She had always had a good eye for such things and had probably even been able to pick up much of the Amagiri Shinmei style through observation alone. She probably understood his patterns of attack better than he himself did.
But in that case, he had the same advantage over her, too.
He probably wasn’t any match for her in that regard, but he, too, had observed the Toudou style countless times over.
In that case, she’ll probably try…
Just as the thought entered his mind, Kirin launched into a remarkably powerful flurry of attacks.
Ayato moved to meet the first one head-on, when she launched a second toward his neck before he even had a chance to catch his breath. If he managed to dodge that, next she would aim for his side, then his throat, his right arm, his throat again—
“It’s the Conjoined Cranes…!” one of the students in the crowd gasped in excitement.
Kirin’s version of the technique, however, was much more precise than Yoshino’s. Ayato couldn’t find even a single opening.
On top of that, her present application of the technique differed from her usual practice.
“Watch and learn, everyone,” Ayato heard Yoshino call out. “This will be the next stage of the Toudou style, after the Conjoined Cranes.”
There were numerous traditional methods of countering the Conjoined Cranes—though they were all varying degrees of impossible to actually carry out. One could try to repel an opponent’s blade through overwhelming force, or interrupt it through even more elaborate movements and techniques.
This time, however—
“Haaaaaaaaaah!”
Ayato put all his strength into sweeping aside Kirin’s overhead lunge—but she merely brushed his blade away, and then, with a flick of her wrist, came flying toward him.
He pulled back as quickly as he could, rotating his body and preparing to deliver a physical strike with his elbow—but as he had feared, Kirin’s current form of the Conjoined Cranes had already accounted for his actions.
The Conjoined Cranes was so named because it looked, to the outside observer, like the folding of an origami crane. The intricate procedure was, however, nothing more than a sequence of consecutive attacks, and so to carry it out well, what was most important was fine control over one’s breathing, timing, and senses, so that one could create a situation their opponent was unable to counter or resist.
Kirin’s current form of the Conjoined Cranes seemed to be integrating his own attempts to counter into the sequence.
In other words, whenever he attempted to defend or attack, her response was immediate and incorporated directly into the chain.
“…Maybe we should call this the New Conjoined Cranes…,” Yoshino, awe-struck, murmured under her breath.
If this was all thanks to her clairvoyance, then Kirin had gained an insurmountable advantage—one capable of turning the tables on a more powerful opponent.
It wasn’t luck that she had defeated Xiaohui Wu. If the two of them were to have a rematch, she would, no doubt, run circles around his close-combat prowess.
“Ayato! Let’s finish this!” Kirin called out as her movements suddenly sped up.
She was so fast that Ayato hardly even had time to respond.
But even so—
“I’m not going down so easily!”
The Conjoined Cranes wasn’t, in general, the kind of technique that involved dealing a single, knockout blow. Rather, its goal was to chip away at one’s opponent’s defenses, until finally, a fatal breach revealed itself. In that regard, at least, this New Conjoined Cranes was no different.
In that case, he only needed to make sure that he wasn’t worn down.
Kirin’s blade flashed before him, Ayato racing to meet it and brush it aside, when once again she drove the pursuit—again, and again, and again.
Ayato had already memorized every technique used in the Conjoined Cranes. The current strike, a deep, rotating thrust from a low angle, was called the Laying Bait. Next came the Fisherman’s Boat, then the Revelation, the Lovers, the Yatsuhashi, the Great Romantic, the Ocean Wavelets, the Kalavinka, the Sacred Lotus, the Warrior Kumagae, the Pinwheel, the Gathering Clouds, the Black Bamboo, the Path of Dreams, the Ninety Thousand Leagues, the Bleached Cloth, the Four Wings, the Sandalwood Lance, the Blue Waves, the Three-leaf Arrowhead, the Wings Abreast, the Calabash, the Water Wagtail, the Mitsudomoe, the Game of Hina Dolls, the Tripod Cauldron, the Parquet, the Citrus Blossom, the Mount Hourai, the Circlet of Flowers, the Clapper, the Blossom Crest, the Hundred Cranes, the Young Maiden, the One-of-Three, the Rose of Sharon, the Bank of Clouds, the Zhuangzi, the Nested Chick, the Kindred Twins, the Wind Orchid, the Sparrow of the Reeds, the Spring Dawn, the Gentian Wheel, the Anthill, the Desolated Field, the Rabbit-Ear Iris, the Gourd Vine, the Firebolt—
“She’s doing all forty-nine moves…?!”
“All of them in conjunction?!”
“There’s no way he can beat this…”
As the exchange drew on, the commotion bubbling among the students only fomented further.
Ayato could feel their ardor and excitement, but he wasn’t about to allow it to interfere with his concentration.
He had to focus his attention solely on Kirin’s movements, on responding to her blade and readying himself for the next strike.
To those watching, it must have looked like some kind of delicate performance.
Ayato, for his part, felt as if he was communicating directly with Kirin, albeit not in words. It was as if his hands simply knew, somehow, where next her blade would strike, and how next to repel it. They knew, too, that even the slightest mistake meant certain defeat.
He focused on the clanging of their wooden blades, on his fighting posture, and on the sweat trickling down his body. Whenever he leaped forward, he adjusted his movements so that he wouldn’t slip or break through the floorboards, so that his speed wouldn’t drop. The tip of Kirin’s blade would come within a fraction of an inch of making contact before pulling away, leaving him practically no time whatsoever to tell his body to move. It wasn’t a matter of one or the other anymore—his mind and body had become one.
The exchange felt as if it had lasted for ten, twenty, maybe even thirty minutes.
But that couldn’t be right. It may have felt that way, but it couldn’t have been.
The Conjoined Cranes excelled at driving its target to exhaustion, but its user, too, couldn’t escape the same fate. Kirin had once said she was able to sustain the technique for around an hour, but Ayato doubted that she would be able to keep us
ing this new form combined with her clairvoyance for the same amount of time.
“Nngh…!”
Her fatigue was beginning to show on her face, and while she had yet to make a mistake, her movements were beginning to become disordered.
The same thing applied to Ayato, however.
The winner would probably be whoever could hold out the longest.
He resolved to do exactly that, when there came an unexpected opportunity:
“—!”
“Agh…!”
The trajectory of Kirin’s overhead slash was slightly irregular, giving Ayato a chance to repel it and move in to counter.
At that very moment, however, his battle stance fell apart.
“Arghhhhhhhhhh!”
“Hyaaaaaaaaaa!”
Kirin spun around, pulling her sword back up and then swinging downward, as Ayato, having fallen to his knees, raised his own blade one-handed in a desperate counter.
“That’s enough!”
At that instant, Yoshino’s voice rang out through the dojo, and the two of them finally relented.
Kirin’s blade had stopped just short of Ayato’s eyes, while his had almost reached her throat.
Silence fell over the hall, the students all watching breathlessly.
When Ayato’s and Kirin’s expressions both loosened, they each said, word for word and second for second:
“…You win.”
CHAPTER 8
DETERMINATION
“What on earth could be so important that it couldn’t wait until after New Year’s?” Julis called out in annoyance as she opened the door to Saya’s room in the girls’ dormitory at Seidoukan Academy—before turning pale in alarm at what she saw.
Saya was sitting at a kotatsu in the center of the room, clinging to a heavy, padded kimono that she wore over her shoulders.
“We’re sulking,” she responded in an unusually sullen tone of voice.
That was one thing, but—
“You too, Claudia…?”
“Oh no, this is surprisingly comfortable.” Claudia, sitting across from Saya and dressed in a similar padded kimono jacket, lay with the top half of her body slouched over the kotatsu.
“You’ve really loosened up since that brush with Galaxy…”
“There’s still a rather severe issue left to deal with, so there’s no cure like a good rest every now and then,” she said with a carefree smile, before stifling a yawn.
“By the way, what happened to you?” Saya asked.
“Oh dear, look at your injuries,” Claudia exclaimed. “Are those…burns?”
“Ah, this is just…well, it’s no big deal. I was just training.”
“You, who can resist your own abilities, got burned?” Claudia stared at her with skepticism in her eyes.
She may well have loosened up, but she was still as sharp as ever.
“Ah, I guess I’ll join you both, then! I don’t think I’ve ever sat at a kotatsu before!” Julis let out a light laugh, before sticking her legs under the blanket. “Oh!”
It was surprisingly warm and comfortable.
“Your upper body will get cold like that. Here, put this on.” Saya, still lying down, reached into a large clothes chest and pulled out another padded kimono jacket.
“Uh… Are you sure…?”
“Is there a problem?”
“Not a problem, really, it’s just…”
“Don’t worry, Julis. They’re surprisingly comfortable,” Claudia said with a light laugh.
“…You’re too fast to adopt new things.”
“When in Rome, do as the Romans do, right?”
Saya began forcefully putting Julis’s arms through the sleeves, giving Julis no choice but to submit.
“I suppose it is warm…,” Julis had to admit. “I don’t think it suits me very well, though.”
“On that point, I think we’re both jealous of just how good it looks on you, Saya.” Claudia smiled.
“Heh-heh.” Saya grinned, puffing out her chest as she lay down on the floor. “Of course. I’m always winning the prizes for best dressed and best dressed at a kotatsu.”
“I don’t really get what you’re saying, but I suppose it does suit you…”
Saya, her padded kimono jacket, and the kotatsu—they were perfectly balanced, like the Holy Trinity.
“Well then, why don’t you tell us what was so important that you had to call us both out now of all times?”
After all, Saya had summoned not only her, but Claudia as well.
Sure, Saya was probably lonely since her roommate had gone home for the holidays, but from the look of things, this went beyond just that.
“Like I said, I’m sulking.”
“I know that! But why? I don’t have a lot of free time, so if that’s all it is, I’ve got other things to do!” Julis said with a heavy sigh, about to step away from the kotatsu, when Saya stopped her.
“Did you know that Ayato and Kirin went home?”
“What are you going on about? Of course I know—”
“And that Kirin went back to Ayato’s house?”
“Wh-what?!” At this, Julis’s whole body froze in place.
“And that she stayed the night there?”
“What?!”
Even from her position on the floor, Julis could hear Saya’s teeth grinding in frustration.
“And that the next day, they both went to Kirin’s house? And stayed the night there, too? They just sent me their excuses.”
“—!” A sound that couldn’t really be described as speech emerged painfully from Julis’s throat.
She could feel the energy pour straight out of her body.
“I was shocked, too, when I heard,” Claudia said with a bitter smile, her cheek pressing against the wooden tabletop of the kotatsu. “I had no idea that Kirin could be so daring… I wonder what’s happened? First Sylvia, now this…” Her voice trailed off before she could finish.
“Wait, what did Sigrdrífa do?” Julis demanded.
“Unforgivable,” Saya murmured.
“And here I was thinking we’d thrown ourselves into another heated battle…” Claudia’s voice, for once, seemed to be laying bare her true feelings—turbid melancholy.
“What? I never…!” Julis, unable to stop herself from showing her anger, pulled herself further into the kotatsu.
She understood now—painfully—why exactly Saya wanted to sulk, but all that did was upset her further.
“Ugh, stop, Julis. If you crawl in too far—”
“You’re lacking in refinement, Julis. The kotatsu is all about compromising with your neighbors.”
“How can you say that when you keep pushing against my feet?!”
“Oh dear, this is most improper.”
“You too, Claudia! You’re hogging all that space for yourself!”
“Oh? You’re as shrewd as ever, I see.”
“Well now? What do we have here?”
“Ugh, Saya! Don’t lift your feet like that! You’re making it hotter!”
“Heh-heh-heh, this is just a technique to raise the temperature. Know ye the power of the best dressed at a kotatsu… Argh, too hot!”
“Two can play at this game!”
“Claudia, why you?!”
The three of them wrestled between the covers and the top of the kotatsu, until finally, with no clear champion having emerged, they each found themselves dozing off into a peaceful sleep.
“Phew…”
Only when he sat down on the balcony outside his guestroom—a cup of tea, which Kirin had brewed, in his hands—was Ayato able to feel at ease.
“Thank you, Ayato,” Kirin, sitting down beside him, said with a relieved smile. “I’m sorry my great-aunt put you through all that.”
“No, it was good experience. I should be thanking you.”
“Thank you for saying that…”
It may have been mid winter, but the sun had come out and the wind had died down, so it was unseasonably wa
rm—or rather, perhaps it was more that their bodies, still hot from the ferocity of their duel, couldn’t yet feel the cold.
“Still… I couldn’t beat you.”
“Ah… The same goes for me too, though.”
In the end, they had decided to call it a tie—although technically, it was Yoshino who had made the decision so that neither of them would have to admit defeat to the other. It was a face-saving measure for both the Toudou style and the Amagiri Shinmei style, but there was no denying that it had come at just the right time. Any longer, and Ayato didn’t quite know what would have happened.
“No, it wouldn’t have gone on so long if you had the Ser Veresta. You would have ended it right away.”
“That’s—,” Ayato began, but he fell silent at the sight of Kirin’s forced smile.
The way he saw it, it was precisely because he wasn’t wielding the over sized Orga Lux that he had been able to respond to his opponent’s incredible speed the way he had.
True, he could have tried to reshape the Ser Veresta to a more optimal form, but that still probably wouldn’t have been enough. Even having regained his natural strength, he still wasn’t particularly skilled at delicately manipulating his prana—and that had nothing to do with the seal Haruka had placed over him.
Now that the Gryps was over, according to Odhroerir’s unofficial rankings, he was third in all of Asterisk behind Orphelia and Sylvia. Of course, that assessment was based on his performances wielding the Ser Veresta, so there was no denying that, in his current state, his actual potential had slipped somewhat.
“Heh-heh… You really are strong, Ayato,” Kirin said, a touch of bitterness in her voice. “I guess it can’t be helped this time, so I guess you don’t need to answer right away… But I’ll win next time, for sure.”
“Kirin…”
He was glad to know how she felt toward him, but to be perfectly honest, he didn’t have time right now to give her the attention that she deserved. Not until he had sorted out everything regarding Haruka, at least.
Of course, he also knew that he was, in a way, taking advantage of her feelings.
The same went for Saya’s, too. He couldn’t keep dragging it all out like this.
