“Want to try some?”
Sakae was peering into his lunch, so he held out a slice of the item in question.
“!!!”
Sakae leaned as far back as he could and vigorously shook his head.
Mutsuki was confused because this boy had a habit of asking for a bite whenever he was eating some kind of snack. But when it came to Mutsuki’s original creations, people had a tendency of sweating a lot and declining.
“But it’s really good.”
He took a bite himself.
“It takes a generous heart to accept something like that. You are a virtuous person, my friend.”
After Sakae muttered that, the smell of the seaweed and meat must have reached him because he pulled his chair back.
“Whoops. Sorry, Ibekusa.”
His elbow hit the neighboring desk where Ibekusa Machina was eating.
“…”
The desk shook, but the girl showed no reaction as she continued to eat.
Her desk was located between Mutsuki’s and Ange’s, so she almost seemed to be a part of their group. She was physically close by, but she was as hard to speak to as always.
No one said a word about her unique lunch: a single red apple.
The way she chomped wildly into it did not match her overall image. She did not actually open her mouth wide, but she did crunch right through the skin.
The class was already used to this scene.
It happened every day. She always had a single apple for lunch.
Saya had once asked about it when it caught her interest:
“Hey, hey, Ibekusa-san. Is an apple enough for you?”
“It is nutritionally adequate.”
“But aren’t you still hungry? Are you on a diet?”
“Negative.”
“Do you like them?”
“Positive.”
That was all.
With her figure, she certainly did not need to go on a diet, so everyone had concluded she was just a light eater.
“…”
Mutsuki’s eyes wandered in her direction and he found himself entranced by her.
When her cherry blossom pink lips pressed against the round apple skin, they bent so softly around the apple’s contours.
That kiss between scarlet and pink looked so oddly seductive that the boy’s heart started racing.
Machina bit off a piece and thoroughly chewed it. Her eyes were still half-closed and he still questioned whether she felt emotions at all.
Even the normal act of eating seemed out of place for such a doll-like person. It felt like he was watching something mysterious.
Taking the bite had dirtied her lips with some apple juice, so she stuck out her wet and shining tongue and carelessly licked it off.
“What are you staring at?”
“! Wh-what do you mean?
When Sakae moved into his field of vision, Mutsuki looked away in shock.
“You were looking at Ibekusa, weren’t you? Your wife’s right over there, so don’t cheat on her, okay?”
“I was not! Um…I-I was not looking at Ibekusa-san.”
Sakae was teasing him just like with Ange earlier, but Mutsuki panicked and shook his head since he really did have a crush on her.
His intense reaction was as good as admitting to it, but that boy was not mature enough to think so rationally about it.
In search of an excuse, he looked back toward Machina and the window beyond her.
“Th-the clock. I was looking at the clock tower because I wanted to know what time it-…”
But when he pointed out the window…
It had been a casual action, but as soon as Mutsuki’s eyes reached the top of the clock tower, his face grew pale. Ange noticed the same thing and once more sent her chair clattering backwards.
“Huh? What’s going on?”
Sakae and Saya both looked over at the clock tower in confusion, but by then “he” had hidden behind the minute hand he had been sitting on.
He almost seemed to have been luring in only Ange and Mutsuki.
“Let’s go.”
“S-sure.”
They left their half-eaten lunches behind and ran from the classroom. They heard Sakae and Saya behind them, but they ignored it. They descended the stairs to the first floor, put on their outdoor shoes, and stepped outside. It was a sunny day, but the wind on their cheeks was so cold they thought it was going to rain.
They had practiced for this moment quite a bit in the past three weeks.
Mutsuki did not want to get anyone else involved in the confusion surrounding him and Ange wanted to avoid filling the human world with unnecessary chaos.
Once an enemy appeared, their first priority was finding an empty place.
Luckily, the enemy had chosen somewhere empty for them. The area was known as a place of rest, but it was not very well-maintained, half of the lawn was overtaken by weeds, and the overgrown plants acted as a natural fence that kept most students away.
The two of them ran to the base of the clock tower.
“Ha had”
The boy sitting on the minute hand with his legs dangling down easily jumped down from the several dozen meter height.
“I’m so happy you came to see me, Mutsuki-kun.”
The demon boy named Lucia gave a smile that Mutsuki had a hard time finding dangerous.
“I’m willing to accept your invitation. Especially when it means I can dispose of an awful brat.”
Ange stepped forward, pulled a pendant from below her shirt, removed the top modelled after silver wings, and squeezed it tight.
The silver color swelled out in her small hand and became a sword pointing Lucia’s way.
The angel easily swung a blade thicker than she was, but the demon boy was entirely unfazed. He did wink at Mutsuki with a cute smile, though.
“Sorry I couldn’t come visit you for the past three weeks. Finding a way to deal with that troublesome angel took some doing.”
He defenselessly turned his back and faced the entrance to the hexagonal clock tower. He reached for the door labelled “no students allowed”. It was not locked, so it creaked open and he left behind a provocative laugh as he entered.
“Wait!”
This was clearly a trap – Lucia had pretty much said it was – but Ange did not hesitate to follow him inside.
“Ah…”
Faced with an enemy for the first time in three weeks, Mutsuki tensed up and failed to stop his reckless bodyguard.
According to Micha, this boy named Lucia was a demon. Of the two groups after the Serpent’s Eye, he was from the one that controlled that thick, black water. Memories of the three-week-old fear sent a chill down his spine.
“W-wait!”
But he forced his shaking knees to follow the two of them.
As the “no students allowed” sign would suggest, this was Mutsuki’s first time in the tower.
Inside, he found moss-covered stone walls and extremely faint lighting from the small windows.
Fortunately, Ange had stopped just after entering. There was no sign of Lucia, but…
“Stop, Mutsuki-kun. Don’t get any closer. It’s dangerous.”
Mutsuki heard the demon boy’s voice as soon as he set foot inside, so he had to be there somewhere.
The tower had only been designed to hold the clock at the top, so the twenty meter wide space was empty save for the spiral staircase running up the wall. There were, however, sixteen columns made of stone and cement with wooden support beams alongside them.
Mutsuki knew nothing of combat, but even he could tell something about this place.
“Over there!”
Darkness dully glistened between two columns and a curved blade poked out. Ange flipped her sword around to deflect the tip and she tried to charge behind the columns.
“…!?”
But just before she did, her sword struck the countless stone columns and wooden support beams.
With her momentum gone, she was the perfect target. The scythe slithered between the columns like a snake and targeted her wide-open body. She twisted her torso at the last second and avoided having her heart skewered, but…
“Vah…!”
Lucia appeared from a different direction and kneed her in the cheek.