The motorcycle did not have a back seat or a luggage rack and he could not have balanced on the back tire’s frame, so he was forced to share the one seat with Micha. By this point, her butt was resting on top of his thighs.
It was embarrassing, but his life really was in danger if he fell. He said “excuse me” and pressed his cheek up against her back. He felt more stable when pressing that tightly against her.
He had changed out of his soaking wet uniform, but the wind was cold and Micha’s body warmth felt nice through her white coat. The scent of the adult woman was enough to embarrass him even further.
“Anyway, Mutsuki-kun.”
“Y-yes?”
The wind would have drowned out her voice, but their close contact let him hear her through her body.
“I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that your body isn’t that of a normal human.”
He was having trouble focusing, but she began with the exact kind of talk he had expected.
“I’m perfectly normal.”
“Even after what you did to Chiaki-chan?”
“…”
Had it really been his fault that approaching his sister had made her grow confused, piss herself, and pass out? Pain began to fill his heart.
“Don’t worry. Although it is true that was due to your power. It was the power of the Serpent’s Eye that appeared in your right eye, but that’s sealed away right now.”
“The Serpent’s Eye?”
He recalled Lucia calling it that as well. When he thought back, he realized the black eye he had seen in the road mirror had been just like a snake’s.
“Wh-what was that? Why did that happen to my eye?”
“It was unavoidable. From the moment god designed human DNA, it was made to create a bearer of the Serpent’s Eye once every hundred or thousand years. It’s just one of god’s rules.”
He had been born with it. That was the most hopeless explanation there was.
“The Serpent’s Eye has a tremendous effect on the opposite sex. In other words, women. I’m sure you can tell based on what happened to Chiaki-chan. Just looking at them is enough to do that. If you wanted to, you could conquer half the world.”
“Oh…”
“Ever since ancient times, the ones known in the human world as demons have been especially obsessed with that power. You saw them earlier, didn’t you? There was that intelligent demon named Lucia and his followers, the Succubi. If they gain your power, it’s game over for the human world.”
“Um. Wait a second.”
The boy frowned.
This was on such a large scale he was having trouble keeping up, but it all seemed a little too “out there”. It was true his right eye – the Serpent’s Eye – had caused Chiaki to faint just by looking at her, but it seemed like an exaggeration to say he could “conquer the world” with that.
The woman brushed back her blonde hair and looked back at him.
“You’re so naived”
“What?”
She gave him a coquettish wink and his heart skipped a beat.
His puzzled look seemed to delight her all the more.
And then…
“Excuse me, excuse me. You on the motorcycle, please stop.”
A noisy siren suddenly started up and a voice shouted at them through a megaphone.
Mutsuki looked back and saw three police cars following them.
They were breaking the speed limit with two people on a one-person bike, so this result was hardly surprising. The boy could only sigh.
But…
“You two not wearing helmets, please slow down and pull over.”
“Um…Micha-san?”
He mentally begged her to stop, but when she faced forward again, she twisted the throttle as if this were none of her concern. She was speeding up.
Mutsuki was on the verge of tears and he squeezed his arms around her waist even more. He had only met this woman fifteen minutes ago, but he could somehow tell she intended to lose them.
“Anyway, how far did I get?”
She calmly continued her discussion as the boy buried his face in her back due to the cold and his fear. She had raised her voice because the sirens were so loud, but that was the only change.
“Oh, right. That you’re the chosen one. Anyway, destined people like that are often targeted by dangerous enemies, right?”
She let go of the handlebar with the hand not accelerating.
She drove with one hand while easily exceeding 100 kph. Mutsuki had gone pale, but she pointed back with her thumb. When he looked that way…
“Eh?”
“The Serpent’s Eye is this world’s one and only perfect power. If you gouged it out and encased it in glass, it would become the most valuable jewel imaginable. Everyone who knows about it wants to get their hands on it. Whether they’re a demon…or a human.”
When Mutsuki saw the rightmost police car she pointed at, he grew even paler.
“There are two main groups after you. One is the demons I mentioned before. And…”
There was no one inside it.
The driver’s seat and passenger seat were both empty and the steering wheel was moving on its own.
“These are the bigger problem. They’re called the Springloaded. They’re the servants of a human group who want the Serpent’s Eye. That group is named FeTUS.”
“Micha-san!”
The freezing boy screamed as the motorcycle accelerated even further.
He was afraid of their pursuers, but he was even more afraid of the red light at the intersection they would reach in another three seconds at this speed. Even if they were trying to escape, this was far too fast for a public road.
“~~!”
However…
“That’s lucky. I think we can get away now.”
The woman charged right into the intersection at 130 kph even as people used the crosswalk.
She swerved left and right so sharply her knees nearly scraped the ground and just barely avoided hitting any of the pedestrians or cars. She kept it up all the way to the other side of the intersection.
Mutsuki had seen videos of people slipping through the paper-thin gaps between the bullets filling the screen on a shooting game, but he had never imagined he would experience it in person. He was still trembling even after they made it through.
He heard screeching brakes and then an especially loud collision.
The police cars with actual policemen in them had of course stopped, but the unmanned one known as a Springloaded had been destroyed when a truck T-boned it from the side.
However, they did not have time to relax. In fact, it was only after that destruction that the boy realized how frightening his pursuers were.
As if removing a disguise, the police car writhed and transformed. The frame shrank down, abandoning any space for passengers and creating a longer form. Claws burst out to form legs.
Just like the Porsche had with his cellphone, the police car swallowed up the parts of the damaged truck.
“Their Lithography sure has gotten fast,” complained Micha. “Honestly, they get more dangerous by the day.”
If the Porsche had been an inchworm, then this was a giant metal grasshopper with the large vehicle’s cylinders as the back legs. After eating another machine to grow and complete its transformation, it jumped over the chaotic intersection.
It was still pursuing the trembling boy.
“Not to worry. We’re here to protect you.”
Micha calmly turned around despite their speed.
“We’re angels.”
She winked at him.
They were approaching the entrance to a vehicles-only road, so she turned that way at the last second. With a snap, the end of the accelerator grip seemed to break off. It turned out to be cover and some kind of button was revealed below.
Mutsuki wanted to complain that this was not a manga, but he still gathered all of his strength in the arms around her waist because he had a good guess what was coming next.
And a moment later…
“~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~!”
They were moving too fast for him to hear his own scream, so how fast was that converted to kph?
At any rate, after being attacked by a mysterious boy, being pursued by machine monsters, and all the other strange events, this was the most frightening moment of the day. Still, they did manage to escape their pursuers.