Part one hundred ninety one — What Nao Remembered

　Far from any of it, Nao Shimizu opened her eyes.

　Her body felt impossibly heavy.

　Her mana reserves had been scraped nearly empty by the battle against Nyxara.

　"Where is everyone?" she murmured.

　There was no answer.

　Only an empty, silent battlefield.

　Nao forced herself upright.

　One step.

　Two.

　Three steps toward the capital.

　A hand pierced cleanly through her chest from behind.

　Nao stopped.

　She looked down.

　Blood was already spilling from the corner of her mouth.

　Slowly, she turned as far as her wounded body allowed.

　"Jiro."

　"I don't know why," he said, before she'd even finished asking.

　Nao's eyes widened.

　"Then why—"

　"Maybe I just want your Perfect Copy," Jiro said simply.

　His voice held no hesitation.

　"Everything you've accumulated. To take it, you need to die."

　He looked directly into her eyes.

　"That's the whole point."

　Nao felt it then.

　This wasn't merely her body failing.

　Something far deeper was being torn apart.

　Her soul itself was unraveling beneath something considerably more precise than a physical wound.

　Her legs gave out.

　The world began to fade.

　And as darkness crept across her vision, a memory rose to meet her.

Japan.

Hokkaido.

　Nao had lost both of her parents in a plane crash when she was still a child.

　A close friend of her mother's took her in, eventually moving with her to Tokyo, where Nao began living with the woman who would become her aunt.

　That was where she met Kazuhiko.

　Her stepbrother.

　At first, he had been distant.

　Uninterested in much beyond his own world.

　Nao never pushed him.

　She simply lived alongside him.

　They attended the same school.

　She watched him from a careful distance whenever he brought his girlfriend home while his mother was working late.

　She told herself the ache she felt whenever she saw them together meant nothing.

　It was simply the loneliness of someone who had lost her parents.

　At least, that was what she told herself.

　Then his girlfriend betrayed him.

　With his own best friend.

　The confrontation that followed left Kazuhiko beaten and abandoned beneath a bridge in the rain.

　Nao waited that entire evening.

　Six.

　Seven.

　Eight.

　Nine.

　Ten.

　Eleven.

　His mother's night shift stretched on without any word from him.

　Eventually, the feeling in Nao's chest became impossible to ignore.

　She went out into the storm to find him herself.

　She found him beneath the bridge.

　Blood mixed with rainwater around his body.

　He was barely conscious.

　"Kazuhiko!"

　Nao got him to a hospital.

　She called his mother.

　The following morning, she stayed beside him while his mother returned to work.

　Kazuhiko couldn't tell his mother the truth.

　So he told Nao instead.

　Everything.

　The girlfriend.

　The betrayal.

　His former best friend.

　All of it was finally laid bare between them.

　Something changed after that.

　The distance between them slowly disappeared.

　And Nao finally understood what she'd spent years refusing to name.

　The feelings she had buried beneath every excuse.

　The feelings she'd convinced herself meant nothing.

　One evening, she went to Kazuhiko's room.

　She leaned closer.

　"What are you doing?" he asked.

　"Comforting you."

　She kissed him.

　What began that night deepened over the years that followed.

　Their relationship remained carefully hidden from a mother who had already lost so much.

　Trust grew between them.

　So did their intimacy.

　Eventually, neither could pretend their bond was anything less than what it had become.

　Then their mother collapsed.

　Her heart finally gave out after years of exhausting work.

　Grief swallowed both of them.

　At her funeral, they stood together before the one person who had brought them into each other's lives.

　And now she was gone.

　Then—

　A summoning circle bloomed beneath their feet.

　Neither of them had called for it.

　Neither understood what was happening.

　Light swallowed them both in front of everyone who had gathered to mourn.

　To the world they left behind, it appeared as though they had simply vanished.

　They woke in a place called Midway.

　A man named Albert ruled the place.

　He explained everything.

　Demons.

　Demon Lords.

　Magic.

　Another world entirely.

　And the reason they had been summoned.

　They were needed to fight a Demon Lord named Demigra.