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After his encounter with Ezeldarm, we see Arata standing in front of the bookshelf in Yuko's office with the said person by his side.
"Are you sure that you want to find it? It may not exist at all." Yuko said quietly as she got ready to open the entrance to the second hidden room.
"It doesn't matter if I do find it or not. If I don't try, the voice that spoke to me will be disappointed in me." Arata sighed.
"But who is this person speaking to you?" Yuko frowned. "It's not that I doubt you but…"
"Yuko-nee, I understand." Arata placed a hand on her arm comfortingly. "But for some reason, I believe that the voice is not lying. I really need to try."
"Alright then." Yuko held up two fingers and uttered something in the language which Arata half understood and pointed them at the bookcase. A brown aura flew out of her fingers to the bookcase and it moved aside, revealing the wall but a portal then opened and they stepped inside it.
Arata could not believe his eyes when they adjusted to the bright light. Yuko smiled and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Do you like it?"
"Who would not like a paradise like this?" Arata muttered in disbelief. The room that they had entered was in fact a greenhouse with various plants and trees scattered around and glass panels on the celling emitting artificial sunlight while displaying clouds. There was a small pond at the corner of the room with a swing large enough to fit two people near it. While a large number of trees and plants were no longer bearing flowers since it is autumn, the flowers in there were blooming beautifully. At another corner of the room, there was a greenhouse which was filled with bookshelves and a table.
"Is this why you would not come out of your office most of the time?" Arata asked in awe of the place.
"I admit that I do like to come here and relax when you guys are at school, but most of the time, I'm busy with either Fantasy's school stuff or worrying that you or Reika failing your classes." Yuko said playfully and sobered up. "I know that Fantasy's schooling system was not one of the best since our main focus was on training you guys to control your powers and learning to take care of yourselves rather than providing good academic education. But I'm glad that you're taking the initiative to push both Reika and yourself to work hard in your classes."
Arata broke into a smile and shook his head. "It's what we should do. I don't want Mito-sensei and Jin-san to think that you haven't been taking care of us well and chase after you."
"You don't need to worry about that. Atsuya and I managed to graduate from Fantasy at a young age and I excelled in my university course years ago. So you don't need to worry about failing. If we didn't, you and Reika won't either." Yuko rubbed her hands together and led Arata to the greenhouse. "I moved all of the books that was in our library over here since the last Night Lurker attack there so that they won't get destroyed."
"That's a clever idea." Arata smiled as he stepped inside. But it faded at the sight of the number of bookshelves and the amount of books stacked in it. "This is going to take a while."
"Don't push yourself. I'll call you when it's time for you to go back." Yuko told him and went back to her office.
"Alright." Arata said distractedly as he picked up a book and sat down to read it.
"Arata isn't back yet?" Mia asked Reika as they headed down for dinner.
"Nope." Reika shook her head. "But I'm sure that he got caught up with whatever he's doing at Yuko-nee's place."
"But it's rare to see him come back so late." Mia sighed and suddenly stopped. "So have you apologized to Takeru and the rest yet?"
"Yeah…sort of…"
"Sort of?" Mia raised an eyebrow.
"In my defense, it wasn't my fault." Reika held up her hands. "I was apologizing to them when Miss Ojou-sama just had to ruin it by saying really nasty things. I had to walk out after that just to cool down before I did anything bad and never got to complete my apology.
"That girl can be as bad as Catherin." Mia scrunched her nose.
"I know." Reika groaned. "But on another note, I think I know now why she is always trying to make life hard for me. Everyone in Harness knows that she has a crush on Kaidou-sensei and he always seems to look out for me."
Mia stared at her for a moment and clapped her hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing. "…She…she has a crush on Jin-san?"
Reika giggled and nodded. "Yup. But Kaidou-sensei usually does not takes any notice of her unless necessary."
"So how does Jin-san look out for you?" Mia asked curiously as they walked to the dining room.
"Oh, he often teaches me how to use Sirena better when we're at Yuko-nee's place and he would often give me tips on how to study better." Reika shrugged.
"That's helpful. But I wonder why he wants to look out for you that much." Mia cocked her head.
"I wondered about that myself but I grew used to it." Reika shrugged. They kept quiet when they reached the dining room and headed over to their respective tables. Much to their surprise, Arata was already in there.
"Arata, I thought you haven't come back yet." Mia remarked as she sat down at the first platoon's table.
"Well, let's just say that I got caught up looking for something at Yuko-nee's place." Arata shrugged and turned to Sakuya. "Thanks again for making Dot Blastrizer for me."
"You're welcome." Sakuya smiled. "So can you use it well?"
"Of course." Arata nodded. "But I'm sorry for being very touchy on the subject for the past few days."
"Apology accepted." Sakuya nodded.
"So now all we have to do is to fix up the others." Haruki spoke up.
"Well, the others agreed to help so I think we can get them back in shape in no time." Sakuya said thoughtfully.
"By the way, what happened back there with Ezeldarm?" Hikaru suddenly asked Arata.
Arata paused in eating and looked up at him. "You saw that?"
"I just so happened to be passing that area when I saw those students from Ezeldarm talking to you but I could not hear what you were talking about." Hikaru said plainly. This caught the rest's attention and they turned to Arata, waiting for an explanation. He glanced around and leaned forward with the others following the suit.
"They wanted me to join Ezeldarm to look for the Parasite Keys." Arata said in a low voice once he was sure that no one was listening. "But I turned them down. Also, they also said something interesting to me."
"What's that?" Haruki asked.
"I'll tell you guys later outside. I need Rikuya to hear this too." Arata said as he flicked his eyes to Catherin's table where she was casually leaning towards them. "But Mia, get ready."
Mia nodded in understanding while Haruki, Sakuya and Hikaru exchanged confused looks.
Later after dinner, while Arata fetched Rikuya, Mia and the rest of the first platoon headed out to the grounds and waited for them. Mia soon sensed Catherin as she tried to eavesdrop on them so she waved her fingers at her side and created illusions to throw her off guard again.
"Mia, what did you do?" Haruki asked when he saw Catherin suddenly sneaking away as though she was following thin air to another place.
"I just made an illusion so that she would leave us alone." Mia shrugged. "Don't worry, she'll head back to the dorms once she realizes that the 'us' that she's following vanishes."
"You don't happen to have anything to do with the Higurashi-sensei that we were following during the 'Doldkin's mission', do you?" Hikaru asked critically.
"You got me." Mia said sheepishly. "Mito-sensei actually knew about our powers a long time ago so she told me to make it harder for you guys to find Jin-san." She cocked her head around and nodded at Arata and Rikuya as they came over. "They're here."
"Arata, since we are here, can you tell us what did those guys from Ezeldarm told you about?" Haruki went straight to the point.
Arata nodded and lowered his voice. "They mentioned that they already have one of the Parasite Keys in hand."
"What?" Rikuya gasped. "Sena-kun, are you sure about that?"
"Unfortunately, yes." Arata nodded grimly. "This guy, Itan Kyouji, told me clearly and he wants me to join them so that I can help them find the other Keys with my Overload. But don't worry, I didn't mention that one of them is in your LBX."
"But how could they have one of them when they have only been established only two days ago?" Sakuya wondered.
"That's what's bothering me." Arata frowned. "They also said that because of Bandit, they could not go further. But think about it, ever since Ezeldarm was established, not once did Bandit appeared other than at the lab this afternoon. And Ezeldarm did not even have any signs of activity."
"I think we should mention this to Mito-sensei. Ezeldarm is getting overly suspicious every minute." Mia told Haruki who nodded in agreement.
"We'll tell her about this tomorrow."
Yuko sighed as she replaced one of her father's journals back into the shelf. So far, her investigations of Tougou Giichi has not been very successful and she had resorted to looking through her father's journals even though she once swore that she would never look inside them.
She took out another one and flipped through it tiredly. 'No wonder Arata was so tired when I sent him back just now. It's just too much to look for a single topic within many books.' But as she continued to flip through it, a page caught her eyes and she stopped there.
29 September- My old student, Tougou Giichi came to me, demanding that I handed over the Gem of Wishes so that he can use it for the Second World on Kamui Island. Of course, I refused and threatened to lock him up if he did not leave. He soon left, but not without a warning that he will get his hands on the Gem of Wishes, no matter what. I know just too well how powerful he is right now. He had used the ERP to gain power over various countries and blackmailed others to attain his position. Therefore, in order to protect the Gem of Wishes while keeping my family safe, I decided to disappear for a while so that I can gather evidence against Tougou and prevent him from getting his hands on the Gem of Wishes.
Yuko paused and dropped the journal on the table. "This is absurd. If otou-san wrote this before he disappeared…" She trailed off and flipped to the next page.
3 March – Despite my best efforts, the Gem of Wishes was stolen from the Crystal Cave. My biggest regret is that I had left Yuko and Atsuya for nothing, making them think that I had abandoned them. But I'm not giving up. I have to fulfil my duties as a Kuriko guardian and stop Tougou before he causes more damage than he has before. I trust that my children will be able to find the Gem of Wishes and bring it back to Fantasy before it is too late. In the meantime, I will continue my mission and stop Tougou from making more mistakes. The Gem of Wishes is in fact too powerful for him to control and he will unfortunately learn soon enough. I will entrust this journal to my friend Houjou Mitsuki to replace it in my library so that Yuko can read this sooner or later.
By the time she was done, tears were slipping out of the corner of her eyes. 'After all this time, otou-san was working so hard to uncover Tougou Giichi's schemes and yet, I blamed him for leaving me and Atsuya. Oh, otou-san, you're so stupid, we could have helped you.'
"Nee-san, Reina-nee-san wants to see you." Atsuya called her through their necklaces.
Yuko sniffed and quickly wiped off her tears. "Alright, send her to my office." She quickly kept the journal and went back to her office just as Mito-sensei came in.
"Hey, you wanted to see me?" Yuko forced a smile in greeting.
"Yeah." Mito-sensei nodded and sat down. "I just wanted to give you the data that you asked about. But how are you going to use it to find the other Parasite Keys?"
"I graduated from the MIT, remember?" Yuko reminded her. "So I can build a scanner to find the Parasite Keys as soon as possible. I don't think we have much time left."
"Why so?" Mito-sensei frowned.
"Let's just say that the energy from the Gem of Wishes will become a danger if too much is left to accumulate." Yuko said grimly. "Anyway, thanks for giving the data to me."
"I just hope that it'll help." Mito-sensei nodded and got up. "I have to go now. I'm meeting Jin soon so that we can discuss our next move."
"I don't think it would be a good idea for Jenock and Harness to think about gaining territory now." Yuko advised her. "Bandit may be more dangerous than we think."
"I agree." Mito-sensei nodded grimly. "I know from Arata that there is an umbrakineticist with them but we don't know who."
"We'll work on that. For now, focus on preventing Bandit from taking the Parasite Key that's with you." Yuko promised her.
