"I was raised to believe in a God. I remember the faith my parents had and how they had raised me to share that faith. I did, once. I believed in something larger than us, some benevolent force behind the universe, guiding it forward. But after what happened to Tokyo in October 2022, it seemed like a joke. How could a loving god allow something so horrific to happen to the millions of innocent victims that Edenra claimed? And if that hadn't shattered my faith, then Bloody Valentine certainly would have.

Even now, I wonder—will I ever find something that will allow me to believe in something greater than myself again?" —Ayase Eli

Umi shielded her face with a hand as she trudged on the familiar path back into Tokyo. It was barely 1000, but the sun was already peeking over the tops of half-fallen buildings, promising another scorching August morning even though it had rained the previous night.

Normally, her hunting trips would have taken her past noon, but almost tangible tension had hovered in the air as she'd made her way through the outer districts that morning. It had unnerved her slightly even though she did not scare easily.

It had also given Umi the feeling that she needed to get out of there as fast as possible—there was something about the way the few citizens that had been out had looked at her that made her skin crawl with the sensation of suspicious malice, and she was never one to dismiss gut instinct.

Something has happened. I just don't know what it is.

Approaching the waterfront of Tokyo Bay, she spotted a large gathering of people just in front of the makeshift bridge, and the sight was enough to distract her from her thoughts.

Several military vehicles were parked in the already narrow lane— she could pick out the garbs of a few bounty hunters amidst the sea of camouflage green. She frowned a little: a large group of bounty hunters and private military corporations in the same place usually spelled trouble, and it was rarely in a good way.

As she drew closer, Umi realized that they seemed to be arguing with a much larger crowd of citizens from the outer district.

Unease lingered in the atmosphere around her, igniting the rubble and derelict buildings around her like kindling. What… is going on? She had a nasty feeling she was about to find out, and she knew from intuition alone that she was not going to like what she found.

Nearing the mob, she began to make out the words that the mercs were shouting. "You guys killed him!" There was more than one weapon raised, in more than one hand, and that fact was tantamount to the strangeness of the situation alone because none of the Edenra victims that the weapons were pointed at were backing away from them.

Umi edged through the crowd of people as one of the victims shouted back. "He bombed our district! I saw him there last night! It was him. Do you know how many people it killed?"

She froze.

Is that… what happened? She knew that Eli had gone to see her sister last night, but she hadn't seen her blonde friend return that morning. Realistically, Umi knew that she would've already known about it if something had happened, but that didn't do much to diminish the gravity of the situation at hand.

It made her sick to think about it.

Who… Was it really one of the bounty hunters that did this? She knew from bitter experience that most mercs and bounty hunters despised the victims of Edenra for Bloody Valentine, even though the majority of them had had nothing to do with that fateful day. That fact did not matter to most of the people who worked for military companies or as bounty hunters, but she had never imagined that their hatred would escalate into… Into something like this.

She had finally made it to the front of the crowd. Peering under a merc's arm, she stifled a gasp, covering her mouth with a hand.

The body of a bounty hunter she did not know lay sprawled on the dusty ground before her, blood mixing with the dirt and dust that refused to ever be washed clean from the outskirts, no matter how much rain tempered the district. His broken rifle was on the ground beside him, twisted at an awkward angle and utterly useless.

She stood still for a few moments.

There was no wasted grief over the man as she raked her eyes over his body, picking out the spots where he had been impaled by bits of glass and dull knives. She had no idea where the Edenra victims had gotten those weapons, but she was not surprised at all by the fact that they did.

"Where's your proof that he did it?" one of the mercs called back at the angry crowd gathered on the opposite side of the ring of spectators, as though odd guests at an ill-attended funeral.

"I saw him!" one of the men repeated. It was echoed by a chorus of other voices as they raised their fists along with their voices.

One of the bounty hunters beside her drew his spear and leveled it at the citizens opposite them in one swift, violent motion. "Who cares, anyways?" he called back derisively, sarcastic distaste evident in every syllable. "It's not like the people who died mattered. What have they ever done for this city? No one even knew their names!"

Before the argument could escalate further, the sound of sirens permeated the still, humid August air. Umi whipped around, spotting the bright white police vehicles rapidly approaching them, throwing up dull brown dust in their wake.

The crowd scattered almost immediately, the citizens of the outer district disappearing down alleyways or scrambling back into homes within the collapsing buildings. Slowly, the rest of the remaining mercenaries and bounty hunters turned to leave as policemen approached the body of the bounty hunter in the middle of the avenue, stopping briefly to speak to a select few.

Umi turned to go. There was nothing for her to stay for, and the sight of the dead man made her feel ill at ease, and it wasn't because of the way he died. She had seen the rage on the faces of the Edenra victims, and she knew that they would not have approached a bounty hunter for no reason, unless they were sure he had been the one to commit the crime. If he really did set off a bomb here last night, then he deserved to die. Perhaps not like this, she amended to herself, but he needed to be brought to justice.

Someone shoved her roughly from behind. "Did you enjoy the show, Sonoda?"

She bit back a scowl as she half-turned to see that Satou Fubuki had caught up with her in a few easy strides. She simply gave him a cold, disdainful look—she had not forgotten their last conversation at the warehouse district. "Can I help you?" she asked icily, cognizant of the fact that there were still police officers in the vicinity, otherwise, she would have drawn her bow at his obnoxiously close presence to intimidate him into backing off to a respectable distance.

Satou seemed aware of that particular fact as well, because his stance was slightly less aggressive that it normally would have been towards her. "You know," he drawled, "I would've thought that you, out of all people, would've thought that guy did you a favour." He jerked a finger back in the direction of the dead bounty hunter.

"What are you talking about?" she snapped.

He lowered his voice, not for the sake of her privacy, but for the sake of dramatic effect. "Y'know, since the Ceresis killed your family and all. I would've thought you'd be the first one to want revenge."

"You—" Umi stopped herself before she lost her temper. Breathing heavily through her nose once, she let it out before she opened her mouth again; letting Satou Fubuki see her lose her temper was the last thing she needed this morning. "I would never do something like that for revenge," she ground out through gritted teeth at last.

Catching her momentary slip of composure, he laughed openly at her reaction. "You'd like to think so, wouldn't you, Sonoda? Let me tell you this. You might think you're better than the rest of us, but really, you're just a scared little girl who isn't willing to do what she should be doing to avenge her family." The tone of his voice intensified as he continued. "If you really wanted to avenge them, you'd be taking notes."

He sniggered again, giving her an exaggerated wink before stalking away, fingering the hilt of the large sword strapped to his back as he did so, leaving Umi there to fume silently long after he had departed.

She had heard enough from Satou over the years that she had had more than sufficient practice in ignoring the content of his taunts and jibes obviously designed especially to get under her skin, but disgust roiled just underneath the surface of her skin like a moldering pile of rot. How dare he…

He knows absolutely nothing, she reminded herself, repeating the statement in her head like a mantra.

There had been a time after her parents' deaths that she might have been caught and trapped in an all-time low of a mental state that she would have briefly considered carrying out such an act, but that was before she had met Kotori.

Kotori had changed her—had allowed her to appreciate the things she still had to live for and convinced her to let go of the things that should be left in the past. There had never been one moment where Umi had doubted the brunette's intentions and she knew without a doubt that entertaining thoughts like the ones Satou wanted to put in her head would disappoint Kotori more than anything if nothing else.

No. I'm not that kind of person. I know better than that.

She clung to the final thought as she climbed the rocky incline on the other side of the bay, checking her phone as she did so: there were a few messages on it that she hadn't read. One was from Eli, letting her know that she wouldn't be back until at least tomorrow, and the other was from Kotori.

Umi nearly smacked the palm of her hand into her forehead when she read her fiancée's message—a reminder that they had set aside some time to go over wedding plans together the next morning, something that in the light of the last few days, she had completely forgotten about.

While it would certainly be a welcome distraction, she was suddenly plagued with the memory of their last wedding planning session. She closed her eyes as visions of crinolines, corsets, and tulle flashed before her, each more shameless than the last.

This could end very, very badly.

Eli closed the lid of her laptop, burying the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. She took a deep, steadying breath, but it felt cursory at best, because it seemed like the stuffy air of the district building in August did almost nothing for the oxygen requirements of her lungs.

The tips of her fingers brushed the report she'd just printed out. More so than anything, it was its content that was the root of her headache. A lot of headaches had beaten their way through her skull over the years, but this one felt alive, its greasy pressure insistent.

Toujou had called her on the morning after her visit with Alisa in the outer districts, waking her up in the middle of her impromptu nap in Maki's laboratory. She had startled awake, unsure of where the sound that had broken into her sleep was for a few heartbeats was coming from before finally recognizing it as her own ringtone. Spying the number on the illuminated display, she picked it up, fully expecting Koizumi's timid tones and being surprised again when it wasn't.

Still blinking away sleep, she had listened to the request from the other end. She did not miss the less-than-composed tone of Toujou's voice—and given what she had very nearly witnessed the previous night, Eli did not blame her.

"I'll tell you more when you arrive," Toujou had assured her over the phone.

She shook her head slightly as she picked up the small stack of paper. There had been genuine distress haunting the edges of Toujou's voice and Eli wondered if, for the first time, she felt like she was finally losing control over her district. The violet-haired woman had always carried herself with an air of charismatic confidence, even in televised meetings, and Eli had never seen her composure slip in public, even slightly. But there's only so much you can keep bottled up. One of these days, something's going to happen and all that control is just going to disintegrate. I'm hardly one to talk, but I would know.

She had taken the OSD and the photograph from Kouchou, the man that had debriefed her the very first night that she had met the district leader, and had given them a quick glance over as she listened to what he wanted her to do. It sounded a little desperate—even to her—but Eli knew enough about the current state of affairs that at this point, there was little choice in the matter. If ruling the district had been up to her, she would not have seen another solution to the current problem that had only been compounded by the bomb that had been set off in the outskirts. The police report on its aftermath had yet to come in, but she didn't need to look at the results to know that nothing positive would come of it.

Toujou had swept off for an emergency meeting with her senate regarding the explosion, which left Eli to her own devices for the next few hours. It had taken her almost two to crack the encryptions on the other districts' citizen databases, but at least she had something to show for it.

However, she was reluctant to make her way over to Toujou's conference room just yet, as she didn't know if the meeting was supposed to be over already. Eli had absolutely no intention to run into Fujiwara Hayato in particular, even just in passing.

Papers in hand, she went to drop off her personal laptop in the room that Toujou provided for her in the district building. Regrettably, she'd used it more often than she would've liked, but at least it was secure. Tapping her ID card on the doorframe, she made sure to lock the computer in the safe she'd stashed in the closet before meandering her way back to the conference room, taking her time.

She didn't spot any politicians in the hallway leading up to the conference room, but she made an effort to drag her feet, just in case.

The door to the conference room was ajar.

No voices drifted out of it—something she would've expected had it still been stuffed full of politicians she had no desire to interact with. The papers in her right hand made a small crinkling sound; she was holding them tighter than she needed to.

Though the gap between the door and the doorframe, she spotted the dark silhouettes of Toujou's usual pair of security guards. There would've been more if there were senators present in the room, so Eli made the tentative conclusion that the meeting had already concluded, and walked up to the door.

She knocked once, the sound reverberating in the empty space and making it seem much more forceful than it really was.

There was no reply.

But… she has to be in there, right? Doubt crowded at the edge of her consciousness for barely a moment before she squashed it. Eli raised her hand to knock again.

"I know you're there, Eli-san," came the reply, sounding more tired than she had ever remembered Toujou sounding. "Come in." There was effort in the cheerfulness to her tone.

Pushing the heavy wooden door open wider to let herself in, Eli spotted Toujou sitting alone at the head of the table. Her hair was still in its single braid, but her bangs were messy, as though she'd pushed her fingers through it many times during the span of two and a half hours, and her hat was nowhere to be seen.

Toujou motioned to the chair on her left closest to her, a clear invitation for her to sit. She pushed her fingers up her forehead again, brushing her bangs upwards carelessly before she spoke. "What did you find?"

Eli sat on the very edge of the seat, placing the stack of paper between them so that it was within her reach. "He's not a direct match to anyone in any of the districts," she said. "But there were a couple of people with a higher number of hits than I would've expected if they were completely unrelated, so I looked into them." She pushed the papers towards Toujou.

The other woman picked them up delicately in a gloved hand, looking them over. Eli watched the expression in her green eyes change from interested to intense as she read through the pages.

There was a long pause as Toujou read.

Eli didn't know what to do with her hands, given the fact that she already knew what was printed on the pieces of paper. The atmosphere between them might've changed, and while it was nowhere near the frosty silence of something caught in between hesitant respect and awkward curiosity, she wouldn't have called it friendly by any means.

"This Imori Shinn," Toujou said at last. "I'll have Kouchou look into him."

She nodded wordlessly, unsure of whether or not she was supposed to acknowledge the statement aloud.

Imori was a last name that was familiar—to her, at least. He owned one of Tokyo's largest private military corporations and was one of the biggest sponsors of the endeavours beyond the fenceline, but he had recently relocated to Osaka, which was probably why his profile had shown up in their database instead. He pushed aggressively for new weapons almost every year, and Eli vaguely remembered Umi telling her that he had struck some sort of deal with the senior Hoshizora within the last two years, having heard the news somewhere down the grapevine from Rin.

She had never met the man in person, however, and Eli had no idea if the man in the photograph truly resembled the corporate owner or not, especially given the fact that he had left the district—though he'd left his company in place—before the new regulations regarding citizen registry had come into place last November.

Eli looked up to find that Toujou had put down the pieces of paper, folding her hands over them.

"Thank you," the purple-haired woman said to her quietly. She couldn't tell if it was exhaustion or something else much deeper that weighed the violet-haired woman's voice down like rocks.

She shook her head. "I just did what you asked me to do," she mumbled awkwardly, still unused to the new, altered dynamic between them.

She turned to get up to leave.

"How did last night go?"

Eli paused, the question catching her completely off guard. Turning her head to look around sharply, she saw that Toujou was wearing the small, familiar smile on her face as she watched her. "That's something a friend would be concerned about, yes?"

She bit her lip, but there was a small smile that fought against the action as gingerly, Eli sat down again. She looked down at her lap for a moment before looking up again; her heartbeat had picked up slightly into an erratic pattern and she hoped it wasn't showing on her face. "Okay, I think," she said, hesitating a little.

"You found her?" Evidently, Toujou knew who she had gone looking for, though it wouldn't have been hard to guess.

"Yes. It was… a little awkward at first," Eli admitted, unsure of why the answer came out so easily when she had been so reluctant to broach the topic with Umi and Maki before. None of them were good at talking about their feelings, but at least Umi and Maki had their respective professions to channel their anger into.

Somehow, the clinical part of her brain knew it was because she knew how they'd respond. Toujou was different, but Eli had yet to figure out if it was a good or bad sort of different.

"But?" Toujou prompted her.

Is it just me, or is she too familiar with my facial expressions and mannerisms? She wasn't sure if the thought made her uncomfortable, or not.

"But we talked," she elaborated. "There were a lot of things that were left unsaid the last time we met. I… don't know how things will work out in the future, but at least there will be a next time."

The purple-haired woman shifted her hands so that her chin was resting on the back of a wrist, the fingers of one hand holding the other. "I'm glad you went back to work things out." There was a hint of real warmth to her voice, though it was smoldered by the tiredness that Eli detected in it. There was something else, but she didn't know Toujou well enough to pick out what it was. Regret?

"Me too." She paused. There was an unseen, but very much tangible, weight in the room that Toujou was carrying on her shoulders. It didn't seem right to leave that unaddressed. At the back of her mind, Eli knew that had it been anyone else, she would've asked about it already. If it had been Umi or Maki, it would've been done before she'd even sat down.

"How did your meeting go?" The question felt strange on her tongue, but she quashed the awkward embarrassment that threatened to go along with it.

Toujou looked up at her. "What?"

"Your meeting," she repeated. "Isn't… the important part about being friends is that it's a two-way street?"

A smile tugged at the corners of the violet-haired woman's lips. "I… suppose so." She sat back slightly in her chair and took a steadying breath, but it was several moments before she continued. "You didn't happen to see the bomb last night, did you?"

"No," Eli answered. "I was there when it happened, but I didn't see it."

Toujou was silent for a few minutes. "You understand why they did it, don't you?"

She felt the fingers of her hands tighten ever so slightly in her lap, turning her knuckles white. "It's because they oppose your new law, isn't it?"

"That's correct. Though… I never imagined that they would resort to these measures in order to show their opposition."

No. Neither did I.

Silence wrapped around them, but it was brief. "Because of what happened last night, the senators are convinced that passing this new law is only going to make things worse. In all the months that we've been debating this, none of them have ever mentioned the welfare of the citizens that live in the outer district to me. Not even once." She paused. "Isn't it funny that now something's happened, they're using the fact against me?"

Eli did not miss the sarcastic undertones in her otherwise soft, subdued voice. There was a drawn smile on the other woman's face, but she knew it wasn't because of what they were talking about, but about the irony in the words she was saying. "That's how they are though, isn't it?" she asked. "Nothing's ever the truth unless it somehow benefits them."

A few months ago, she would've kept that observation to herself, not knowing how Toujou would react to it; it was a testament to the fact how things between them had changed enough that she felt that the woman beside her wouldn't be offended, at the very least, by the opinion.

"You're right, of course," Toujou acknowledged serenely. "But knowing how things are doesn't make my problem go away. Would it be better if I stopped trying to persuade them?"

Even just a few weeks ago, Eli would've been reluctant to answer the question and all its implications out of trepidation. It surprised her that she was willing to answer it now. She didn't know enough about politics to give Toujou a complete answer to her question, but she suspected that that was not what the violet-haired woman was asking.

"No," she said quietly. "You shouldn't do something because other people say you shouldn't. If you think it's the right thing to do, then you should do it."

Don't make the same mistakes I have.

"And what about you?" Toujou asked her gently. "You have a right to voice your opinion too, you know. In fact, it could even be argued that you have more of a right to say something than most of the senators here. Do you think it's the right thing to do?"

Eli hesitated.

Years of experience fought a war with her most recent memories. She couldn't deny that there was a reason that Edenra victims remained marginalized in Tokyo's population. Most of them had been angry at the way the district treated them for none other than their diagnosis alone, and in turn had turned around to treat anyone who belonged to the district in the same way. She would never claim that the citizens of Tokyo were innocent, but she could understand their fear—their pain—at the prospect of a third disaster that could cost them everything they knew once more.

"I don't know," she answered truthfully. "I understand why the people in this city are afraid of the Ceresis. They don't want another Bloody Valentine. That's why people are afraid, because none of us do. But…"

But not all the Edenra victims are like that. Sure, most of them are—that's why ordinary citizens don't go into the outer districts unless it's absolutely necessary, but…

"We've lived like this for years," she finally murmured. "Nothing's changed. And nothing will change, because we're not doing anything to change it. So… because of that, I think it's worth trying, at the very least. Even if it doesn't work, it won't be because we haven't tried."

Toujou gave her a dry smile. "And if it doesn't work, you do realize that that would mean it's my fault for having suggested it to begin with."

"Everyone is responsible for their choices," she said simply. "There isn't a decision out there that doesn't have a risk attached to it, but whether we choose to make them or not, even with that knowledge, is up to ourselves—alone—to decide."

The smile on Toujou's face grew, morphing into something more genuine even through the somnolent lines etched into her delicate features.

"Thank you, Eli."

It wasn't until long after she'd left the room that Eli realized Toujou had dropped the honorific at the end of her name.