Now that Choso was back in the glass confinement, she struggled with what to do with the information she was given. It had shattered her perceptions of everything. Honestly, she shouldn't have even locked Choso up again; he'd not done anything wrong. Yet she did, and he hadn't resisted, not even a flicker of protest. That fact gnawed at her conscience.
She needed to be careful; there was still a possibility he fabricated that entire story. That should have been the main theory, yet she wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. Something in his eyes told her that was his truth.
But if it were all true, what did that mean for her now? What was she supposed to do with him? Should she just let him go? Letting him go seemed reasonable, a merciful choice, yet filled with risks. Even if he was innocent, he had connections to the people who did it. And he'd been very informative; she could still use him for intel.
She wanted to use him, keep him confined where she could keep an eye on him, and force information out of him as she pleased. He was still a curse, and he'd hurt other people before and might do it again if she let him go.
So why was she more inclined to go down there now and free him? She hated how much she couldn't find the space to hate him in the moment. He had tried to save her sister.
—
A few hours later, she went back down; she found him asleep. And she found herself conflicted. She was unsure of what the consequences of this would be. But it needed to be done; he'd been a noble person, and she'd have to trust that that man she saw pleading her moments ago was the real him.
She placed her hand on the glass and broke all the protective walls she'd placed. He'd feel it when he woke up—that he was free.
Asami felt naive for believing people could change and that he would be a changed man, never causing harm to anyone.
She walked away, out of the basement, through the front door, and headed toward the train station. She'd be headed home; it was the only place she could go now, the only place where she could figure out her next steps. She had to start over to rebuild her plan from the ground up.
—
Back in her old home, the Choso had never been asleep; he'd simply been laying there, letting his thoughts consume him. He felt the wings break the moment they did, and he knew what it meant. After around 10 minutes, he left and disappeared into the crowd of people in the busy city.
—
Asami got into her home, which had been left exactly the same. She needed to make a new plan on how to capture Mahito and Rei. Which would be indefinitely harder than it was to capture Choso. She'd never seen them since that day, and she left her only lead.
She spent hours going through her notes, discarding everything about Choso. It was all useless now, irrelevant. She'd also have to start the report about Choso, unsure of what to say. She couldn't say she'd let him go; she'd be cast away from the sorcerer world. The higher-ups would make her pay for her actions as well. They ostracized the situation to fit their narrative.
Asami began writing her report, the lie taking shape with each word she wrote. Choso had escaped. He had injured her in the process, and she had not seen him since. As she wrote, she couldn't help but think of Choso, now free somewhere in the city. She could only hope that her decision wouldn't come back to haunt her. But for now, she had a new mission. She needed to be assigned to Mahito. They had critical information that she'd need in order to encounter them.
She was going to get that information one way or another.