To fix it, Rei Ao simply took hold of this world's very source and did a light consolidation of time.
In his own words:
"This way, Mitsuha, you can naturally stay at this point in time without any rejection."
A casual line that implied the unimaginable power to rewrite the rules of the world!
Becoming the one and only god? Altering the timeline?
After her initial shock peaked, Miki actually felt a strange sense of "so that's how it is."
Who but someone like that could fulfill such an outrageous wish?
She looked at Mitsuha, who seemed to still be digesting it all.
A soft sigh rose in Miki's heart.
Along with it, a subtle sense of connection.
Because of a wish, a man, and an unbelievable accident, they were now tightly bound together.
What would the future hold?
Miki didn't know.
But when she looked at the straightforward, yet much-tried young woman beside her, the guilt she'd felt about "cuckolding" slowly gave way to something complicatedpart shared misfortune, part the feeling that they might truly be in this together.
She tentatively took the hand Mitsuha had resting on her knee.
Mitsuha's body trembled slightly, but she didn't pull away.
They met each other's eyes.
In them, they found shynessand a faint, tentative hope for an unknown future.
Sunlight poured into the room, warm and bright.
Their brand-new, unpredictable story with that man seemed to be only just beginning.
Tokyo, 20th Ward.
The midnight cold burrowed into bone like maggots gnawing marrow.
The air carried a warped mix of the sour stench of rotting trash and the metallic tang of blood.
A slender figure staggered into a narrow, dim back alley crammed with discarded boxes and garbage bins.
Her movements had lost their usual agility; every step was heavy and agonized.
Her left arm clamped her abdomen; thick, dark red fluid oozed between her fingers, soaking her dark uniform even darker.
Blood pattered onto the filthy concrete, blooming into ominous crimson flowers.
It was Kirishima Touka.
Her face was so pale it was almost translucent, slick with cold sweat.
A few deep-blue strands clung to her temple and cheek.
Her breathing was rapid and ragged.
Each inhale tugged at the wound in her belly, sending waves of tearing pain through hershe had to bite down on her lower lip to keep from groaning.
She pressed herself into the shadow of a cold, rough wall,
curling up behind a heap of discarded cardboard,
holding her breath
even her own heartbeat seemed deafening.
"Over here! The blood trail leads this way!"
"Search carefully! She's badly hurtcan't have gone far!"
"Stay alert! Target is S-classextremely dangerous!"
Cold, hurried footsteps and low, barking orders drew nearer.
Beams from flashlights sliced the darkness at the alley mouth like icy blades, a few times nearly sweeping inside.
CCG investigators!
Touka's heart hammered like it would burst from her chest.
Her body quivered slightly from tension and blood loss.
She clamped the wound tighter, trying to slow the bleeding.
She knew that, in her condition, facing a team of investigators, her odds of survival were slim
but she was ready to fight to the death at any moment.
The flashlights hovered at the mouth of the alley for a few seconds, apparently spotting nothing deeper within.
"Nothing here!"
"Check over thereshe might have headed for the main road!"
~~~
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Chapter 914: Desperate Times calls for Desperate Measures
The footsteps gradually receded and finally vanished at the far end of the street.
Only when she was sure the outside had gone completely quiet did Touka's taut nerves snap slack. All strength drained from her as she slid down the cold wall to the ground, letting out an involuntary, pained gasp.
Cold sweat soaked her back. The wound in her abdomen had split open again from the frantic sprinting and tension. Waves of agony crashed over her, dimming her vision to black at the edges. Leaning against the wall, she gulped for air, trying to steady lungs that felt ready to burstand to quell the bloodthirsty instinct howling from hunger and injury.
Her blurred gaze swept the alley's dark wall, graffitied with chaotic scrawls and grimejust like her mood: a complete wreck.
Her thoughts drifted, uncontrollably, back to the nightmare just moments ago
The cozy Anteiku caf, likely reduced to rubble by now.
An attack out of nowhere. CCG investigators in far greater numbers than expected surrounded the place.
They hadn't been without the power to fight back. The manager"Owl," an SSS-rated ghoul. And that feral devourer called the "Binge Eater," Kamishiro Rize, her strength unfathomable. Plus her uncle and several other SS-rated comrades from Anteiku
At first, against a squad led by only one Special Class, they even held the upper hand.
But CCG reinforcements came too fast. More than one Special Class entered the fray. Worst of all was the arrival of that man:
The CCG's grim reaper, the undefeated ghoul investigatorArima Kishou.
His appearance flipped the battle on its head.
The manager was forced to reveal his massive kakuja form and became locked in combat with Arima. That was a fight none of them could join.
And that madwoman Rize, after grievously injuring several investigators, was ultimately restrained and taken away by quinques made specifically to counter her.
With their top-tier fighters gone, the remaining Anteiku members were driven back under the investigators' encirclement.
In the end, the manager's heavy, resolute order came, bellowed through his kakuja:
"Go! Touka! Renji! Take whoever can still movesplit up and run! Live!"
She remembered her uncle's furious, unwilling roar as he obeyed, and the despair in her comrades' eyes as they each broke out.
She herself had taken a devastating blow to the abdomen from an investigator's sneak attack during the breakout, and only by exhausting every last ounce of strength had she managed to escape here.
"Manager"
Touka shut her eyes in pain. Yoshimura Kuzen's ever-gentle, kindly face rose in her mind. Alone against Arima and that many Special Class investigatorscould he possibly survive?
A cold despair and a towering hatred spread through her chest.
All because of that womanRize Kamishiro!
If she hadn't suddenly shown up and drawn most of the CCG's attention, Anteiku might not have been targeted so completely!
If she hadn't rampaged around like a lunatic devouring people and provoked a purge on this scale, none of this might have happened!
"Cough, cough!"
The violent surge of emotion tugged at her wound again, wracking her with coughs as a coppery sweetness rose in her throat.
"No I can't stay here."
Too much blood lost, RC cells over-spentshe was frighteningly weak. Hunger was surging in, the craving for flesh gnawing at her reason.
She had to do something.
She tore a relatively clean strip from the lining of her uniform and cinched it tight around the wound to slow the bleeding. The pain nearly made her black out, but she clenched her teeth and held on.
What now? Find Uncle Yomo and the others? Where were they? Were they safe? The CCG would be hunting every scattered Anteiku member; reaching out rashly might only expose them all.
Or try to rescue the manager?
She crushed that thought the instant it rose. Against Arima Kishou and that CCG lineup, going now would be walking into a trapshe'd only be a burden.
A tide of helplessness and despair swelled to drown Kirishima Touka.
At that dead end, a thought flashedunscientific, nearly forgotten:
"That mysterious trading chat group!"
People there said all sorts of strange things, as if from different worlds. There was even a "group owner" who seemed omnipotent.
She'd always thought it might be some absurd dream, a mental hallucinationnever fully believed it, and she'd barely said anything there.
But just earlier, while lurking, she'd seen a girl named Mitsuha Miyamizu ask the group for help a newcomer who'd joined around the same time as Touka. She'd said her hometown was going to be destroyed by a meteor.
And that group owner, Rei Ao, had actually stepped in to help. It was a transaction, but if the deal was completed, didn't that mean he'd solved the meteor?
She couldn't fathom howbut it seemed like her only slender, unreasonable hope.
Pressing her bloodless lips together, Touka's eyes flickered with hesitation, then hardened into resolve.
"Desperate times, desperate measures."
She focused, trying to "call" the way she had at the very beginning, following that faint sensation.
In the next instant, a semi-transparent panel, glowing faint blue and visible only to her, quietly unfurled in the air before her.
The chat history was still slowly scrolling. She flicked upward quickly.
Sure enough, she found the prior discussion about Mitsuha and the comet, and Rei Ao's final "Handled."
Her heart began to pound on its own.
"Maybe it could really work?"
She took a deep breath, endured the stabbing pain, and forced her thoughts to congeal into words in the input box.
Kirishima Touka: "@everyone Could you please help me?"
Message sent.
She waited, nerves taut, for a reply.
Stella: "Hm? The other newcomer ran into trouble too?"
Bibi Dong: "If you have time, start by explaining what's happened to you; otherwise we won't know how to help."
Shinoa Hiiragi: "Exactly. Of course, you can also choose to trade directly with Rei Ao-kunvery convenient. I doubt he'd refuse."
Chapter 915: Kirishima Touka's Trade Request!
Kirishima Touka: ""
She went quiet for a few seconds,
then organized her thoughts and laid out Anteiku's ordeal as succinctly as she could:
Kamishiro Rize's arrival, the trouble in the 20th Ward, the CCG encirclement, the fierce battle, the manager's decisive order, everyone's breakout, and her own grievous injury and entrapment
She left out many details, but the despair and urgency still came through in the text.
The group fell silent for a moment.
Yotsuya Miko: "E-eats peopleRize the Binge Eater? Th-that's terrifying"
In reality, Yotsuya Miko's voice shook a littleshe was clearly scared. Even with powers that could be called godlike, she was still, at heart, an ordinary girl.
Couronne: "Rei Ao-kun had already given us a brief rundown on ghouls as a species but hearing a concrete case out loud still makes it hard to stay calm."
Couronne looked conflicted. Her world had monstrous races that harmed and devoured people too, but ghouls weren't simply 'monsters'they were more like a variant of humans, demi-humans. The thought of a human-shaped being eating people made her skin crawl.
Misaka Mikoto: "CCG investigators hunting ghouls to protect humans sounds 'just,' but my feelings are complicated."
Misaka Mikoto: "Especially since you, Touka, don't seem like the type to kill indiscriminately"
She felt like neither side was entirely wrong: one fighting to survive, the other resisting to protect.
Mabel: "Debating racial positions isn't the point right now, is it? The point is Touka-san is badly hurt, her comrades are in danger, and she needs help."
Compared to the more sentimental types, Mabel was blunter.
Shinoa Hiiragi: "Meh, ghouls are basically like vampires anyway. For now, let's focus on Touka's problem."
Yukinoshita Yukino: "@Kirishima Touka, what exactly are you asking for?"
Yukinoshita Yukino: "Treatment for your injuries, or do you want someone to rescue your manager and the others?"
Yukinoshita Yukino: "You can also choose to change your world."
In Yukino's view, the humanghoul conflict was hardwired at a biological level and couldn't be reconciled. A one-shot solution would likely require outside powernamely, Rei Ao's.
Touka watched the messages race by, feeling a swirl of emotions.
The chat kept scrolling; the debate over humans versus ghouls didn't stop. Yotsuya Miko's fear, Couronne's unease, Misaka Mikoto's mixed feelings Those words pricked at Touka's nerves like cold needles.
But she only watched in silence. She was used to it.
The existence of ghouls was an original sintwisted and contradictory: hungering for flesh, yet struggling to approach human warmth. It usually ended in ruinor being ruined.
Others' fear and rejection had always been the terms of her survival.
None of that mattered now. What mattered was how to live. How to keep the manager, her uncle, everyone at Anteiku alive.
She hadn't expected to kick off a debate about humans and ghouls. It made her feelings complicated.
But Yukinoshita Yukinodragged her back to reality.
Kirishima Touka: "I I don't know. I just don't want the manager to die, I don't want anyone to die, but I don't know what to do"
In both her words and in truth, Touka revealed rare vulnerability and helplessness.
Shinoa Hiiragi: "So we've circled back to the starting point."
Busujima Saeko: "At times like this, the simplest, most direct way is to @Rei Ao."
Touka's gaze skimmed past the arguments and stopped on the one name that could solve everything.
Her fingertips, cold and trembling from blood loss, still shaped the words with resolve.
Kirishima Touka: "@Rei Ao, group ownerare you there?"
Almost the instant she sent it, a reply popped up.
Rei Ao: "I've been here the whole time."
Misaka Mikoto: "Hey, hey! So you really were lurking and peeping again!"
Seeing him finally speak up, Misaka couldn't help but sass him. Who reads everything and only talks now?!
Touka's heart lurched. Hope and nerves clenched her all at once.
He really was there.
Kirishima Touka: "Group owner, could you help me, please?"
Her tone clearly carried a cautious plea.
Rei Ao: "Of course."
Shinoa Hiiragi: "Told you he wouldn't refuse."
That was the Rei Ao she knew.
Kirishima Touka: "That's wonderful!"
A rush of joy blew away some of the gloom; she was nearly moved to tears.
But his next words doused her with cold water.
Rei Ao: "Don't celebrate yet."
Rei Ao: "Crossing worlds requires coordinates. Without establishing a link via a transaction, I can't precisely locate and descend into your world."
It seemed like the kind of small thing that shouldn't even need a deal. But reality was reality: great power isn't without limits.
He could traverse different worlds, but without coordinates he couldn't just 'find' a path to a specific one.
