Yui fell silent once again.

Seiji wanted to say something else, but then he felt that there was nothing more to say.

Would he be able to change Soul Society’s decision just by saying a few words? That was likely impossible.

Would he be able to change Soul Society’s actions? That would also be impossible.

If it was possible, he believed that Yui would have done so already.

If there were anything that he could help with, Yui definitely would have mentioned it already.

Yet, all she did was remain silent.

There was nothing to say.

The sacrifice of more than three thousand lives was something unchangeable and set in stone.

If there was anything else to say, that would be about the specifics of how to go about this cruel action, or if there would be any unexpected additional damage. There was also the matter of how Kamitani knew such top-secret information within Soul Society, and whether the Messengers would be doing anything regarding this.

But, after confirming how serious this matter was, Seiji didn’t want to ask about it anymore.

No matter what he learned, or what was going on behind the scenes, it all seemed meaningless to him in comparison to so many lives that were going to become a planned sacrifice.

So many people would die.

And he was helpless to do anything about it.

He wasn’t a superhero who could save everyone. There would always be people that he couldn’t save… Seiji had understood this already long ago, and accepted it. Yet, he was unable to remain calm when faced with the reality of such a cruel, large sacrifice before him.

‘Is there really nothing else that can be done?’

Seiji really wanted to ask this.

Yet, it seemed meaningless to do so.

There really wasn’t anything else that could be done.

Thinking too much on this would be meaningless.

It wasn’t his fault.

His power was limited.

It would be impossible to save everyone.

It was good enough already to just protect the people important to him…

…

“Seiji onii-chan, want to play together?”

Seiji snapped back to his senses when he heard a little girl’s voice asking him this.

Only then did he notice that he was now back in his own apartment.

Saying goodbye to Yui, getting off her car, and walking back to his apartment… it was as if this entire process had been erased from his mind. He couldn’t remember any of it at all.

Reo was currently holding out a game controller to him. Kaede was also by her side and looking directly at him. Both of them were worried about how he seemed to be giving off such a heavy aura.

“Sure.” Seiji took the game controller and forced himself to smile as he sat down in front of the TV.

On the television screen, Reo’s “Player 1” character was shouting “I shall protect this street!” Her character was a chibi suit-wearing man with explosives strapped all over his body. He rushed towards a horde of cartoon-style hoodlums, and sent the hoodlums screaming and flying everywhere with his fists and explosives.

Meanwhile, another chibi character with “Player 2” over his head appeared in the battle. This character was a youth who wore a helicopter rotor on his head while carrying a large wooden sword. He shouted “I shall create a legend!” while also rushing at the hoodlums, waving his wooden sword and shooting out some cute little birds from the rotor to attack.

The battle seemed fierce yet comical. This game seemed quite simple, but was actually surprisingly difficult… Seiji had only started playing for a few seconds when a blond-haired hoodlum suddenly went berserk and dealt his character a mighty blow. The chibi youth made strange chirping sounds while flying backwards and smashing into a telephone pole on the street. Then, numerous other hoodlums ganged up on him with fists, kicks, projectiles, and blunt weapons. Seiji’s character’s HP bar was instantly decreased by half.

Seeing this, Seiji started focusing more on the game and played it more seriously. He barely managed to dodge another vicious attack from the blond hoodlum while counterattacking with his wooden sword. Seiji’s character then knocked over a vending machine, revealing a fried chicken that he ate for some health restoration.

Why exactly would a fried chicken appear under a vending machine?

Well, this was only a video game, so there was no need to nitpick the details… Otherwise, Seiji would be stuck commenting for an entire day on how unrealistic video games could be.

Just earlier, he had been thinking about such a serious topic, but now he was being distracted by such a small matter. Seiji almost wanted to laugh out loud.

It seemed that rather than remaining quiet and thinking about everything on his own, doing something to distract his attention would be much better.

After playing this video game for a while, Seiji suddenly recalled something.

“Reo, have you still been hearing those strange sounds like you previously told me about?’

“No.” The little girl shook her head.

“That’s good.”

The last time that Reo heard strange sounds in her dream was more than a week ago.

Mayuzumi had experienced hearing strange sounds in her dream only once.

Apart from hearing strange sounds, nothing else seemed to be unusual so far. Mayuzumi had also participated in everyone’s training and grown stronger by absorbing the experience mist from the monsters. It didn’t seem like Seiji needed to worry about Mayuzumi.

…Did he really not need to worry?

Seiji suddenly felt uneasy.

Although he hadn’t asked about the specifics of how Soul Society intended to sacrifice people in order to forcibly summon the Realm of Cherry Blossoms, he felt that it would likely be similar to the attempt at creating a Spirit World during the Bloodwine Ritual tournament.

The assassin Yoshihara had to sacrifice his own life in order to start the Spirit World creation ritual. Summoning the Realm of Cherry Blossoms likely needed a sacrifice similar to Yoshihara, a sacrificial catalyst to begin the spell, in addition to just ordinary civilian sacrifices.

If that was really the case, Reo and Mayuzumi might become potential sacrificial candidates as they were all connected to the same mysterious power like Yoshihara and his deceased girlfriend were.

Would Reo and Mayuzumi be discovered and then captured and taken away by Soul Society?

And even if not, would Reo and Mayuzumi be negatively be affected in some way by Soul Society’s spell to summon the Realm of Cherry Blossoms?

Seiji suddenly became quite worried.

At this time, a comical sounding scream came from the TV. His helicopter rotor wearing character had died from too many hoodlums ganging up on him.

“Seiji onii-chan, I’m coming to save you~” Reo’s explosives man character agilely dodged enemy attacks while rushing over to Seiji’s side. She released a bolt of electricity from an explosive and revived Seiji’s character.

“Thank you…” Seiji continued fighting the hoodlums, but he was no longer concentrating on the game at all.

Should he contact Yui immediately and ask her some more questions?

Or was he just overthinking things?

If he tried to seriously consider every possibility, there were truly too many dangers to possibly ask about everything.

If only he had been calmer during the discussion earlier, he should have been able to think of all this… Damn it all.

‘I’ll calmly think over things some more and then determine if I should call my older sister or not,’ Seiji decided.

………..

[A new character’s POV]

“Humans always make mistakes. Not only that, humans always make the same mistakes. The history of humanity is like the most frustrating story to read. Human history is filled with twisted, ugly, boring, and meaningless scum. From past to present, even right now at this very second, such trash is constantly being produced.”

“That way of thinking is too overboard. There’s still much that’s interesting about humanity,” a voice opposed his statement.

He didn’t care enough to counter such a shallow disagreement, because it would be meaningless.

The existence of this youth named Kamitani who constantly talked about “interesting” and “boring” was a mistake to begin with.

If it wasn’t because of necessity, he would never even communicate with such a “mistake.” In fact, he would have instantly killed this type of “thing” on sight!

Meanwhile, Kamitani spoke to him again. “We can finally make our move. You must be quite excited, Ashiya-kun.”

“Shut up! Don’t call me by that name!”

“My bad, I forgot that you hated your real name… by the way, what was your code name again?”

“One day, I swear I’ll kill you!!”

“Don’t glare at me like that. It makes you look rather scary. I just simply forgot it for a moment. Just wait, I’ll remember your code name!”

“I’ll kill you, and I’ll kill everyone!! Humans are mistaken existences, humans only make mistakes; it was a mistake for humanity to be born in this world… Everything is meaningless!

“Anything that’s meaningless is garbage.

“Garbage should be disposed of.

“And, I am—”

“A janitor? No, I was just joking, that’s not it, hey, don’t hit me like that, it hurts… Ah, I remember now! I really do remember now, your code name is ‘Voidfire!'”

The emptiness of the void, the burning of fire. An empty yet fiery existence, hence he called himself Voidfire.

He also hated his nickname of Voidfire. But, Voidfire was slightly more acceptable to him because he loathed his real name even more.