The quiet of the apartment was shattered by a soft vibration.
Still buried face-first in Star-trail's belly, Qiluo groaned and reached under her pillow.
The light of her phone screen illuminated her face. In the notification bar lay an encrypted email from "Melulu" with a two-word subject line: “Data.”
Qiluo rolled over and sat up. Star-trail tumbled off her lap onto the duvet, letting out a disgruntled grumble.
“Finally,” Qiluo muttered, bringing the phone closer to her face as her fingers swiped rapidly across the screen.
The email contained a data packet from Meruru, followed by a decryption password and a brief note.
Meruru complained for a bit in the text, saying that the Observation Department's ancient server took hours to run a single deep search, and high-clearance files required manual approval, which was why it had taken a few extra days.
Qiluo skipped the text and tapped directly on the data packet.
Meruru had organized the data impeccably. Each entry was labeled with the observation time, brightness level, spectral analysis results, and the corresponding Erosion Body activity index at the time.
Skipping past the astronomical figures, Qiluo's eyes went straight for the correlations.
Sure enough, every abnormal spike in the brightness of the Eye of the End was followed by a large-scale Erosion Body outbreak within one to two weeks.
This pattern had been particularly pronounced over the past decade.
Scrolling back to the body of Meruru's email, the final paragraph felt somewhat abrupt: “Also, when I searched the archives for information on Shiraha Mashiro, I found extensive signs of destruction. What is currently confirmed is that she left the management shortly after founding the Association, and there are no public records regarding her subsequent whereabouts.”
“I've heard that some undestroyed paper originals are still kept in the Association's underground archives, but they require special clearance to access. I'm looking into it.”
After reading the last line of data, Qiluo set her phone down by her pillow and flopped back onto the duvet.
Star-trail poked its head out from under the covers and nudged her cheek, as if asking, What's next?
What else could she do? She would just have to take it one step at a time.
Qiluo stared at the small light on the ceiling for a moment, then reached out to scoop Star-trail onto her chest, her fingers idly stroking the fur on its back.
“Star-trail—calling Star-trail—”
Kizuna's voice came from the other side of the contract link, carrying the damp warmth of someone who had just finished bathing.
She was probably snuggled under her covers, her hair not yet fully dry, leaving the scent of shampoo on her pillow.
“My sister said she's not coming back tonight, and I can't sleep alone. Hurry on over! I've already saved a spot for you on my bed—the little dent to the right of my pillow. See how good I am to you?”
“No.”
Star-trail raised its head from Qiluo's chest, its ears twitching.
“Eh—why?!”
Even across the contract link, Qiluo could picture Kizuna sitting up in bed with her hair sticking out in a messy nest. “You used to come over every single time! Last time I said I couldn't sleep, you even came over on your own accord—”
“Today is different.”
Star-trail pulled its tail from Qiluo's hand and shifted its posture to crouch next to the pillow.
Qiluo scooped Star-trail up and held it in front of her eyes.
Held by her under its front legs, Star-trail's tail dangled in midair as starlight particles lazily drifted down onto the duvet, as if it were waiting for her to say something.
Star-trail tilted its head. Qiluo placed it back on the pillow and curled into the blanket herself, pulling it up to her chin, lying on her side face-to-face with Star-trail.
Come to think of it, this clone of hers, Star-trail, hadn't really slept with her much.
Star-trail nudged forward, pressing its forehead against her brow.
Qiluo closed her eyes and buried her face in the back of Star-trail's neck. It was a little ticklish, but mostly, it smelled wonderful.
When she had first designed Star-trail, she had deliberately set its fur softness to the maximum. She hadn't expected that she would one day become addicted to this sensation herself.
Ahem, she had almost forgotten to reply to Kizuna.
“I still have some things to handle on my end.”
“What things? Where are you? Are you over at Kurokawa-san's? You've been going to her place way more than mine lately! I've counted—last week, you slept at her place for at least four days!”
“Kizuna.”
“I'm not jealous! I just think you should allocate your time fairly—”
“You just said you weren't jealous.”
The other side fell silent for a moment.
Then Kizuna spoke in a tone that was clearly sulky yet trying to sound nonchalant: “...So you're really not coming over tonight? My sister isn't home. I'm all alone.”
“Last time, you told me to lock the doors and windows when I'm home alone, so I locked them all. But after locking them, I realized how huge the house is. There's an echo when I walk.”
What did everyone think Star-trail was? A personal body pillow? A magical cat to be used in rotation?
Qiluo's pinching of Star-trail's ears unconsciously tightened, causing Star-trail to let out a soft squeak.
“You can sleep with the bedside lamp on. Didn't you say you weren't afraid of the dark anymore?”
“What if I'm afraid of it again now?!”
The sound of rustling blankets came from the channel. Kizuna had probably pulled the covers over her head, making her next words sound muffled.
“Let it go, go do your work. Night.”
“Goodnight.”
In the days that followed, Qiluo wished she could split herself into three.
By day, she was Qiluo Tian Gong of Class 2-A at Tachibana High School. At dusk, she changed into her convenience store uniform, scanning barcodes behind the register and restocking shelves and freezers. After her shift, she set aside half an hour to massage Misa Tachibana's shoulders, using the opportunity to quietly update her analytical data on the mana in Misa's left shoulder.
Night was the real battlefield.
The low table in her apartment was covered with printed star chart comparisons, spectral analysis curves, and statistics on Erosion Body activity frequency. Her laptop screen glowed late into the night. She had broken down the database sent by Meruru into dozens of tabs, highlighting each entry with different colored highlighters.
Star-trail curled up on her lap, acting as a constant-temperature heater, occasionally letting out low murmurs when she rubbed its ears.
“Look here,” she said, holding Star-trail up to the screen and pointing to an observation record highlighted in red. “The interval between this peak brightness and that major outbreak is nearly half of what's in the other records. Why?”
Of course, she couldn't get an answer.
It was just that Qiluo Tian Gong always talked to herself when she was thinking.
Back in the day, she would just pretend to converse with another person in her head.
Now that she had another version of herself, this habit naturally translated into conversations between her and Star-trail.
Massaging her temples, she placed Star-trail back on her lap and continued to flip to the next page.
Rate on N.U.
