The Man in the Mirror

Vanity demon looked up.

For the first time, it looks afraid.

Miyo’s eyes sharpened.

“But I brought my baby.”

“Choo-choo…”

And swallowed the vanity demon whole.

As the blue anglerfish hit the ground, it shattered into small blue lights, along with the demon inside its stomach.

---

The first thing Chitose noticed was Miyo.

Not the enormous creature; not the ruined street; not the countless fragments of glass scattered across the monochrome crossing.

Miyo was floating above the street.

Her summer dress swayed gently in the air despite there being no wind.

A translucent summer hat above her head.

Around her, tiny blue lights floated like fireflies trapped beneath water.

And above her, a colossal blue jellyfish. Its translucent body was filled with countless tiny shapes that looked almost like sleeping babies.

Its tentacles curled around Miyo's arms and legs.

Chitose stared.

“...Miyo?”

Miyo looked down at her.

Her expression was completely different from the cheerful girl Chitose had met that morning.

There was no bright smile; no playful excitement; no nervousness, just an unnaturally calm expression.

For the first time, Chitose realized something.

I've never actually known Miyo before.

Not like this.

This was the first time she had seen what Miyo truly was.

Chitose's eyes narrowed.

The Eye of Order activated, and then something was wrong.

The giant creature had swallowed Vanity.

But the Domain of Order had not disappeared.

The monochrome city remained, with cars still frozen and pedestrians motionless.

The traffic lights still had no color.

And then Chitose heard it.

Crack.

She slowly turned her head.

A broken piece of glass lying beside her moved. Another piece followed, and another. The shards began to slide across the ground.

As gathered into one piece.

---

Miyo descended toward the ground.

“Chi-nee...”

Chitose didn't respond.

She was staring at the shattered glasses.

Something was reflected inside it.

A face?

It's a human face!

Then the reflection smiled.

“We're just getting started, Harbinger.”

Chitose immediately raised her compass.

The Eye of Order focused on the figure.

Usually, the information appeared instantly.

'Class' for demon and 'Type' for angel anomaly

But this time, nothing. Those familiar words did not appear.

Instead, the figure was highlighted in orange rather than yellow.

Chitose was confused.

“...What?”

She had never seen that before.

She looked again.

The entity information was blank; only the orange highlight was visible.

The figure stepped out of the reflection.

It wasn't the enormous pillar of flesh anymore.

It was an ordinary-looking man.

He had human skin, eyes, and clothing, human-like.

He looked like someone Chitose might pass on the street without recognizing. Yet the Eye of Order continued to highlight him in orange.

Chitose tightened her grip on the compass.

“You're the demon.”

The man smiled faintly.

“I was.”

Chitose froze.

“...Was?”

The man touched his chest.

“The demon you fought was something I created.”

He looked toward the empty sky where Miyo's creature had vanished.

“And she destroyed it.”

Miyo tilted her head.

“Did I?”

The man smiled.

“Yes.”

He didn't sound angry, yet he sounded amused.

Then he closed his eyes for a moment. Nothing happened.

Then purple mist began gathering around him.

It wasn't coming from his body.

It was coming from the people themselves. From every human feeling, it collects a certain emotion within the silent world.

“Arrogance, Egotism, Pride…”

“The desire to be admired; the fear of insignificance; the need to be better than someone else.”

The purple energy slowly gathered around his hand.

Chitose stared, fixing her stance, not letting her guard down.

“What are you doing?”

The former demon opened his eyes.

“Making another one.”

The purple energy condensed.

It became a tiny purple ball.

The grimoire recommends a pincushion. She takes it quickly and throws it to the man.

"Then not letting you!"

BOOM

The pincushion detonates, interrupting the man and making him create another one.

But the man runs quickly, protecting the negative energy on his hands.

"It's real. The Angel is right! You are unpredictable, Harbinger."

The purple energy grew bigger and bigger, and he gently let it fly to the center of the crossing. As he let it fly, the purple energy hardened into an egg-like form before landing on the ground.

The egg cracks, and a figure quickly emerges from it.

Bones appeared first, then flesh, the translucent pillar, the skeletal torso, and the mouth opened in its stomach.

The new Vanity Entity lifted its head and screeched.

The Eye of Order identified it.

Class: Vanity

“You can make another demon...?”

The man shook his head.

“No.”

He looked at the creature.

“I create another Vanity thanks to humans producing the Pride.”

Miyo responds calmly.

"Why do you talk so much?"

Miyo opens its arms and releases a brown orb.

The orb flies toward the Vanity demon. In response, the Vanity opens its mouth on its stomach, and a black light gathers, trying to counter the attack.

But as soon as the black light forms completely.

A translucent Catfish arrives, hitting the mouth like a train, making the jaw on the stomach dislocate, then it coils around the Vanity demon.

The man just touched his forehead with his palm. He was disappointed.

"Who is this jellyfish girl?"

The Eye of Order continued to glow orange around the man.

Chitose takes her rapier from the grimoire.

"Demon or Angel, it doesn't matter who you are."

Miyo speaks calmly.

"It's over now."

---

“The environment will become black and white. And an hour inside the Domain of Order is equivalent to only one second outside it.”

One hour was one second.

That was the limit.

Chitose didn't know why.

She only knew that the domain had rules and didn't know what would happen if she spent more time inside the domain.

The first hour belonged to the Harbinger.

After that—

The outside world would notice.

---

A faint sound came from beyond the frozen street.

A car horn.

Chitose turned.

For a moment, she thought she had imagined it.

Then she saw something.

A pedestrian pointed a finger at the Vanity demon coiled around a translucent catfish.

A man near the crosswalk blinked repeatedly.

Someone in a parked car turned their head.

The monochrome world was beginning to seep into reality.

The Domain had lasted too long.

Chitose's eyes widened as she noticed Momoka was shocked and staring at her.

Are they starting to see it?

"Miyo, can they see us?"

Miyo calmly responds.

"I don't remember the Harbinger's domain."

Miyo sees a little girl staring at her, smiling sweetly, mesmerized by her appearance.

"But a friend of mine knows a lot about Harbinger. She was a close friend of the previous Harbinger."

"Just don't touch them and make sure they won't take any hits. That's all I remember."

"I don't want them to die seeing a nightmare, unable to fight or make it run. I'll protect them and try to take the demon down."

Chitose looks at Momoka.

"I understand."

---

The pedestrians just watched everything that happened in one second, an hour ago.

Chitose looked around.

A woman outside the Domain is screaming, yet there is no sound.

For the first time since activating the Domain, she wasn't thinking about how to defeat the demon.

She was thinking about everyone else.

I have to end this.

But the man was still standing. As long as he remained alive, he could keep creating Vanity.

Chitose lowered her compass slightly.

She looked at him.

“Who are you?”

The man smiled.

“I don't think you know enough about this world to understand the answer.”

Chitose's expression didn't change, but something inside her sank. She felt dumb.

She had spent so many days believing she was simply fighting Angels and Demons.

Entities that the Eye of Order could identify.

The way she understands everything easily, but this was different.

She didn't know what he was.
She didn't know about the Left-Behinds.
She didn't know how he had become human.
She didn't know what the orange meant.
She didn't know who Miyo really was.
She didn't even know Miyo could fight the entities too.

And lately—

She didn't know who she could talk to. Sometimes she's becoming self-aware that Kazuha was a dog and unable to respond like a human.

But still, she knows she's just a person who wants to be happy, too.

“Kazu-kun...”

Chitose pictures him standing near the apartment entrance, waiting for her to come home.

After this, I will come home to hug you.

She closed her eyes for a moment.

Then she opened the Grimoire.

Instead of waiting for it to recommend something, Chitose flipped through its pages.

One page.

Another.

And another.

She stopped.

Her hand rose slowly.

FWOOM.

A red pentagram appeared behind her.

Then blue.

And green.

Three circles of light rotated behind her like enormous magical seals.

Chitose stared ahead.

She had never used this kind of magic before, after using a Seam Roller for the first time.

Slowly, something emerged from each pentagram.

Pins

Hundreds of them.

Red, blue, and green.

They floated behind Chitose, pointed directly at the man.

Takes her rapier on the grimoire and tightens her grip on her rapier.

“Let's finish this.”