Gakusen Toshi Asterisk - Volume 12 - Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3 
BLOOD TIES 
“Well then, where should we begin…?” Haruka asked, her chin cupped in her hand, as if sorting through her newly recovered memories. 
Ayato, having returned the Ser Veresta to its sheath at his waist, made himself comfortable in his seat before spinning around to look at her. 
“Ah, but before we get to that, there’s something I’d like to ask… Ayato. Did Dad tell you about my birth?” 
“Yes,” he replied, nodding. “It was just the other day, though, actually.” 
“I see…” At this, Haruka turned downward, her gaze vaguely forlorn. 
“But nothing’s changed between us, at least as far as I’m concerned. I mean, I was surprised, of course, but that was all.” 
That was the honest truth. 
Sure, the knowledge had come as a shock, but Haruka was still his sister. 
“…Thank you, Ayato.” She smiled, until— 
“—!” 
—she gasped, gripping her chest. 
Ayato rushed to put a hand on her shoulder. “Haruka…!” 
But before he could reach her, she raised her own hand in an attempt to reassure him. “Sorry. I’m okay. Don’t worry,” she said with a forced smile. 
“…That might be asking too much. Are you really okay?” 
Despite her protests, he couldn’t help worrying given her present condition. 
“Yep. Really, really. It’s just a headache. I mean, Dr. Korbel said I was fine, right? So there’s no problem.” 
“Well…if you say so…” 
If that was the opinion of the best doctor in the city, then he had little ground to argue. 
“But if you do feel unwell, make sure you tell someone right away.” 
“Got it.” Haruka nodded before taking a deep breath and staring at him seriously. “All right… Well, I got a letter one hot summer day, from someone claiming to be my real father.” 
“…Your real father?” Julis murmured in surprise. 
Saya nudged her with her foot. “Shh,” she warned, a finger raised to her lips. 
Julis said nothing more, a look of chagrin falling over her as she returned to her seat. 
“A woman who said she worked for him gave it to me on my way back from school,” Haruka continued. “It… He’d written about Mom—things that I never knew about her. And he invited me to meet him.” 
As she spoke, Ayato realized that this was the first time he had ever seen her this way—her voice cool and detached, devoid of any trace of emotion. 
“Of course, I didn’t want to believe it at first or have anything to do with him. But then, it was true that I didn’t really know much about Mom. So I looked into things a bit myself, but there didn’t seem to be anything that really contradicted what he’d said in that letter…” 
“What exactly did he say?” Ayato asked, bracing himself for her response. 
Haruka, however, merely shook her head. “There weren’t a lot of details, unfortunately. Only that she’d thrown everything away and started a new life somewhere else.” 
“She ran away…?” 
At this, Haruka leaned closer to him, her gaze boring deep into his eyes. “Yes. Her face, her name, her identity—she threw it all away to become someone else. That’s what he wrote.” 
“Wha—?!” 
Ayato, it seemed, wasn’t the only one taken aback by this revelation. 
Julis, Saya, and Kirin, having followed along in silence until now, were visibly shocked. 
“B-but that isn’t—” 
“Oh, it’s possible,” Claudia interrupted. “For the IEFs, that is. Of course, it would be a lot of work, turning a person into someone else. There’s all the data to think about as well. It isn’t the kind of thing they would be willing to attempt without adequate justification—that is, unless there was some kind of profit to be made, or else…” 
“Or else they were granting a wish from the Festa,” Julis finished for her. 
“But in that case, shouldn’t we just check the past winners…?” Kirin asked, her voice muted. “If we look over all of them…” 
“It won’t be that easy.” This time, it was Helga’s turn to speak. “The number of winners who keep their wishes secret is by no means inconsiderable. It is also possible someone else might have requested it on her behalf.” 
“I see…” 
As it happened, Ayato, too, had used his wish to help someone else—to have Hilda Jane Rowlands’s penalty revoked in exchange for her aid in waking Haruka. 
On top of that, Ernest Fairclough had once told him that students at Gallardworth often used their wishes to prove their worth by benefiting those around them. 
That being the case, they couldn’t discount the possibility that Ayato’s and Haruka’s mother had relied on someone else’s assistance. And if that was the case, then finding out who she had been would be all the more difficult. 
“There is a chance, if the wish was made to Galaxy—that is, if your mother was a student at Seidoukan—that there might be some data that I can dig up… Although I suspect that any such data may have been altered, just as it was on the Ser Veresta. If she was a student at one of the other schools, then I’m afraid I’m out of ideas. The Festa Executive Committee ought to keep records of everything, but I doubt they would grant Galaxy access to any of it. On top of that, the other foundations would oppose us right from the start. More importantly, however, if the wish was to have her past erased, I doubt that even those records would have survived.” 
Ayato could find no fault in Claudia’s reasoning. 
“Well, putting that question aside… I wanted to find out the truth, so I agreed to meet him. There was a chance that whoever wrote it could be my father after all,” Haruka said, returning to her account. “Around a week after I received that letter, the woman who had given it to me came back for my response… She took me to a black car where this guy with a weird, creepy mask was waiting.” 
“A mask…?!” Ayato blurted out, suddenly freezing in place. 
“…He was the one who claimed to be my father. He called himself Lamina Mortis.” 
A bolt, the likes of which Ayato had never before experienced, coursed down his body. 
Him…! He’s Haruka’s father?! 
“I see,” Helga said with a nod, her fists clenched. “So that’s the connection.” Her voice was so low that it was almost inaudible. 
“I could tell right away that the man—Lamina Mortis—was dangerous. And strong. He was polite, and his voice was calm, but that was obviously just a facade. No one would be able to fully conceal the level of hatred that burned inside him.” Haruka’s words were tinted with a vague sense of frustration. 
According to Dirk Eberwein, Haruka had been defeated by Lamina Mortis during the Eclipse. Ayato, too, had crossed swords with the man and didn’t doubt for a second the depths of his power or his capacity to bear a grudge against the world. 
“He looked me over, as if he was sizing me up. And then he asked me to help him carry out his plan.” 
“His plan…?” 
“Yes. An unbelievably delusional, destructive plan,” Haruka said with a deepening frown. 
 
“I don’t know how to respond, hearing this all of a sudden,” Haruka said to the masked man sitting across from her. 
That man—Lamina Mortis—seemed to glare back at her. “Not even if it’s a request from your father?” he asked with a regretful sigh. 
With only Haruka and Lamina Mortis present, the spacious interior of the limousine felt unoccupied, its leather seats uncomfortably empty. The air-conditioning was so strong that she couldn’t help feeling as if she had entered a world apart from the blistering heat outside. 
“You can’t expect me to go along with what you’re saying when you won’t even show me your face or tell me your name. And I haven’t accepted you as my father yet.” 
“Whether you accept it or not, it’s an objective fact. Speaking for myself, that’s enough for me. What could be more important than having our daughter see the plan through at my side?” Lamina Mortis declared with a puckered grin. “I will, of course, reveal everything once it’s finished—my face, my name, and your mother, too.” 
“…I’m not interested. Excuse me.” 
She knew now that she shouldn’t have come here. 
But as she rose to her feet, Lamina Mortis called out to hold her back: “Haven’t you heard? Your mother is dead. Murdered, as it were.” 
“…What?” At this, Haruka turned back toward him, her ire piqued. “Don’t lie. My mom was sick—” 
“That would be Sakura Amagiri, no? That carcass of hers isn’t what I’m talking about. No, I mean your mother as she was before her death.” 
“!” Almost reflexively, Haruka swung her right arm upward, but before she could strike, the man caught her by the wrist. 
“…She was murdered. I can’t forgive that. That’s all,” he said, his masked gaze staring deep into her soul. 
There was no hint of insanity in those eyes, yet there was no hatred, either. It had resembled that at first, but it was something else—a deep emptiness that somehow surpassed hatred. 
After what seemed like an eternity, he pushed her away, returning to his seat. “I may have asked you to lend me your power, but don’t think for a moment that I need it. The plan is already entering its final stages. I’ll be satisfied just to have you at my side. Although there’s no denying that ability of yours would make for good protection… 
“In any event, I’ve already gotten you enrolled at Seidoukan. You can wait there until the final preparations are complete.” 
Haruka felt her temper flaring hotter with each passing sentence. “How dare you…!” 
“Yes, you have a younger brother, don’t you?” 
“—!” Haruka caught her breath at the sudden change. 
“Well, I can’t say I’m particularly interested in him. Akari’s blood may flow through half of him, but the other half is a nobody from heaven knows where. And yet…” 
“Wait! Ayato has nothing to do with this!” 
“…Indeed. So long as you understand that.” Though Lamina Mortis kept his voice cool and calm throughout, Haruka detected—if only for a second—an undoubtedly intentional glistening of something terrible. 
“…Just what are you trying to achieve?” 
She only barely managed to wring the words out of her throat. 
“Oh, it’s nothing too complicated,” Lamina Mortis said lightly as he crossed his legs. “Only a second Invertia.” 
 
“A second Invertia…?!” Helga exclaimed, rising to her feet. Her countenance had turned sterner than Ayato had ever seen before. 
And she wasn’t alone. All of them, even Claudia, were left speechless, wearing expressions of utter shock. 
“N-n-no, they couldn’t…,” Julis murmured, the words of dismay almost too low to catch. Ayato didn’t need to hear the rest to share her reaction. 
The Invertia was the greatest disaster in human history, a catastrophe that became a turning point for all mankind. It had swept away the past, changing the world beyond recognition, and brought untold tragedy in exchange for the gifts of mana and manadite. 
Not even the integrated enterprise foundations should be able to bring about a second such calamity, no matter how godlike their power… 
At that moment, a memory suddenly flashed before Ayato’s eyes. 
It was during the school fair the previous year, when he had first met Xinglou Fan, Jie Long Seventh Institute’s student council president. 
“The Invertia was no natural disaster. It was caused, intentionally, by someone.” 
That was what she had said. 
And: that there was nothing to stop it from happening again. 

“I can’t blame you if you don’t believe me. I couldn’t believe it at first, either… But I could tell, just by looking at him, that he wasn’t joking. I don’t know whether he can actually do it or how, for that matter, but he’s definitely going to try. I can feel it in my bones. What he wants is destruction.” Haruka paused there to catch her breath before pursing her lips. “And I also thought, if he’s going to try to cause another Invertia, then I had to stop him, and I had to do it by myself… What other choice did I have? I mean, no one would believe me with a story like that…” 
She was no doubt right about that, Ayato thought with a grimace. Even if she went to the police or somehow managed to get word to the upper echelons of the foundations, it was hard to believe that they would be willing to accept what she told them: that an unidentified masked man was involved in a conspiracy to wreak havoc and destruction on such a scale. 
“But this Lamina Mortis was clearly much stronger than me. It was obvious enough I’d have no chance of beating him in a fight… So I decided to go along with him. If I could get more information, if I could manage to interrupt his plans somehow… But I guess he probably expected me to try to do all that even before he invited me.” 
“…Probably,” Ayato murmured in agreement, gaze downcast. 
At least he knew now why she had disappeared. He might not have been able to fully accept it on an emotional level, but he suspected that had he been in her position, he would probably have made the same choice. 
“But,” she continued, her voice warm, “before all that, there was one thing I had to do. I had to protect you, Ayato.” 
“Me…?” Ayato looked up, only to see a sad smile rise to his sister’s lips. 
“I asked him, Lamina Mortis, for a chance to see you one last time before I went with him. On the condition that I didn’t say anything about his plans. Not that I had any intention of bringing it up anyway—I mean, if I told you, you’d come chasing after me, right? You were already strong enough to do so.” 
“—! So that’s why you sealed my power away…?” 
“Yes. To stop you from coming after me.” Haruka’s voice possessed a complex mixture of anguish and affection. “But I knew I should still give you room to choose for yourself once you’d grown up a bit more—if I wasn’t able to come back to you, if you still thought the same way about me.” 
“So that’s why Ayato’s seal was unlocked in stages,” Saya murmured to herself, frowning. 
“Yes. I set the conditions for unlocking them at the minimum level that I thought you would need to reach before confronting Lamina Mortis. The first would be released when you found something you needed to achieve at all costs… I know it was a while back, but do you remember what we spoke about that night?” 
“…Of course.” The memory from his childhood flashed through his mind. 
Ignoring his father’s instructions, he had gone and joined the other students from the dojo. 
Even now, his sister’s words that day, and his own response, were engraved in his soul. 
“The second would be released once you found friends that you trusted from the bottom of your heart.” 
That one had been unlocked during his semifinal match at the Phoenix, against the Li twins from Jie Long, when he finally understood that he couldn’t just become Julis’s strength, but that he needed her to become his, too. 
“And the third one… The third would be released once your strength surpassed my own.” 
“…Ah, so that was it.” 
The final stage of the seal had been released during the championship match of the Gryps, in the middle of his duel against Ernest. 
In that case, it sounded like he had finally caught up to his sister. 
“You would need to pass all three hurdles before you’d be strong enough to face Lamina Mortis, I thought.” 
“I’m sorry, Haruka. I…I hadn’t even passed the first one before coming here…” 
When Ayato first came to Asterisk, he still hadn’t been able to break through the first seal, even when mustering all his strength. He had still been, it seemed, far from what Haruka had envisioned. 
“There’s no need to apologize!” Claudia called out, rushing to Ayato’s defense. “I invited you here for my own selfish reasons!” Her countenance and voice betrayed an unusual depth of emotion. 
“Thank you, Claudia. But I still decided to come here on my own…” 
“That doesn’t change the fact that I—” 
“Enough already, you two!” Haruka interrupted, no doubt sensing that neither Ayato nor Claudia would give ground to the other. “What matters is that the seal is gone now, right?” 
“But Haruka! I…?!” 
But… Right. That wasn’t what he really needed to tell her. 
That day, he could clearly put his feelings into words. 
“Then, I’m going to protect you, too, sis! That’s what I have to do!” 
But he hadn’t been able to keep his word. 
Perhaps there was no helping it. Judging from what Haruka had said, he wouldn’t have been strong enough at the time to make any difference. 
But it wasn’t the words he’d spoken that pained him so much. 
As a wave of regret washed over him, he clenched his fists so hard that he feared he might draw blood. 
He understood now: What he had to do was add something else to the strength he already had. And once he’d come to Asterisk, he had found that something in the form of an obstinate, kindhearted princess. 
He had to be strong—not for himself, but for someone else’s protection. 
That certainly wasn’t unrelated to what he had said to his sister that day, but it wasn’t exactly the same thing, either. To protect someone, to be their strength, meant that one had to first probe to the bottom of one’s own inner strength. 
What he’d said back then had been more like a wish. Looking back, he couldn’t help but feel chagrined at just how naive he had been. 
And yet— 
“You did well, Ayato,” Haruka said, stroking his head gently. 
That was all. 
She said no more than that, but Ayato felt something deep inside his chest, something that had been there for longer than he could remember, begin to thaw. 
“…Yeah.” 
As he closed his eyes, that now-distant summer night rose up before him once more. 
Haruka’s voice now was just as firm and as kind as he remembered. 
“Um, ahem.” Helga let out a feigned cough. 
Ayato, embarrassed, sat up straight. He felt the heat rising to his cheeks as he realized just how warmly Julis and the others were staring at him. 
“…Sorry, but I need to hear the rest of what happened,” Helga said guiltily as she turned her keen gaze back to Haruka. “Can you confirm the details of this plan you were talking about? I need to know how it ended.” 
“Ah, all right… It’ll take a while to go into all the details, and I don’t really understand it all myself, but okay. How it ended… I was able to put a stop to it. I think.” She spoke matter-of-factly, her chin resting in her hand. 

 

“Put a stop to it? Just like that…?” Ayato repeated in bewilderment. 
“No, not ‘just like that,’ of course. I wouldn’t have been able to destroy the rocket without the Ser Veresta. And Ecknardt was unbelievably strong. And even though I was able to put a stop to it, that didn’t stop them from catching me. We were out at sea, so there was nowhere to run…” 
“Wait, you were out at sea? And what’s this about a rocket?” Helga interrupted. “It sounds like I’m going to have a lot of questions, but let’s start with this Ecknardt fellow. Who is he?” 
“He was with Lamina Mortis, I guess. Mortis was responsible for leading the plan, but I got the impression that it was Ecknardt who really put it all together.” 
“What kind of person is he?” Helga pressed. 
Haruka, however, shook her head. “He wasn’t a person.” 
“…What?” Helga snapped, furrowing her brow. “You don’t mean that metaphorically?” 
“No. He looked human, like a young man… But he wasn’t. He was something else, a different kind of existence.” 
A different kind of existence. 
It wasn’t the kind of story that most people would be prepared to believe, but Ayato himself knew of at least two others who matched that description. 
“How do I put this? It was like mana itself had taken the form of a person… Anyway, the gist of the plan was to send Ecknardt to the moon. That’s what the floating launch platform and the rocket were for.” 
“Th-the moon…?!” Kirin stammered. “But I thought we lost that technology centuries ago…?” 
From what Ayato had read, humanity had indeed possessed the ability to land on the moon, at least up until the Invertia occurred. 
Now, however, while humanity had made great strides in the sciences thanks to advances in meteoric engineering, space development was the one field that seemed to have regressed. Perhaps because very little mana existed in space, present-day research into space technology both began and ended with the deployment of satellites and the like. 
“That isn’t exactly right,” Saya corrected them. “The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency was planning a manned mission to the moon a short while back. But that ended up, well…” She trailed off there, her expression turning suddenly mournful. 
“Yes, I’m familiar with what happened,” Claudia said, picking up the story for her. “That manned lunar mission was canceled after a massive explosion at the testing facility. Given the number of casualties, I suppose it couldn’t be helped.” 
At this, Haruka’s expression clouded over. “I’m pretty sure that was their doing. Lamina Mortis and the others.” 
“What?!” 
“I overheard him say that the engine was stolen from the JAXA…” 
“But that all happened over a decade ago,” Claudia murmured, unable to conceal her surprise. 
In that case, Lamina Mortis and his associates must have been planning this for quite some time. 
“Assuming Ecknardt reached the moon, how exactly was he planning to cause another Invertia?” Helga asked. 
“I don’t know the details, but it sounded like he was going to use a large urm-manadite crystal,” Haruka answered. 
“Hrm.” Helga bit her lip in frustration. “I don’t know how we could verify that…” 
She might have been the strongest Strega in Asterisk’s history, but not even she could travel to the moon. 
“Just before they could put it all into motion, I managed to sneak aboard the launch platform and destroy the rocket. I ended up fighting Ecknardt, but beating him took all my strength, and the others caught me. Ah! I destroyed the launch platform, too, so the wreckage might still be on the ocean floor!” Haruka paused there, opening a world map in an air-window from the terminal by her bed and zooming in on a part of the ocean near the equator. 
“I’m grateful for the information, but unfortunately, Stjarnagarm has no authority outside the city. It’ll be difficult for us to investigate. More importantly, though, what happened to Ecknardt?” 
“Well, when I finally managed to land a blow, he kind of shattered, like a piece of glass…” 
“Like a piece of glass…? So he really wasn’t human…?” Julis murmured in a low voice. 
“I was ready to face the consequences, but Lamina Mortis stopped them from killing me. They detained me somewhere for a while, then he told me they’d make me join them unless I could beat him in a duel…” 
“The Eclipse, you mean…?” Ayato asked. 
Haruka nodded. “I knew I’d lose, but I used the opportunity to seal away his power. And then I put another seal on myself, so that I wouldn’t be able to remove the one that I’d put on him.” 
The abilities of Stregas and Dantes didn’t necessarily dispel even upon the death of their user (although such abilities weren’t uncommon, either). Given the seal that Haruka had put on him, Lamina Mortis probably didn’t want to risk killing her. 
“Phew… I guess that’s the short version of it all.” Haruka breathed out a heavy sigh as she stretched her arms. 
“That’s… You really are amazing, Haru…” Those were the only words that Ayato could find at first after listening to her story to the end. 
“I’d already heard about you from Ayato…but you certainly match his descriptions, that’s for sure.” 
“You really messed them up!” 
“A very impressive accomplishment!” 
“You’re just like Ayato!” 
Julis, Saya, Claudia, and Kirin, respectively, couldn’t hide their admiration for her, either. 
“All right, I think I’ve got a rough understanding of what happened. I’ll admit, it’s a little difficult to believe, so I’ll have to get you to go over it all again in more detail soon.” With that, Helga rose to her feet. 
“Ah, Helga,” Haruka called out after her, her next words leaving Ayato even more stunned than he already was: “If it’s all right with you—can I join Stjarnagarm?”