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With breaths that sharply inhaled the bitingly cold autumn air causing them to wince, it didn\'t take long for the two to recover the stamina lost from chasing after me.

Looking at them, I thought to myself.

My survival here is more or less guaranteed, but the implications of that may not be so pleasant. What it comes down to, really, is whether my gamble has paid off, although this whole situation is pretty much a screwed-up amalgamation of gambles.

Whether or not they would even come after me, for example, was a slight gamble. Though, I was confident they would―because it wasn\'t an opportunity they could easily come across.

The other gamble... Well, we\'ll see if it happens.

"So, what did you come for?"

Hands in the pockets of my black coat, I asked them frankly. Of course, I already knew the answer, but I was more interested in gauging their reactions.

Tarou Fushigimi appeared as if he didn\'t know how to answer, a face of tension laying bare his emotions, but fortunately, his sister answered for him in a slightly more relaxed manner.

"Why are we here...? Well, we were just worried; wondering why you were coming to such a place despite saying you would go home..."

A likely story.

"Atsuko Fushigimi. I know you\'re not entirely aware of the situation, but you should know that you\'re teetering on the edge of a very hazardous cliff right now."

Glancing at Tarou, examining his perturbed expression as he looked between his sister and myself, I truly realised the level of his cluelessness.

"Hah... A cliff? I really don\'t know what you\'re talking about all of a sudden..."

I could see the cracks in her awful pretence poker face as if they were visible to the naked eye. She tried her best, but it simply was not sufficient. Though, even if it was, it wouldn\'t have been able to fool me.

"I\'m saying that I recommend you leave now. It\'s a dangerous game you\'re trying to play here."

More precisely, it was akin to a baby reaching its fragile hand towards a lit fireplace―the thing in front of it looked strange and piqued its curiosity, but the closer it got, the heat of the fire grew, until eventually, it got burned.

"No, seriously, what do you mean? I don\'t think we\'re the ones in any danger here..."

Taking a step forward, Atsuko moved Tarou behind her as if to shield him.

She didn\'t know what I was capable of, but she didn\'t want to take any risks for her brother, huh.

Well...

""!?""

If you wanted to avoid risks, you should have never followed me to begin with.

"W-w-w-wait a second! H-h-hold on, is that a fucking gun?! Don\'t screw around here, okay!? We really weren\'t gonna do anything! C-calm down!"

Her eyes trembled and appeared to shrink in renewed apprehension. Waving the palms of her hands in my direction, as if such a thing could stop a bullet, she shook her head and told me to calm down.

The words she spoke were strange to me.

"Calm down? I\'m plenty calm. I think you are more the one who needs to \'calm down\' than I am, Atsuko Fushigimi."

Tarou, utterly ignorant of the entire situation at hand, froze in place, overcome by the possibility of death invading his mind, the image of bleeding out from all the blood that could pour from his potential gunshot wounds flooding his thoughts.

Gritting her teeth, Atsuko\'s trembling right hand reached into the pocket of her jacket and started furtively fumbling around.

"Ah, ah! Leave your phone alone. Take your hand out of your pocket and keep them both in the air."

Emphasising my point by slightly wiggling the end of the suppressed Ruger Mark IV in my hand, she quickly stopped in her tracks, staring at me terrified. However, her hand was still in her pocket.

"Will you kill us?"

Suddenly, she posed such a question.

Oh...? I see what she\'s doing.

"I wonder. I am inclined to; surely I don\'t have to explain why?"

"..."

Atsuko didn\'t respond, instead glancing once at the petrified Tarou behind her. Naturally, he wouldn\'t know the reason, so it seems like he\'s the only one left out.

"Oh, dear, that\'s right. Poor Tarou doesn\'t know a thing, does he? Hey, Tarou, I promise I won\'t shoot you, but do you want me to solve your confusion?"

"W-wha-- Hey!"

Atsuko frantically began to yell at me as I changed my target from her to Tarou.

What a brave sister, trying to protect her brother from harm. However, it\'s no good being overprotective and steering him away from the truth, you know?

"Don\'t you hate being kept out of the loop? I can give you all the answers you desire if that\'s what you want. I can solve all of your troubles."

"Shut up!"

He looked at me with an odd gaze. The guy was confused as all hell and had no idea what was going on, but he recognised what I said and reflected on it nevertheless.

His perceived image of me was of an intelligent but isolated classmate who knew a lot and scored the maximum possible marks on every single academic exam.

Couldn\'t such a knowledgeable person give some insight as to his feelings?

"I\'m sure you\'ve felt it for a long time, right? The fact that your sister and parents have been keeping something from you."

"You...! Hey, Tarou, don\'t listen to that crazy guy, okay? Look, he\'s brought a gun, he\'s clearly insane!"

If he was smarter and thought about it a little bit more, then he would have realised that I had this gun and suppressor in my coat pockets from the very beginning―meaning that I had brought it with me to and from school.

His hazy eyes seemed to focus on nothing but his own thoughts, however, completely ignoring his sister\'s hurried warning and with a lack of critical thinking.

Like this, things would proceed interestingly.

See, what I realised not that long ago was that Tarou Fushigimi was the only person in the family left in the dark about Saburou\'s existence. When I wondered why that was, I found out that it was a ploy.

At birth, Saburou was separated from his family for the power he held―the power that was the Measurement of Space. With an exorbitant amount of hush money paid to them on a monthly basis, his parents were, at first, the only ones who knew this secret.

It was an easy deal for them to accept since it\'s not like they weren\'t allowed to see their son during his upbringing in the Playground, and they were able to visit him weekly or so, which satisfied them enough.

The Wardens saw themselves as a benevolent group aiming to save the world, after all. Working alongside international governments, they wouldn\'t dare to taint this flawless reputation of theirs by needlessly separating a kid from his parents and not enabling any contact between the two.

One day, the mail arrived at the Fushigimi household just like any other. The parents were out at the time, and the one who first stumbled across the letter, a 7-year-old Atsuko, got overwhelmed by her child-like curiosity at the sight of a bright-red \'classified\' printed in capital letters across the front.

Naturally, her first instinct was to open it up and see what the fuss was about.

Like that, she found out about the secret third sibling―the triplet Saburou―and, after a year passed with her keeping her knowledge of the fact hidden, confronted her parents about it.

They, who were quite distressed about one of their children finding out about it, were about to come clean to Tarou as well, but the Wardens stopped them before they did.

See, around this time, a certain child vanished from one of the other Playgrounds.

That child, of course, was me.

The Wardens paid the Fushigimis even more money to keep the secret hidden from Tarou, the identical twin of Saburou, for one reason and one reason only.

To catch me out.

The Wardens came up with the idea of having the real Concept of Space hidden behind the visage of a fake identity, and having that identity be the one to get close to me in hopes of discovering an opportunity to bring me back.

Someone whose Measurement was useless and inconspicuous.

Someone whose appearance matched exactly.

Someone who had absolutely zero knowledge of or connection to the real one.

That was Tarou Fushigimi.

His only aim was getting close to me, and even that was easily obscured―Atsuko simply told him that she had a crush on a guy in his class and asked him to get close to that guy for her, which he gladly did, or at least somewhat attempted to do, as her brother.

Truly, he was the perfect substitute, better than anything they could have hoped for.

"Wh... A-Atsuko, is that true...?"

To be precise, they were using him as if he was a pawn. Just to reach me.

And yet, they still failed.

How must that make him feel, I wonder. Well, the evidence was clear.

A fierce glint gleamed in his eyes, and Tarou looked at his sister with an expression on the verge of snapping.

"...Tell me. Atsuko, what he said--"

"Of course it isn\'t true, you idiot! Listen to me! This--"

"Fucking hell! Be honest with me, Atsuko!"

Grabbing her shoulders, Tarou shouted at his sister. Despite her goal being the opposite, it appears her constant denials of my words only served to boost his agitation even further.

"Itou\'s right! I always felt that something was wrong―that you, Mum and Dad were keeping something from me! If what he\'s said is true, ten years...! Are you telling me I\'ve been kept unaware, used and treated like bait for almost ten years?!"

The scene of a family being ripped apart was right in front of my eyes.

While Tarou was not exactly wrong in his frustration, his family was also not wrong for keeping it secret from him.

Think about it from their perspective:

If you were given a bunch of monetary compensation and told that you\'d be saving the world by doing so, would you lie to your kid? I don\'t have a kid, but I lie for free all the time anyway, so I can\'t imagine turning such an offer down.

More than that, the Wardens\' plan was brilliant, I must admit.

If it wasn\'t for Sophie Asanami informing me about Saburou\'s supposed enrollment at our school―information that originated from someone who knows about Saburou\'s existence seeing Tarou and mistaking the two―I have a growing feeling that I would never have found out about him, or at least not for a long time.

Thinking about it, isn\'t the situation rather ironic? The Wardens\' plan was foiled by the very daughter of one of the organisation\'s executives.

"Tarou, don\'t be so harsh on your sister. She isn\'t the one to blame, after all."

I spoke to him, but I don\'t think he took much notice. Instead, he was wholly focused on the person in front of him, his sister in question, turning her into a target for his unbounded rage.

"..."

Rather than sit and listen to all that resentment-fuelled rambling, however, I was more focused on the more valuable person of the two; Atsuko Fushigimi.

Since Saburou and her had already met and become well-acquainted siblings in the past years, I was planning on taking her hostage to prevent him from making any rash moves, but... Hm? Wait.

I thought she was too swamped by the brunt of her brother\'s raw emotions to take unrelated action, but... was her heart more steeled than I anticipated? Observing the position of her hand, I noticed it subtly moving around inside her pocket... the same pocket her smartphone was located.

...Uh oh.

The moment I realised this, it was already too late. With the final press of a button with her thumb, her hand stopped moving.

I closed my eyes for a second, taking a moment to sigh at my own foolish incompetence.

It was my mistake.

I should have ensured that her hands were fully out of her pockets before filling Tarou in, but I thought it would be fine either way because she would be too focused on dealing with him...

Not only that, but the gamble... isn\'t even ready yet.

One, two, three seconds later―I opened my eyes and, immediately after, witnessed the air in the space between me and the siblings slowly begin to distort.