From the Warlord's Empire by Gakuto Mikumo

about this somehow…”
    “Yes…but this shouldn’t be…”
    As Yukina spoke, she bit her lip. The seal was decorated with a crest with a snake-and-sword design. It seemed very dignified, but Kojou felt the design was rather creepy somehow.
    Kojou waited for her to continue her explanation as both of them looked down at the sealed letter.
    “—Kojou?”
    That was when someone unexpectedly called Kojou’s name.
    Hearing Kojou’s voice, a classmate of his leisurely poked her head out from the shadow of the building. She was a schoolgirl with elegant facial features. Kojou and Yukina swallowed as their faces met.
    “What are you doing making a ruckus back here? You have some nerve not coming to practice, leaving me there with the lovey-dovey couples and making me come looking for you…”
    “A-Asagi?”
    The shocked expression that came over Kojou’s face was due to the unexpected outfit she was wearing.
    It was a sleeveless polo shirt with a frighteningly short, pure white tennis skirt. It wasn’t odd for a badminton uniform—and yet, given this wasn’t a public match, but rather practice for a mere sports festival, Kojou thought it was awfully revealing.
    For whatever reason, Asagi was expressionless as she looked over Kojou and Yukina as they stood still. Then…
    “…What’s that letter?”
    “Eh?”
    As she asked in a quiet voice, Kojou finally grasped the gravity of the situation.
    A boy and a girl meeting behind the gym after classes, avoiding prying eyes, and held in their hands was an unusually extravagant letter. Looking at this, she must have thought that either Kojou or Yukina was giving the letter to the other…
    By the thinking of any impartial observer, this was someone tenderly confessing their love.
    “Did I interrupt something?” Asagi asked with an awkward expression. Her attitude was that of someone in shock.
    Kojou and Yukina vigorously shook their heads at the same time.
    “No, you’re not. I met Himeragi here because of an unforeseeable incident, emergency situation; it’s absolutely
not
that we’re exchanging a letter here, right, Himeragi?”
    “I-indeed. This outfit’s for class cheerleading, I’m certainly not wearing it because it suits Akatsuki-senpai’s tastes…”
    Even though those were the actual facts, somehow even Kojou found them strangely unconvincing. He wondered if he’d normally be in a much happier mood being sandwiched by two girls in short skirts.
    Asagi maintained a strange reserve as Kojou and Yukina continued explaining in tandem. “That’s enough,” she said, making a long sigh. “It’s fine, whatever. It doesn’t have anything to do with me, anyway.”
    As she spoke, she made a small smile. Her smile was perfect, but Kojou did not sense the usual whimsical Asagi; rather, her smiling face seemed drained of all emotion.
    Keeping that artificial smile on her face, Asagi turned her back on Kojou and Yukina.
    “Ah, hey, Asagi…!”
    Ignoring Kojou’s words of restraint, Asagi vanished into the shadow of the building once more.
    Kojou thought, as if strangely detached, that Asagi had been concerned for him, only to have undergone a heavy shock due to a complete misunderstanding.
    “Oh, crap. She’s going to think she has something on me for sure. I’ll have to pay her something or bribe her with food to keep her quiet again…and why was she dressed like that, anyway?”
    Kojou held his head, trying to understand why Asagi left surprisingly easily.
    Seeing Kojou like that, Yukina looked up at him with a face that was somehow full of reproach.
    “Senpai…,” she muttered with a weak sigh mixed in.
7
    The man was in the corner of a dreary room with bare metal showing.
    The only sound in the quiet, thinly lit laboratory was that of cooling fans. The temperature was low enough to make exhales turn to white mist, no doubt to protect the electronic circuitry packed in the room like a dense grove of trees.
    The image displayed by the central