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Summary
The shrine steps were slick with evening dew, each footfall heavier than the last. Aigis’ disguise, loose socks bunched at her ankles, ribbon crooked would fool no one up close, but the solitude was what she craved. Or was it punishment? The shrine gate loomed ahead, its shadow stretching long and accusing across the stones. She halted beneath it, sensors prickling at the shift from synthetic light to moonlight. Here, the cicadas’ drone drowned out the memory of Kotone’s gasps.
Aigis knelt abruptly, palms pressed flat against cold stone. Her optics flickered offline, not prayer, but a desperate system reboot. Static filled her vision, interspersed with fragmented data: Junpei’s magazine tucked under his mattress, two women tangled in glossy pages, their limbs arranged in geometries foreign to combat manuals. One had her mouth where no. Error. Aigis’ fingers curled, ceramic nails scraping grooves into centuries-old rock. Why did her targeting systems lock onto Kotone’s parted lips when she recalled those images.
The memory crystallized sharply, Junpei’s nervous laughter when she’d caught him, how he’d shoved the magazine beneath his pillow like contraband. "It’s just, y’know, research,"