Minotaur?

A man in a white coat walked through the door.

“Someone has a guest? Is he your friend, Celty?”

After setting down his medical case, Shinra noticed the stranger in the living room.

Celty stood up and rapidly moved her fingers, typing out everything Kyosuke Hojo had just said. She handed the message to Shinra, then looked at him expectantly, hoping to receive some affirmation or encouragement from the person she cared about most.

“Don’t joke around, Celty. You are who you are—nonhuman. How could you possibly become human?”

To Celty’s surprise, Shinra’s expression darkened the instant he finished reading the words on the tablet. He rejected them outright.

“If I get my head back, I’ll be able to blush properly and become a real human!”

The scene she had imagined, in which Shinra would share her joy, failed to materialize. In her anxiety, Celty used the word “real” twice.

Shinra did not even change out of his slippers. He strode toward Celty in agitation, frightening her into retreating several steps.

“Celty, you are so beautiful and captivating as a nonhuman. Why would you want to become human? Besides, even if you found your head, it wouldn’t do you any good!”

Damn it. He had let it slip.

His expression changing, Shinra hurried toward the door.

Why would Shinra know that finding my head would be useless?

A great mass of black mist surged from Celty’s body, transforming into a spiderweb that blocked the doorway and stopped Shinra.

“Shinra, why are you running away?”

“Oh, it’s nothing. I just remembered that I left a scalpel in that patient’s stomach. I have to hurry back and take it out.”

Shinra picked up his medical case and tried to squeeze through a gap in the web.

“Don’t even think about escaping!”

Celty extended the black mist, binding Shinra completely to the web. Then she held the tablet in front of him.

“What exactly do you know about my head?”

Why am I not mute? Shinra bitterly regretted possessing a perfectly functional voice.

“Your head and body were never connected in the first place. So even if you recovered your head, you still wouldn’t become human.”

Shinra was suffering inwardly, but he knew there was no way out now.

“How do you know that?”

Celty had never imagined that the clue she had searched for day and night had been beside her all along.

“Your head was stolen by my father. He used the demon sword Saika to sever the soul connecting your head and body.”

Shinra spoke with the hollow despair of a man who had lost all hope.

“How could this happen?!”

Those were Kyosuke Hojo’s own imagined words. Watching Celty stagger backward as though she had suffered a devastating blow, he understood something.

From the way Celty had immediately shared her joy with this man named Shinra after he returned, she must have trusted him deeply and continued to depend on him.

“You knew all along?”

Perhaps Shinra had only learned of it recently. Perhaps he was trying to get her head back from his father. Perhaps he had kept silent only because he wanted to surprise her.

Please, Shinra. Tell me that’s the truth!

“Of course I knew. I was afraid that once you found your head, you would leave me, so I never dared tell you.”

“So when I followed the trace of my head to the seaside, that was why I met you and your father aboard the ship bound for Japan. You had stolen my head and were taking it back to Japan…”

Celty could not believe it. The kind people she had thought were providing her with shelter, the people to whom she had given her trust and affection, were actually…

“I remember your father saying something like, ‘Just once. If you let me dissect you, I’ll provide you with a place to live.’ You took part in dissecting me too, didn’t you, Shinra? You were only four years old at the time.”

Celty seemed to remember what had happened then. Her entire body began to tremble, and black mist burst from her neck.

Kyosuke was standing behind Celty, so he could clearly see what she typed. The moment he read those words, gooseflesh rose all over his body, followed by an involuntary phantom pain. Dissected while conscious? A child taking part in a dissection? What kind of sick father and son were they?

“Do you have any idea how terrified I was when I woke up and discovered that my head was gone?”

“Celty, I didn’t know about it when you were dissected. I only found out later.”

Shinra tried to make amends.

“All the memories left in my body have become blurred and indistinct. Who knows how many memories are preserved in my head? Do you know what that feels like?”

“Do memories from several hundred years ago really matter? You’re fine just as you are.”

Shinra closed his eyes and spoke in agony. He felt that he was about to lose Celty.

“Hey, hey. Even I can’t listen to this anymore. What do you mean, ‘Do memories from several hundred years ago really matter?’ Forget several hundred years—could you accept losing the memories of just twenty years?”

Kyosuke spoke up. He had thought himself quite capable of making things up, but he had never imagined there could be someone even more unreasonable than him—someone who could casually deny the meaning of another person’s entire life.

“You bastard! I haven’t settled accounts with you yet. If it weren’t for you, Celty wouldn’t have ended up like this, and I wouldn’t have let the truth slip. You bastard, I’m going to kill you!”

Shinra began struggling wildly, though he knew there was no way he could break free of Celty’s black mist.

“That’s enough, Shinra! Do you know that I can barely remember my own face anymore?”

Just as he had experienced the earlier phantom pain in his body, Kyosuke felt that his ability to empathize with Celty had somehow been magnified tremendously.

Through the words she typed, he could clearly feel her despair, anger, and sorrow: the despair of being powerless as her memories slowly faded; the pain of having her trust betrayed; and the anger of having the meaning of her own existence denied.

“Kyosuke, let’s go for a ride.”

Celty took back the tablet and caused the spiderweb to shrink. She opened the door and walked outside, then stood there and beckoned Kyosuke over.

“Oh, right. I’m coming.”

Kyosuke crossed the room in a single stride, picked up the wooden box containing the blade, and deliberately rammed it into Shinra’s stomach as he passed. The man had actually dared to curse him just now.

“Cough, cough! You bastard, come back here! You’re not allowed to go out and have fun with Celty!”

“Celty!”

By then, Kyosuke had already climbed onto Celty’s motorcycle. Hearing Shinra, he turned around and stuck his tongue out at him.

He normally would not behave so childishly, but against such a selfish pervert, he was happy to resort to childish tactics. After all, watching Shinra rage helplessly was genuinely entertaining.

“Hold on tight.”

Celty raised the tablet so Kyosuke could read the words. Then, still unwilling to take any chances, she fashioned several black cords from the mist and tied his waist to hers.

That was probably the expression on Kyosuke’s face: his arms wrapped tightly around Celty’s slender waist, while his body was “forced” into complete contact with hers.

Though Celty was not human, her body perfectly embodied every male fantasy. Both her touch and her scent stirred the imagination.

After becoming familiar with her, Kyosuke noticed that Celty’s scent had changed.

Before, it had resembled fallen leaves and gravestones, filled with ominous decay. Now it was like chocolate wrapped in gold foil—tempting, exuding a sweet fragrance. It was mysterious too; until you opened the wrapper, you could never know what flavor of chocolate waited inside.

In the past, Celty would push her motorcycle into the elevator before riding it down, since she lived there and had to remain discreet.

But now none of that mattered. She was not even sure whether she would return to this place. All she wanted was to mount her beloved motorcycle, Shuda, as quickly as possible and race freely along the Tokyo Loop Line Kyosuke had mentioned.

And so—

With a roar, the pitch-black motorcycle leapt straight into the air, smashed through the corridor window, and shot outside.

Kyosuke now understood why Celty had tied him down. The instant the motorcycle began to fall, countless strands of black mist spread from Celty and forcibly pulled it toward the wall. The motorcycle then followed the black road formed by the mist, riding down the wall until it reached the ground.

“Which way?”

Ignoring the onlookers, Celty typed the question.

“Take Theater Avenue for two kilometers, then turn directly onto Highway Five, the Ikebukuro Line. My men are there now.”

Kyosuke answered without hesitation. Before leaving, Tsukasa Katagiri had already told him that they would spend a little while here before meeting up with the others at headquarters and officially beginning tonight’s gathering.

As for his Rocket 3, Kyosuke did not mention it at all. Could riding his own motorcycle possibly compare with having a warm, soft beauty in his arms?