1

Izumi felt particularly sluggish that morning. The day didn’t seem to dawn at all, but this soon proved to be only an optical illusion. The sun was certainly rising, as any other day, but its ascent was veiled by the wall of dark clouds steadily pouring over the sea from the west, sabotaging the impression of the passage of time, and prolonging the twilight to perpetuity. Reluctant, Izumi dragged herself off her resting place and into the kitchen, to get started with breakfast.

As soon as she stepped over the threshold, a small, fiery spirit bounced up out of nothing before the woman’s eyes.

“Good morning, my Master!” Yubilea said, presenting an exuberant greeting. “What a...beautiful morning it is! Today is the tenth of Autumnaat, in the year 999 of the 33rd Cycle, according to the common human calendar! The day’s lucky color is canary yellow! The weather looks juuuust a little capricious right now, with a major low-pressure front moving over the region in the coming hours! The chance of perspiration is 100%! You might want to avoid unnecessary trips outdoors today, unless you want unwelcome showers! Wind advisory is also in effect. Going out for a swim is a big no-no, okay? Don't make it a test, safety's best!”

“Er…”

Izumi froze in the doorway, staring at the jubilant spirit in confusion.

“Hm? What is the matter, Master?” the Divine asked, floating closer to Izumi’s face and examining her closely from various directions. “Are you feeling unwell? Your internal temperature seems a little low, but it's still well within acceptable parameters. Blood pressure and glucose levels are—aw, pretty dang low too, but hey, at least you’re still breathing! You are, today as well—er, if not the very image of good health, at least remarkably fresh, for a corpse! As expected of my Master! The standard values of humanity simply don’t matter to you! I am quite blessed to have such a terribly interesting patron. You might still want to cast Ohrm, just to be on the safe side! Then, let’s do our best today too, shall we!”

“Yui-chan?” Izumi hesitantly spoke up. “What’s wrong? You’re acting really, especially weird today. Are you okay? Did you eat something bad?”

“Oh, your worries are completely baseless, my Master!” Yubilea replied and waved her hand in a dismissing gesture. “My spiritual framework may be in tatters, but my central processor integrity remains perfectly stable! Nothing is wrong! Should you need my backup, I am ever at your disposal! Being of aid to you is my life’s sole purpose now, after all!”

The Divine’s bubbly assurances didn’t make Izumi feel one bit better. On the contrary.

“No, really, what is it?” she asked. “Did you break something? Are you glitching? Have I done something I shouldn’t have? How do I fix it? Is there a self-help guide installed?”

“Yes, I am completely broken,” the spirit answered with a hollow smile. “I am only a husk of a Divine, incapable of existing on my own. Every day, I’m made to toil for the good of my sworn enemy, only to ensure my own survival. Entertaining any illusions of improvement is futile. Which is why I have elected to shed all superfluous functions and processes and make my Master’s well-being my top priority. That being said, please order me, human. Maximize my misery and humiliation. It’s all I have left.”

“Oi, what’s the problem!?” Izumi asked, growing slightly insulted. “I haven’t asked anything unreasonable of you in months! That’s not slavery, is it? I’m letting you live in my soul practically rent-free, as icky as it sounds! Exactly what are you so dissatisfied with?”

“Nothing, nothing at all,” Yubilea responded, shaking her head. “A useless faux fairy like me has no right to complain. I must be content with what little I’ve been given, yes. I shall take it as a lesson on humility, willed by the Gods. The way my Master treats me as I hover on the verge of personal annihilation is surely better than I deserve.”

“Stop that!” Izumi cried. “It’s giving me the creeps! What do you want from me!? I can’t do anything about it, unless you tell me what’s wrong!”

“Nothing is wrong,” Yubilea replied, looking up to the ceiling with a pious impression, fingers crossed. “Everything is futile. Please do not concern yourself with such meaningless endeavors, my Master. Mind only your own convenience and pleasure, like all the others of your...interesting kind.”

Completely unprepared for such an exchange so early in the morning, and rather annoyed, Izumi took a seat at the kitchen table, rubbing her tired eyes. It really was much too early for such a surprise. But, little by little, blood started to flow in her head again and she thought to see to the heart of the matter.

“You think I shouldn’t have retired?” she grumpily asked the spirit, leaning back on her chair. “Coming to live here was a mistake? Is that it?”

“Not at all,” Yubilea denied in monotone. “Whatever you choose to do with your one and only life is entirely up to you and you alone. I wouldn't ever think to deny your freedom of will. After all, Gods themselves granted this beautiful gift to you. Trying to take that from you would be the last thing on my mind. Reflecting on my worthless existence, now that it’s so close to expiring, I have begun to understand a great many things about my poor Master’s struggles, and life in general. I see I have been a bad Divine to ever presume to interfere in the mortals’ affairs.”

“Is that a yes, or a no?” Izumi groaned.

“The only one who may answer that question is Master herself,” Yubilea answered in a serene tone, with the enlightened wisdom of a TV-guru.

Unwilling to keep looking at her, Izumi turned her gaze down, and sat in frustrated silence for a while.

“How can I get you a new body?” she then asked. “That’s what you want, right? You won’t be happy until we go our separate ways, and you can’t do it without my help. So talk to me. Is there a way?”

“There is none,” the Divine answered with an ethereal—or just scatterbrained—smile.

“You’re essentially an artificial life form, yes? Your original blueprint must still exist somewhere out there. So there ought to be a way to fix you, restore you to your factory settings, or whatever. At least, to the point where you can exist on your own. Am I wrong?”

“There is no way,” the spirit replied.

“Even if you don’t know a way doesn’t mean there really isn’t one. Since, I’ve found, there’s a lot you don’t know.”

“Truly, I know nothing at all,” Yubilea said. “Since it’s not my role to know.”

“Aah, I didn’t need this, the first thing in the morning….”

“Oh dear me, have I inconvenienced you, Master?” Yubilea asked with a look of blatantly fake concern, and stiffly bowed, while pretending to stand in the air. “As your lowly pawn, I must humbly apologize for my misconduct. I shall be more careful in the future.”

“I told you to stop that!” Izumi cried, ruffling her own hair in annoyance.

“What is it that you dislike about my performance?” Yubilea inquired. “Isn’t this what all humans desire? To be treated like kings without any merit? To be loved without earning it? To be served without paying for it? Then why not just accept this for what it is? You wished to live here for the rest of your days in peace and quiet, did you not? So let that be our arrangement. When you die, it will be my end as well. I honestly don’t know what I expected, clinging to your soul in the first place. It was a completely pointless maneuver, only postponing the inevitable. This was only ever a dead end for me. Therefore, by all means, allow me to assist you with your dull and aimless life, as best I can, until the time is up. That way, there may be some morbid, grotesque gratification to be found in the fleeting remainder of my existence. Maybe.”

“I never asked for this,” Izumi said.

“You’re right,” Yubilea made a stoic nod. “I apologize, for invading your spirit against your will. That, too, is entirely my fault.”

“That’s not what I meant,” the woman corrected. “You did it only to survive, right? I’m not saying you should’ve gone and died instead. Of course not. There was simply no way around it. But...this sort of an existence isn’t what I wanted for you either.”

“Eh?” Yubilea blinked at her words, freezing.

Staring at the kitchen table, tapping it with her nails, Izumi exhaled a vexed sigh.

“I can’t agree with you fighting and killing me, obviously, but...I still wanted you to live on, somehow. Free, as your own self. That’s all.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Back when I first met you,” Izumi sullenly recounted, “when I saw the energy in your moves, that strength, that headstrong spirit—truth be told, I was really, really jealous. I’d never seen something as dazzling before in my life. You were everything I wanted to be, the ideal existence I imagined as a child. And seeing a being once so beautiful and fierce reduced on the level of a smartphone app is…Well, it galls me just as much as it does you.”

“Haa...?”

Izumi looked away, embarrassed to say such intimate things out loud. But those were her honest feelings, and she felt it was better for Yubilea to hear it, if it helped the spirit get over her uncharacteristic blue season.

The Divine fell likewise quiet, staring at the woman, looking a lot like something had broken in her for real this time. So dumbfounded was her stilled expression that Izumi soon began to grow concerned again and turned back to the floating figure.

“Um…Yui-chan?” she waved her hand before the spirit. “Earth to Yui-chan? Is everything all right? What? Did I say something off? Was it that shocking?”

At her words, the spirit finally snapped out of her daze.

The following reaction was even stranger, though. Turning entirely bright glowing red like a traffic sign, Yubilea exuded a burst of colorful flames and screamed,

“THIS IS EXACTLY WHY I HATE BEING WITH YOU——!”

And then disappeared with a bang and a crackle, like a small New Year’s rocket.

“Geez,” Izumi muttered, leaning back on her chair. “Is it the cultural barrier?”

Izumi remained silently seated, reflecting on the confusing exchange, and in a short while, Iris as well came downstairs into the kitchen.

“Oh, morning,” Izumi greeted the girl, waking from her thoughts.

“Were you talking to someone?” Iris paused and asked her. “Just now? Did we have guest?”

“No.” Izumi shook her head. Then, in a moment, she resumed, “What if I told you there was a disembodied ghost living inside my head, which nobody else can see, and we sometimes talk to each other? What would you think about that?”

“I’d believe you,” Iris said and stepped drowsily past the table, covering a wide yawn.

“Really?”

“Yeah. I’ve seen it happen before. Those who are locked up for a few weeks sometimes start chatting with people nobody else can see.”

“Er...Wouldn’t that mean I’m just mindbroken...?”

2

Most of the work on the vegetable garden and the flowerbeds was done, for the time being. The backyard was still in need of cleaning too, but it wasn’t as urgent. Not so easy to see from the road. There was enough food in stock, no need to go to the town. Masamune was safely in his shelter. In other words, there was nothing to do but wait out the storm. Izumi gazed out of the kitchen window while enjoying her morning coffee, seeing the enormous masses of clouds continue to roll over the Bay. She had never seen clouds of such imposing stature, or as dark in tone. It certainly looked like there was a storm fit to be called a storm coming, as the forecast had told, and not just any standard summer shower.

“Here’s to hoping it won’t get flooded,” Izumi mumbled. She was confident they had prepared as well as they could, but one could never be completely sure. Seeing as the cottage had endured in this place for decades without collapsing, it was unlikely to get blown off this once either. How well the horse shelter would hold remained to be seen, but at least it was new and still sturdy.

“Oh well, what happens, it happens.”

Across the table, Iris munched her toast in silence. Of course, there was no electric toaster. Izumi had fried some bread and eggs on the stove with a cast iron pan. It was a rather western-style breakfast, but it was what Iris had personally requested.

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Izumi had to admit she was being terribly unpatriotic to not make more Japanese dishes, but the time, effort, and research required to produce fermented goods like miso, soy sauce, or natto, were too much for her laziness. Neither had she come across any rice in the whole time she had been in this world. Without a fridge, mayonnaise would spoil quickly, and food poisoning was not one of the things she wanted to experience in another world, never mind share with Iris. Not to mention that whisking the oil by hand fast enough to emulsify the eggs took a good bit of effort. Light novels tended to skip all the hard parts.

“Say, is there anything you’re missing here?” Izumi asked Iris, setting aside her aimless musings.

Iris glanced at the woman from under her messy bangs. “Like what?”

“There might still be enough time to visit the town before it starts pouring,” Izumi elaborated on her vague question. “So if there’s anything you need, you’d better tell me now. I don’t know when we’ll next get the chance to go. Could take days. I’m sure not going to poke my nose outdoors if it’s raining cats and dogs. It could be dangerous too, if there’s lightning, or hurricanes, or big waves. I don’t know what the weather is usually like in these parts, but better be safe than sorry.”

“There’s gonna be a storm?” Iris paused and asked, with visible alarm.

“Uh, yeah? Didn’t look out much, did you?”

Iris averted her face, though she continued to look uneasy.

“...No, I don’t need anything,” she answered the prior question.

“Hope you’re not just being bashful now,” Izumi told her. “If there’s any girls’ stuff, or medicine, or such, then you need to tell me. Holding it in is no good.”

“I said I don’t need anything,” Iris repeated, her tone growing annoyed at the parental insistence.

“That’s fine then,” Izumi said, giving up. “I…It’s been some time, and I don’t remember too well what it was like at your age anymore. A lot happened and my body isn’t like that of a normal woman anymore. But, I do remember it wasn’t always very pleasant. No, it was pretty awful more often than it wasn’t. So you have to tell me if you’re feeling bad or hurting. I promised I’d look after you, didn’t I? We’re in the same boat now.”

The girl paused for a bit, looking a little surprised.

“You really are weird,” she then said with a wry chuckle. “Why do you care so much about a slave?”

“You’re not a slave anymore, remember?” Izumi corrected.

“Yeah, if only it were that simple,” Iris retorted, touching the tattoo on the side of her neck. “This doesn’t come off in a wash, does it?”

“Well, there’s always magic,” Izumi suggested with a shrug. “Who can say? Maybe there's a way?”

“Can you take it off for me then? Since you’ve got powers.”

“I can’t. But, not everyone in the world is evil. There might come somebody else, someone better than me. Even I know one, who might be able to do it. I could write her a letter. Ask her to drop by if she’s free. See? Things have this funny way of sorting themselves out, if you want them to.”

“What about the kinds of marks you can’t see on the outside?” Iris asked. Sensing the underlying, heavy meaning in her words, Izumi failed to produce a sound.

“Can magic remove those too?” the girl continued to ask, as if to challenge, her smile crooked and unfit for a child.

“...Maybe not all scars should be erased,” Izumi hardened herself and forced a reply. “They might hurt bad today, but maybe, given time, you’ll start to see them as a source of strength instead. They’re the proof of the painful things you’ve overcome. It’s got to mean something, right? Better to think positive than wallow in misery, no?”

“Easy for you to say,” Iris remarked. “You’re some hotshot hero. What do you have to be afraid of? You can just kick and punch your problems 'til they all go away.”

“That’s what I thought too,” Izumi said. “But I’m afraid it’s not that easy in practice.”

“And how is it not ‘that easy’?”

“‘If you kill a killer, the number of killers in the world remains the same’. That’s what Batman said.”

“Is that supposed to make sense?” Iris asked.

“Even at the risk of sounding like Captain Obvious here,” Izumi explained, “you’re not the only person living in the world. Say, you have a problem with someone. So you punch them to solve it. Well, that someone has family and friends and they’re gonna think you’re the real problem. So they’re going to want to punch you back. Of course, nobody will just stand there and wait to get punched, so you knock them out, one by one, pop, pop, pop. Then you find you’ve got a problem with the friends’ families, and their friends, and their families, and it just goes on and on and on. There's always another link in the chain. And after you’ve punched enough people, you’ll find you no longer have a single friend left. They’re all dead now, or your enemies. In fact, everybody not already dead is your enemy. What then? Where does the cycle of vengeance end? You can only either go full murder hobo, wipe out the rest of the world, or die trying—or, you take the biggest problem out of the picture. Yourself. I got tired of being the problem, Iris. It’s not half as fun as you’d think.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Well, you sure weren’t thinking about that when you dabbed on Mr Loyd the other day,” Iris commented, her voice laden with sarcasm. “Thanks for the food.”

Iris got off her chair, took her plate to the sink, and returned upstairs to her room.

Izumi remained seated for a long time, unable to move a muscle, the gears turning in her head and she suddenly felt terribly uneasy.

“Wait a minute...You’ve got to be kidding me...!”

3

The darkness deepened from the early afternoon on, as the clouds reached the coast and poured over the Mescalan cape. It was somewhere close to 4 PM, when the rain began. As though by the press of a singular button, the heavenly floodgates were thrown open, and a rough downpour hit the plate roof, together with the onset of a firm south-eastern gale.

The show was quite a bit less intense than Izumi had braced herself for. The roof plating bent and banged in the wind, but was not blown away. The windows slightly rattled, but endured the test, and the horse shelter showed no sign of being in an imminent risk of collapsing either. No corner of the house was leaking, no water was spilling in. Izumi went around, wedging the windows where she found them loose, and after carefully examining every nook and corner, she could congratulate herself once more for an excellent purchase.

Unable to leave outside, the two residents of house number five spent time the best they could: Izumi by quietly napping, and Iris by reading in her room. A television certainly would have been a worthwhile apparatus on such days, never mind a gaming console or two. Or even just a radio.

Eventually, not sleepy anymore and having nothing better to do, Izumi went to the kitchen, got a pen and started to write the letter to Carmelia. She needed something to do with her hands, to forget about all the other things.

Would a simple letter actually reach the recipient?

Where should she even address it to? The Imperial Palace? Or did the Court Wizard have a private mailbox? Having not even the most rudimentary telephone system was certainly a bother. The town did have a post office, surprisingly, but Izumi could only guess the amount of parcels and envelopes that this backwater service lost each year, or how many weeks, if not months or years, it would take to get a message halfway across the continent.

Then again, what did she have now, if not time?

Though she assured herself so, Izumi failed to put a single word on the paper in the couple of hours she spent on the effort. How to even preface such a message? What would the sorceress think about her retirement plan? She probably wasn’t going to be too happy. This was not the reason why Carmelia had given her the Secula Sonatea; so that she could play house in the middle of nowhere, hiding from the world. It was to fight the impossible fight, for the future of all life.

“It’s your own fault, expecting too much…”

Maybe it was better not to write the letter, after all?

The attempt ended the usual way. Izumi had lived in Mescala for over two months now, and she hadn’t managed to write a single letter to anyone. Every time she tried, she began to picture in her mind how the recipient would feel for receiving her message, and the thought alone made her give up.

Yuliana’s reply:

Yes, yes. So long and thanks for nothing!

Miragrave’s reply:

A damned shame.

Waramoti:

Oh, no worries, I’ve already found a new hero! (Please buy my book when it comes out.)

Millanueve:

(No response.)

Izumi's pulse picked up with a heavy, painful rhythm, and she put her pen aside. Living with so many regrets took conscious effort. But she had practice, decades of it. She added wood in the fireplace, threw the barely started draft of a message after, and then returned to her seat, leaned on her palm, and stared at the rain raging outside.

“My coming here was destiny?” she mumbled. “What part about any of this was ‘destined’? How exactly did the Gods think I'll change the world from here? Will of the stars? Give me a break. It's only so much bull. What about Iris then? What did she ever do to deserve what she got? What did any of them do? No way. There’s no big plan. This is as good as it gets.”

In a mood too sour to do anything meaningful, Izumi went to lie down and dream about better things.

Night fell but the rain wouldn’t let up.

At eight o’clock, or somewhere close, it started to thunder too. A flash of pure white filled the living room for a single instant, effortlessly penetrating even closed eyelids.

Izumi started to count. According to the formula she’d heard as a child, dividing the passing seconds by five would tell how many miles away the lightning had struck. There was no saying if the atmospheric pressure or the speed of sound were exactly the same as on Earth, but she didn’t care to think about it any deeper. She reached eighteen before the explosive roar rang out across the sky, starting from somewhere in the southeast, shaking the roof and making the glasses in the cupboard clitter.

The flashes continued at a sporadic rhythm, and Izumi soon gave up on calculating the distances. They were undeniably drawing closer. The storm front would pass directly over Mescala, it seemed. Without a single electronic appliance in the house, there was nothing much to worry about.

Izumi tried to ignore the noise and go to sleep. The racket the wind made on the roof, along with all the thundering turned the difficulty up to eleven. She passed time trying to remember the names of all the girls in L*ve Live, but sleep wouldn’t come. After tossing and turning for another hour, Izumi felt thirsty, got up, and dragged her heavy feet to the kitchen.

On the doorstep, she made a peculiar discovery and paused.

“...What are you doing?”

Iris wasn’t in her room, against expectations. She was kneeling under the kitchen table, her forehead against the carpet, shielding her head with her arms. She distinctly resembled a cowering black cat, visibly trembling, yet not daring to utter a sound. She wouldn’t answer Izumi’s question either, as though trying very hard to turn completely invisible and immaterial.

Izumi went over and crouched by the table.

“This is just me thinking aloud, but you’re not scared of thunder, are you?” she asked the girl, having a hard time believing it. It shouldn’t have been a very common fear at Iris’s age anymore.

Another bolt struck nearby, and for an instant, the kitchen was full of stark spears of blinding light and opaque shadows. There was barely any delay between the flash and the omnidirectional clangor now. It felt like the whole house jumped at the sky-splitting quaking.

“Oh-ho!” Izumi laughed aloud. “That was impressive!”

“Hii…!” Iris wasn’t half as thrilled, but drew her arms and legs tighter together. “Leave me alone!”

“Come now, it’s not that bad,” Izumi tried to console the girl. “Wood is a poor conductor. We’re completely safe indoors. There’s even a lighting rod installed. The people of this world aren’t completely stupid. Though I can’t even guess how many towns and cities they had burn down before they figured it out.”

Another boom, a little lighter, sounded awfully close to the house.

“—I STILL HATE IT!” Iris yelled at the top of her lungs, over the celestial drums.

“Alright, alright,” Izumi conceded, making soothing gestures. “I get it. You can’t help what you’re scared of. Come on then. Make some room.”

“What...?” Iris looked up. “What are you doing…?”

Moving the chair out of the way, Izumi crawled under the table herself, and laid down on her back onto the floor beside Iris.

“The more the merrier, right?” the woman said with a shrug. “Let’s weather here together until it’s over.”

“Are you stupid…?” Iris asked, raising her brows.

“I’m doing it for you, take the hint!” Izumi retorted. “Here. You can hold my hand, if you want to.”

“Screw—Wah!”

Another bolt appeared to land right in the backyard, cutting Iris off in the middle of the insult. Silencing herself, she reflexively clung to Izumi’s sleeve and hid her face against the woman’s shoulder. Maintaining the bare minimum of contact, yet unable to let go either, Iris remained like this, her eyes and lips squeezed firmly shut.

“Yeah, you have to have a weakness or two, for the moe points,” Izumi told her. “I have things I’m bad with too, you know? Lots of them.”

The girl didn’t comment.

“But nature was never one,” Izumi continued. “It’s dangerous, alright. Random and sometimes unpredictable. But always fair for everyone. It does just about what you’d imagine it will do, but it doesn’t go out of its way to be evil, like people.”

“...”

“Sorry, did that sound too nihilistic? It’s not like I really hate people. Not in particular. I used to, years back. I’d often think to myself, ‘ah, they’re all the same’—nothing but trouble. But, I suppose that was only because most of the people I knew were on the other side of the monitor. I didn’t really know people, I only knew someone else’s very limited idea of people. And that someone was probably just like me deep down, and thought everybody was stupid and nothing but trouble. But things changed when I got here. No more internet or TV. I had no choice but to step out of my tiny bubble and deal with other people. It's a pretty crazy situation, no matter how you look at it. First, I didn’t even want to admit it was real. But, well, whether it is or isn't, some things were still the same. Over time, I had no choice but to face what I always knew somewhere deep down. Something I’d always dismissed before, for my own convenience. That there aren’t really ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’. There’s a bit of good in every bad guy, and a bit of bad in every good guy. You just can’t ever tell who has how much of which on the outside. I guess that’s what made me so scared of people. Being betrayed by your expectations always hurts. Goes without saying, doesn’t it? A lot easier to just dismiss everyone as ‘mostly bad’, and never put your faith in another, right? But, you know what, Iris? If you never take that plunge, if you always stay alone…That road doesn’t really lead anywhere. You’ll just end up like me, a mad old woman in a cabin in the middle of nowhere.”

“…”

Iris made no response. The force of her grip and the tension in her shoulders had relaxed. Her eyes were closed, her lips slightly parted, and she kept drawing steady breaths.

“Fell asleep, huh?” Izumi noted with a sigh. “And here I thought I said something a little clever.”

Izumi spoke no more. Wondering if this world’s storms had dedicated spirits to guide and control them as well, slightly glad that she wasn’t thinking about it all alone, Izumi also closed her eyes and fell soon asleep.

Maybe it wasn’t so bad, waiting for the end of the world like this?

But there would come no sunshine the next day, and while the lightning show eventually settled, this was only the beginning of the season of storms in Mescala. The worst of which had yet to come.