Outside, thunder boomed and rain continued to rain.

The elevator came to a stop. The doors opened.

Claire was sitting atop her desk. She was dressed in the maid uniform, legs crossed and arms folded. A wig was on her lap, the muted brown a far cry from her natural red glinting in the light.

She looked at me expectantly, finger tapping at her elbow.

“Yes, I was the maid,” said Claire. “Obviously.”

I blinked, sorta taken aback.

“Obviously.” I agreed. The Sarah stuff had made that pretty clear. “I guess I just thought you’d be more cagey about it.”

Claire shook her head.

“There are more important things to discuss.”

I waited for her to elaborate, but she said nothing, just continuing to stare at me.

“I brought your drone,” I said, holding it up. “The one that got drenched, I mean. I know it’s probably busted, but I figured it was better than leaving it out there for someone to find.”

Claire barely spared it a glance.

“It is of little import.”

“Really?” I asked. “Cause I’m pretty sure Deck would have found it pretty quickly, and it’s not like you’re not heavily associated with drones in his head.”

There was a beat.

“Well, yes. Thank you.” said Claire awkwardly. She coughed. “Still, there are more important things at stake,” said Claire dramatically. “It is small potatoes.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just, small potatoes. It’s not the kind of phrase I’d expect from you.”

Claire frowned.

“I used it correctly. Small potatoes. It means items of lesser importance.”

She said it like she was quoting a dictionary.

“I mean, technically yes.” I agreed. “Sounds a bit weird the way you said it though.”

Claire waved a hand impatiently.

“Enough. You can lecture me on the finer points of speaking prole at a later date. It’s time to discuss the topic at hand.”

Claire steepled her fingers as she regarded me.

“You knew about the storage shed,” she said. “Even at the time I thought it odd you were so quick to understand what needed to be done. That alone would have been suspicious, but at the end there, with the fusebox, you knew what to do without any direction at all.”

Claire was talking in that monologuey styled voice that signaled to me it was really more about hearing thoughts out loud rather than for the sake of any kind of back and forth.

“That can only mean one thing. You knew what was going to happen. You knew what needed to happen.”

She tapped at her chin. “Curious.”

It was curious.

“You knew too,” I said. “You know, I mean. About…events.”

Claire gave me a considering look.

Her eyes went from place to place on my body, lingering on details. The part of my hair, the way I wore my tie as part of the uniform, even the knotting of my laces. It was like she was looking for hints.

“Tell me Hero,” she demanded suddenly. “Do the words ‘pink handcuffs’ mean anything to you?”

Of course I remembered the pink handcuffs. The chapter was infamous. So much nonsense had occurred that pink handcuffs had imprinted themselves into the anime memeplex forever. People posted pictures of frilly pink handcuffs during exam times with captions like “wish me luck boys.” or “time to get some REAL studying done.”

The event in question hadn’t happened yet. The year had basically just started and exams were at the end of the year. Still, it seemed Claire knew about it.

“The study session chapter.” I replied. “Before the end of year exams.”

Claire eyed me silently, then nodded slowly.

“What can you tell me about Valentine’s Day chocolate shapes?” I asked in turn.

In that chapter, Deck received chocolates from all three of his main love interests. Sarah, Claire, and Lene had all went out of their way to fulfill the required Valentine’s trope of chocolate cooking hijinks and ended up with three uniquely shaped chocolate signs of their affection.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Small flowers, squares, and weird misshapen chunks,” answered Claire.

I nodded. That tracked.

We continued the back and forth for a while, quizzing each other on details remembered from the manga. It was like nerds battling for street cred. But as we stumbled further and further into esoteric details, it became clear that one of us was superior.

“What food was ordered during the school trip?” I asked.

“Pizza,” answered Claire without a moment of hesitation.

“How much did Deck auction off the last cream puff for after the school baker got married off and left?”

“I don’t even know what it costs now.”

“Who was the bloomer bandit?”

“A cat.” Claire frowned. “Though I am reasonably certain that it was trained by a third party. I suspect the library assistant.”

“Type of skirt worn by Sarah during the picnic outing?” Claire asked.

I raised my hands up in exasperation.

“Oh come on, who would remember that?”

Claire posed with her nose in the air, the very picture of a smug victory.

“Ha,” she said. “ It appears I am the winner.” Claire leaned forward, hand held mockingly at her cheek. “It was a knee length pleated skirt, by the by.”

Claire leaned back, shifting back from gloating to composure. She brought her fist to her mouth and gave a dainty cough.

“Ahem. Well, competence aside, it seems clear enough.”

“The evidence does seem to point in one direction.” I agreed.

We regarded each other from across the room. From the looks of it, she had come to much the same conclusion.

Claire, she knew. She knew what was going to happen. She knew about the events in the manga.

“You truly are acquainted with certain...images,” said Claire. “Foreknowledge, in so many words.”

I nodded solemnly.

“You too. You know what’s going to happen. You know more than I do, even.”

Claire returned my nod. “The conclusion seems obvious.”

I nodded slowly. Claire was like me. She had to be. There was only one explanation that made sense. That connected all the dots.

She was a fellow isekai-ee.

“You’re like me,” I said. “You’re—“ I began.

And...I paused.

The reason was stupid. It was a silly hesitation. A semantic thing more than anything. I wasn’t sure if ‘isekai-ee’ was a real term. It sounded a bit goofy.

But then, Claire seemed to take my pause for an invitation to fill in the blank.

“A seer.” Claire finished for me.

I blinked.

Rain pattered against the window. There was a well timed boom of thunder.

“Huh?”

Claire gave me a puzzled look.

“What, do you prefer a different term?” Claire waved a hand. “Future teller. Oracle. Soothsayer. Whatever. It amounts to the same thing. You are like me. You can tell the future. We are pawns of Fate, you and I.”

I blinked again.

Huh?

*

Claire led me down a long dark hallway.

Lantern lights lit the cobbled walls. We were under the Clocktower. It seemed Hielgard had an extensive underground.

Every inch of wall was covered in portraits.

Portraits of Deck, Sarah, Claire, Lene, and a couple other characters like yours truly.

“More of these being sent here every day,” said Claire as she lead me down the hallway. “Most are redundant at this point, recreations of a scene we already have, but sometimes some fresh new detail sticks out.”

She pointed to a few of the paintings as she passed.

“This one was from Seer Amode. She’s ancient. You can tell by the tremor. This one is from Seer Gainsley. She always draws everyone with the same face. This one is from Seer Callide. He’s not very good at drawing hands.”

I glanced at the painting in question.

“Well, hands are tricky,” I said.

Claire shook her head.

“Such lapses are unacceptable. Every detail matters. Every single one. Even the smallest thing can be a possible hint.”

Claire’s voice grew stiff.

“An odd twist of a finger could suggest a sprain or break. Frazzled hair can signal weather conditions or time of year. Even height if accurately drawn can be a hint towards chronology.”

“Huh.” I said.

I was pretty sure stuff like height was inconsistent in the original manga as well. That was the sort of continuity most authors and audiences alike tended to not care much about.

We walked forward for a bit in silence.

“So people are sending these in from all over the world?” I asked. Something about the idea of a bunch of strangers drawing me struck me as creepy. “Exactly how many seers are having visions about us?”

Claire paused for a moment.

“All of them.” Claire said. “Without exception.”

I considered this.

“And that’s…normal?” I asked.

“No.” Answered Claire. “Unprecedented actually.”

We began to move again. The hallway began to wind down and around in a spiral.

“You wouldn’t know, being new to the gift and all, but it wasn’t always like this. Everything changed about a year ago.”

Lanterns began to wind up as we descended, flickering light onto old stone steps.

“Suddenly across the world, all of our visions stopped. They were all replaced at once with something else. For a while now, every foretelling, every prophecy, every minor reading— they’ve all been centered on one thing and one thing alone.”

I glanced at the surrounding portraits.

It was easy enough to guess.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Deck?”

Claire nodded.

“He does seem to be center of it, yes. We’ve collected it all, of course, trying to get a better picture of what’s in store. It was obvious to anyone with a brain that the images were tied together with some governing logic. Too many recurring images seemed to fit together as a set. Like an outline, or a storyboard."

We reached the end of the way. The steps terminated at a simple door.

“Here we are,” said Claire, pushing it open.

On a plinth in the center of the room was a thick, oversized book.

I glanced at Claire who nodded, and I used both hands to lift up the cover.

I flipped through the book, then closed the cover once more.

Claire frowned.

“That’s it? You’re not going to look through the whole of it?”

“I got the gist of it,” I said.

I had read it before after all.

In front of me, sitting on the plinth like a holy book of prophecy, was a panel for panel recreation of Harem, Harem, Oval Panic.

It was weird seeing a manga in hardcover of all things.