Chapter 318: Protective? |
"Eh?"
The cold metal of the ring was forcefully slipped onto her finger by the young man before her. It was a dreamy scenario that had never even occurred in her wildest fantasies playing out in reality, yet Shimizu Yu did not feel the slightest trace of romance in her heart.
She knew all too well that given the occasion, the context, and the words spoken, Hoshino Gen placing a ring on her finger carried absolutely no romantic connotations.
The emotions unconsciously painted across her face right now were purely bafflement, bewilderment, and perplexity.
Suddenly, Shimizu Yu felt her head spin and her vision blur. The next moment, she was staring right at her own face, which was twisted in deep confusion and perplexity...
Gazing at the version of "herself" standing right there, "Shimizu Yu" instinctively widened her eyes. She watched as every trace of emotion vanished from "her" face in an instant. Those eyes took on a chilling, aloof gleam that was both strange and intensely familiar, while a breathtakingly faint smile curved at the corners of those lips.
Realizing what might have happened, she looked down at her own hands and clothes... Had she become Hoshino Gen? Then the "herself" standing in front of her was...
"Hoshino...?" Shimizu Yu called out in a trembling voice. The person wearing her face, or rather, "Hoshino Gen," reached out to pat her on the shoulder. Chuckling in her voice, he said, "Watch closely and learn."
As he spoke, "Hoshino Gen" reached toward "Shimizu Yu's" waist. With a swift swipe, he pulled out two talismans. Using his body to block the crowd's line of sight, he bit down on "his own" finger and smeared a drop of blood across the paper. The two talismans dissolved into a faint golden shimmer that immediately flowed into his arms and legs.
"Hoshino Gen" stepped onto the competition floor, a faint smile playing on his lips as he locked eyes with Akiyama Mio, who had been waiting for some time.
Akiyama Mio had been smiling too, but the moment she met the gaze of the girl before her—a girl who suddenly felt like an entirely different person—her expression froze. Goosebumps erupted all over her skin, and inexplicable alarm bells began blaring in her mind.
Her right eyelid twitched. Taking a deep breath, Akiyama Mio forcefully suppressed this baffling sense of danger and plastered on another smile. "I never expected Shimizu-san to actually have the courage to take the floor again. Are you just afraid of disappointing your boyfriend?"
Akiyama Mio had naturally seen Shimizu Yu sit down next to Hoshino Gen after leaving the floor earlier, so it was perfectly reasonable for her to mistake the two of them for a couple.
However, "Hoshino Gen" had absolutely no intention of wasting breath on her.
The instant the referee lowered the flag to signal the start of the match, Shimizu Yu's figure simply vanished from Akiyama Mio's vision. It felt as though she had merely blinked, yet the terrifying swordswoman who had suffocatingly crushed her during last year's Gyokuryuuki tournament was already standing right in front of her.
"Do."
A calm voice drifted into Akiyama Mio's ears as "Hoshino Gen" swung the bamboo sword. With a heavy thud, Akiyama Mio's eyes bulged. A terrifying, overwhelming force seemed to completely bypass her protective gear, sinking straight into her body, pulverizing the very organs shielded beneath her skin and bones.
In that split second, a surge of agonizing pain washed over her, as if her internal organs had been violently churned into mush.
Yet, to the referee and the audience watching from the stands, the sequence of events looked perfectly normal. They only saw the referee lower the flag to commence the round, followed by one competitor sprinting forward with lightning speed to land a clean strike on their opponent's torso and score a point.
Some people cheered while others sighed, but absolutely no one—not even the referee—noticed anything amiss.
"Hoshino Gen" lowered the bamboo sword and stepped back, that faint, unbothered smile still resting on his lips as he readied himself for the second round.
Akiyama Mio clutched her torso, the agonizing pain completely robbing her of breath. Her mind went entirely blank, utterly unable to comprehend what had transpired in that fleeting fraction of a second.
She was no longer the girl she used to be. She was a one-of-a-kind superpower user!
How could a mere ordinary person still humiliate her in front of a massive crowd like the old days?
Filled with sheer puzzlement and a twisted sense of resentment, she looked up at Shimizu Yu. Catching that taunting smile on her lips, Akiyama Mio suddenly seemed to realize something. "Could it be that you're also..."
Before she could finish her sentence, the referee directed both competitors to take their positions. The flag was lowered once again, signaling the start of the second round.
"Hoshino Gen" refused to give Akiyama Mio the chance to voice her suspicions. He had held back a tremendous amount of strength during that previous strike, purely to ensure his opponent wouldn't be knocked out of the match after a single blow. He had always been the type to hold a petty grudge—
If he was hit twice, he preferred to return the favor twenty times, two hundred times, two thousand times over! However, restricted by the rules of the match, which only allowed him to return two strikes, he had no choice but to creatively condense the force of those two strikes into something a bit more impactful...
"Men," he declared faintly.
Akiyama Mio's eyes narrowed. Taking a half-step back, she prepared to channel her superpowers to the absolute limit and fight "Hoshino Gen" to the bitter end. Unfortunately for her, the gap in their strength was simply too vast.
A fierce gust of wind swept past, causing Akiyama Mio's uniform to flutter wildly. In the very next moment, the tip of a bamboo sword began to enlarge in her vision, growing bigger and bigger—
Crack—!
It did not sound like a wooden blade striking standard protective gear, but rather like the deafening blast of a sledgehammer smashing directly into someone's face.
In that terrifying instant, Akiyama Mio felt as though her brain had shattered into a million pieces. Her body swayed violently before her eyes rolled back into her head, and she collapsed heavily onto the floor.
The spectator stands immediately erupted into an uproar. Medical personnel rushed onto the floor to perform a quick check, swiftly reaching a conclusion: the sheer force of the bamboo sword striking the protective gear had generated a vibration strong enough to knock Akiyama Mio unconscious, though she was otherwise unharmed. Thus, the victor of the match was declared to be Segawa Private Academy's Shimizu Yu.
The surrounding uproar was rapidly swallowed by roaring cheers. With a smirk playing on his lips, "Hoshino Gen" turned his head and locked eyes with the dumbfounded "Shimizu Yu" sitting over in the resting area.
......
The glossy black Mercedes-Benz S600 cruised smoothly down the spacious road. Although Tokyo was a notoriously crowded and bustling metropolis, the traffic congestion wasn't overwhelmingly severe, perhaps thanks to its highly developed public transportation system and sprawling network of roads.
At least on this particular summer afternoon, as Hoshino Gen drove away from the bustling heart of Shinjuku Ward, their route was completely unimpeded.
Shimizu Yu sat huddled in the front passenger seat, hugging her schoolbag to her chest. The car's air conditioning was blasting at full power, sending a few loose strands of her hair fluttering in the breeze. After remaining completely silent for the entire trip, she finally couldn't hold it in any longer. "About the match earlier..."
"We swapped bodies, didn't we?"
"What else could it be?" Even though he was casually driving without a license, Hoshino Gen maintained a terribly arrogant posture, steering lazily with one hand while resting his other elbow on the window frame to prop up his cheek.
Shimizu Yu's pretty face flushed with a faint heat. Feeling a bit embarrassed, she asked, "Why? With your personality, shouldn't you have been thrilled to watch me make a fool of myself so you could laugh at me from the sidelines? Why... did you step in to defend me?"
From Shimizu Yu's perspective, Hoshino Gen's actions today were completely out of character. He had seen her being bullied, so he ruthlessly hijacked her body, marched onto the floor, and brutally taught her bully a lesson.
Unlike the times they had faced supernatural horrors and he had stepped in to save her miserable life, she hadn't been in any mortal danger today. There was no moral dilemma about leaving someone to die.
His actions were purely out of a desire to protect his own people. And it was precisely this overwhelming sense of being guarded that made her unsure of how to even face him now.
"You've misunderstood two things."
Hoshino Gen gently pressed the brakes, bringing the car to a halt before a red light. Turning his head to look at her, he smiled and said, "First of all, I don't possess the sick hobby of watching people make fools of themselves. And secondly, I wasn't stepping in to defend you."