About Senior Elysia
The terrorist organization Bind.
A rising syndicate that had been rapidly swelling its ranks of late, and the first villain organization that Yi Siyun and Carmen — the protagonists of How to Become a Hero — were destined to confront.
To keep the entire organization from collapsing in a single blow, it existed divided into a total of eight branches.
Recently they had been targeting the two schoolgirls named Yi Siyun and Carmen, who had thrown several of their key officers into prison — but then…
"……What did you just say?"
A woman with a scar running across her left eye fixed the terrified man before her with a murderous glare, her presence thick enough to choke on.
"D-Destroyed, they said…."
One of those eight branches had been wiped out without a sound or a whisper.
Complete annihilation — not a single survivor left.
They hadn't even known anything had happened there until a subordinate, sent to move some goods, stumbled onto the scene.
"Annihilation… Yes. Annihilation, is it."
Yeris, the boss of Bind, tapped her desk with her fingers and pinned the man with a gaze of pure ice.
"So… what else did you see there?"
A voice so cold it could freeze a listener's heart solid.
The man opposite her, sweating rivers, barely managed to force the words out.
"Crystals… I saw crystals……. All the corpses were sealed inside hard crystals…."
Crystals.
At that word, Yeris recalled a rumor that had been circulating with irritating frequency of late.
When the sun set and the moon hung at the peak of the sky, an unrealistically beautiful pure-white witch would sweep through organizations as if passing judgment on sinners, sealing them inside beautiful crystals.
The number of organizations already massacred by the witch already numbered in the dozens.
Other organization bosses had all scoffed at the rumor. Yeris had not.
She had always been the cautious type, always preparing for the unexpected. It was precisely because she had survived that way that she could sit here now as the boss of Bind.
"The witch, huh… I was under the impression her area of activity wasn't around here."
Had she expanded her territory already?
This is troublesome.
Even if Bind was rapidly inflating its size, it was still an unstable rising organization. If they came under attack from a witch presumed to be a considerable-level Awakener in this situation, there was a high chance the forces they had barely managed to cobble together would scatter.
Indeed, one of the branches had already collapsed.
What is the witch's goal? Is completely wiping out Bind itself the objective? Or did she simply attack a branch that happened to be in her path?
Yeris clutched her throbbing head and waved for the man trembling in terror before her to leave. He bowed his head several times and scrambled out of the room.
"Whatever the case, for now we should try not to provoke the witch as much as possible."
As if consolidating their forces and the headache of learning that the girls they were targeting were Academy students weren't enough, now this irregular called the witch had suddenly appeared.
As long as they didn't know the witch's exact combat strength, the option of striking first was also ambiguous.
"Damn it. I'm busy enough as it is."
Only the sound of her habitually tapping the desk — tap. tap. — echoed quietly through the room.
So then, at this very moment, what were the two young women being targeted by Bind doing?
"Ca-Carmen! How about this outfit?"
Yi Siyun kept snatching up one piece of clothing after another, holding them against her body and asking Carmen for her opinion.
"Hmm? Yeah, yeah. It's pretty."
"R-Really?"
Carmen answered halfheartedly, looking at her as if to say what on earth has gotten into this girl, and Yi Siyun flushed all over again at the reply.
It was the First Annual Closet Fashion Show, hosted by Yi Siyun herself.
Unfortunately, the First Annual Closet Fashion Show came to an end almost as soon as it began.
Yi Siyun had been changing outfits with great enthusiasm and putting on a whole little performance right in front of her, but her sole audience member, Carmen, was barely paying attention — so of course the excitement fizzled out almost immediately.
If it had been Elysia, she would have scolded Carmen thoroughly and watched Yi Siyun's fashion show with tears streaming down her face…
No — she would have gone further and insisted on picking out the clothes herself and dressing her with her own two hands. But Carmen was not Elysia.
Puffing out her cheeks in a sulk, Yi Siyun approached Carmen, who was sitting on the sofa and typing away on her laptop.
"What are you looking at so hard?"
She had tried to lower her voice to make it clear she was sulking, but unfortunately her natural pitch was far too high for that kind of acting.
"Just… doing a little research."
Still answering halfheartedly without taking her eyes off the laptop, Carmen earned herself a pout from Yi Siyun, who scooted over and pressed herself right up against her side.
Then, as if by habit, she wrapped both arms around Carmen's waist and rested her chin on her shoulder.
Carmen, for her part, seemed used to this behavior — she showed no sign of discomfort or annoyance.
"Researching what?"
"Mm… you'll see."
The window Carmen pulled up on her laptop was a website packed with information on various guilds and families.
A site where experts well-versed in such matters had gathered information and arranged it for easy browsing — commonly known as Tree Wiki.
On the screen Carmen had open were entries on the Lucia Guild, the Shamash Family, and the Mors Family.
Tree Wiki catalogued everything from brand-new organizations that had only just formed yesterday to obscure groups almost no one had heard of, so of course the most famous organizations would be thoroughly documented.
Still, Yi Siyun tilted her head, unable to figure out why Carmen had suddenly started looking this up.
Of course, as an Awakener — and as someone who would eventually join some guild or other — researching this kind of thing wasn't strange in itself.
But Carmen almost never got distracted by side projects when they were together, so her suddenly digging into this was bound to make Yi Siyun curious.
"But why this?"
"That senior named Elysia seems suspicious, so I figured I'd look into her a bit."
"If you're investigating Senior Elysia, why are you looking these places up?"
"……."
Carmen looked at Yi Siyun in silence, then let out a long sigh.
"Do you even know who Senior Elysia usually hangs out with?"
"No idea?"
"…Adele, Tania, and Luna."
But Yi Siyun was still tilting her head as if she didn't get it.
Carmen looked at that face with something close to pity and sighed again.
"Adele is the second daughter of the Moonlight family, the backbone of the Lucia Guild. Tania is the youngest of the Shamash Family. And Luna…"
Remembering Luna, who had suddenly appeared when they ran into Elysia on the street a few days ago, Carmen frowned.
"…is the boss of the Mors Family."
"Uh… for real?"
When Yi Siyun stared into Carmen's eyes as if she couldn't believe it, Carmen sighed one more time and tapped at the laptop.
She pulled up photos of Tania, Adele, and then Luna. They were so famous that the results came up instantly — no searching required.
Yi Siyun nodded as she recognized the faces one by one… then stopped cold at Luna's photo.
"Huh? This person…"
"Yeah. Two days ago, when we ran into Senior Elysia, she suddenly…"
"Th-That's the senior who licked Senior Elysia's chest!"
Her face went scarlet as she said it.
Carmen looked at that face and shook her head as if she no longer even had the energy to sigh.
Come to think of it, that was when it had started.
That was when Yi Siyun had begun acting strangely, suddenly flushing for no reason.
When Carmen stared at her face, Yi Siyun — still with her arms around Carmen's waist and her chin on her shoulder — turned her head and met her eyes.
Close enough that even the smallest breath was audible.
Close enough that a slight dip of the head would have been a collision.
They stayed like that, faces nearly touching, and little by little Yi Siyun's face grew redder. She fidgeted with her lips as if embarrassed and started darting her eyes away.
At the same time, she gradually loosened the arms around Carmen's waist, as if trying to quietly undo the hug —
Grab!
Carmen reached out and caught both of Yi Siyun's arms — the ones still wrapped around her waist — in one hand.
"Heeut!"
Startled, Yi Siyun let out a strange little squeak, her body giving a small shudder, and jerked her head back as if trying to put some distance between them.
But Carmen refused to let her get away. Instead she followed, closing the gap Yi Siyun was trying to create.
Yi Siyun reached the edge of the sofa and slowly tipped backward, and Carmen naturally ended up braced beside her face, looking down at her — still holding the arms that had been around her waist.
Somehow they had ended up in a rather strange position, but Carmen didn't care in the slightest.
Instead she glared down at Yi Siyun, who was fidgeting desperately and trying to look anywhere else, and asked:
"You know you've been weird lately, right? What the hell is going on with you?"
"Th-That's, um…"
Carmen's hair, drawn down by gravity, brushed lightly against Yi Siyun's cheek.
Whether from the tickle or something else, Yi Siyun's face flushed even deeper. She trembled faintly and let her words trail off.