I Received a Date Invitation...
In the end, the day had come.
"What a house. Not a shred of warmth in it."
"You think so...?"
It was nothing like the way she had spoken the last time we met — a manner of speech that didn't suit the age my eyes told me she was. It was precisely the voice she used in her messages.
I should have kept her from coming in...
She was inside the house in a single instant. The moment I moved to shut the door, she wedged a foot in, caught it, and stepped through as naturally as if she belonged there. There was no gap in which to block her, and no gap in which to stop her.
How did it come to this...!
The protagonist had shown up, groped me without so much as a hello, and left — and now the main villain had stormed our house.
"So... why did you come here?"
Once inside, Alice wandered here and there through the rooms.
"Must one have a reason to visit a friend's house?"
"...Friend?"
"Were we not?"
The eyes that had been roaming the house turned on me.
Alice smiled faintly. The expression was a bright one, but those red eyes made it plain the brightness did not run all the way through.
"Y-yes... we're friends."
I nodded, obedient.
What did it matter if I called her a friend?
"How fortunate. Had it been nothing but a delusion of mine, I would have grown quite melancholy."
"We talk all the time, don't we? So of course we're friends!"
From this moment on, she and I were friends. Extremely close friends.
"Hehe. Thank you for saying so."
At last her eyes curved into crescents. Whether I ought to call that a relief... it felt more like I had barely stepped around a landmine.
"Lovely."
Step by slow step, Alice drew closer.
"In that case... I have a small request."
"A r-request?"
I was standing against the wall. I couldn't even retreat.
"Do not fret. It shall not be so difficult a request."
"...Wh-what kind of request?"
In the end she came all the way up to me. A little closer, and our bodies would have been pressed flush together.
...Something sweet.
Not a cloying artificial perfume, but a natural scent of the body, nearer to flowers.
"It is nothing grand. Only that we, being friends, ought to go on a date."
Alice laughed playfully and bent a little at the waist to look at me.
What she wore was a short mini-dress — a mature outfit that sat wrong on her appearance. One careless moment, and I thought her chest would show past the slightly loose edge of it.
"What...? A d-date?"
"Hm? Whatever is the matter? Is it not perfectly natural for friends to go on dates?"
She answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Isn't a date something couples do...?"
At that, she turned her eyes aside, as if turning something over.
"Hmm. I did not know that... Well, what of it? What matters is that we enjoy ourselves together."
"...I-is that right."
"Why? Do you not wish to?"
Once more her gaze fixed on me. My flustered face was reflected in those red eyes.
"...!"
Alice took one more step and caught both my cheeks in her right hand.
"You are a truly curious creature."
"Nnnh... whuh...?"
With my cheeks caught, the words dragged out of me.
"You and I have never met. So why, then, are you so stricken with fear?"
"That's..."
Little by little, her smile was fading.
"You have been this way from the very beginning. To you, I ought to be nothing more than an ordinary girl your own age — and yet you feared me."
"Th-that's just because I'm shy around people I don't know..."
Her red gaze glistened. Her lips still held a faint smile. Her eyes did not.
"Ngh...!"
Her hand stroked my face. The soft touch traced my cheek, my throat, my collarbone. I could not resist it.
"If you were truly shy of strangers, you would have pushed me away."
"..."
"You would have torn yourself free of me, hidden, and fled."
Then Alice's touch came to rest on my chest — the very place my heart was beating.
"And yet you only stand there, rigid."
"..."
Her hand was far too cold. It felt as though, at any second, it would dig into my chest and draw my heart out.
"And so... I am curious about you."
The smile vanished completely from her face. All that remained was a gaze cold enough to prickle the skin, and her hands on my body.
I couldn't offer the slightest resistance. A body locked rigid with terror trembled whether I willed it or not. My expression had gone stiff past any hope of hiding it, and cold sweat slid down my spine.
"Even at this very moment, I wish to know you. I wish to lay bare everything there is to know about you."
She took another step and pinned me flat against the wall. When she straightened she was just a little taller than I was, and she looked down at me.
"Why is it you never once remark upon the way I speak? What is it you know of me, that you..."
Her other hand touched my cheek.
"No. How far does your knowledge of me go, that you are this afraid?"
She seemed convinced that I knew her.
"...Even now, I find myself wanting to split open this adorable little head and see for myself."
Alice, who had been touching me, drew her hands away and stepped back a little.
"Do not be so afraid. I have no mind to do any such thing."
The moment she let go and drew back, I could move again at last.
"I would not handle someone so lovely, and so intriguing, in that fashion. And are we not 'friends'?"
Her expression returned to a playful smile.
"Then I had best be going. ...In the state you are in, I doubt you could manage a single word."
Just as Alice said, even staying on my feet was something I could barely manage by leaning on the wall. Keeping my breath from quickening, and holding back my tears — that was the limit of what I could do.
"I shall be in touch. Let us have our date the day after tomorrow."
"..."
The latch clicked. With that for a goodbye, Alice left the house.
The moment she was gone, my legs gave out, and I dropped where I stood.
Why...!
My body would not take orders. However terrified I was, there had been plenty I could have said. Any excuse at all, papered over with a laugh, would have done. I could have flared up the moment she touched my chest, the way I usually did, and turned the mood.
But I couldn't. The body of a little girl frozen stiff with fear would not let me.
"Hah... hah..."
Cold sweat had soaked me through. Tears stood in my eyes.
"Hah... hoo..."
I put my breathing in order — drawing it in slowly, letting it out — and loosened a body seized by fear.
Once my breath had settled somewhat, I went to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and took out a drink.
I should have bought some water, too...
I drank the orange juice I'd bought yesterday straight down, without even pouring it into a glass.
"...I think I'll live."
Maybe it was the sweetness going in, but the tension strung all through me seemed to loosen, just a little.
I'd had it wrong...
I'd been complacent enough to think that so long as we only traded ordinary messages, things would be fine. There was nothing I could do about her, but I should at least have considered that she might walk into the house without warning. If I'd prepared for that — if I'd thought ahead about what to say...
"It wouldn't have mattered anyway."
This body was far too honest with its feelings. Even earlier, the instant that child was threatened, hadn't I been swallowed by emotion and failed to use my ability at all?
Old memories probably had a hand in it, too...
Now that I thought of it — hadn't Han Soyeon come by earlier and said something?
I trudged to the sofa on legs that had no strength in them, threw myself down, and turned on the TV to the news.
The terror attack... was she talking about the place where that villain had appeared? But the news earlier had definitely said Starlight took care of it...
But what the broadcast was actually reporting had nothing to do with the villain Starlight had handled.
That's the place I went...
Behind the reporter were a bookstore and a clothing shop — the very spot where I had used Sever to wound the arm and neck of the woman with the burns.
"...So that's why she came. Because she saw me use my ability."
Sticky blood strewn across the ground, interfering with psychometry. That was a method Alice used often.
It was a large part of why no one found Alice through Part One of the webtoon. As I remembered it, pour out a vast quantity of ether, and psychometry can no longer read a scene.
Which means... she already knew I'd killed a Villain Alliance executive?
It might have been only suspicion until now, but the moment I used my ability, it seemed to have hardened into certainty.
"Was saving that child... the mistake?"
If I hadn't used my ability there, maybe things wouldn't have gone this way. If I had simply kept quiet and walked on, pretending I hadn't seen...
Don't think about it anymore.
It was already over and done. The report on the TV said the blackmailer had been arrested, and that the child and the father had survived.
"And I survived, too."
The end result was that I'd as good as told Alice I had killed an executive of the Villain Alliance — but she isn't loyal to the Villain Alliance. In the story, she fought Han Soyeon even if it meant leaving the Alliance to do it.
The reason I was still alive was probably that personality of hers.
It's not as if we'd be fighting. Just meeting, and spending a little time together...
I only had to stop handing her anything interesting. If I showed her there was nothing more to me beyond this, she would lose interest and leave on her own.
"...She would, right?"
Mm. She had to. Otherwise I felt as if my heart would simply stop.
The ability's enough for self-defense, but not enough to resist her.
I had to stack Sever at least three hundred times over just to barely wound a human body. Against an ordinary villain, if it came to it, I could slice off a heel and run — but against Alice, that would mean nothing.
"...I'm really tired."
Was it the extreme tension finally letting go, or was it that far too much had happened in a single day?
In my blurring vision, I listened to the news anchor's voice drift farther and farther away, and dropped into sleep as if I'd fainted.