12
Quiet.
Cold. And hard.
He was lying with his right side on a crisply chill, level surface. Almost as if his entire body had been frozen solid. He couldn’t move his limbs at all.
But he felt a mysterious warmth in his arms. Throb. Throb. An indistinct vibration. It was…
Suddenly, he heard a voice. “This is a little uncomfortable.”
Haruyuki’s eyes flew open with a gasp. He saw round, cute scarlet eye lenses before him. “Ah!” he said, and worked his frozen arms to loosen his hold. The adorable face mask receded slightly.
“Sh-Shino—I mean, Mei?” he murmured in a shaky voice, and her mask moved up and down.
A pure, quiet voice reached his ears. “That’s right. You saved me, C.”
Those words sent a jolt through him.
He couldn’t really remember what had happened. He had picked up Ardor Maiden standing on the altar…run from Suzaku’s flame breath…plunged straight into the closed castle gates…
What had happened after that? Were they actually dead? Was this the ghost state?
No, if it was, everything in his field of view would have changed to a single shade. But at that moment, he could clearly see that Utai’s eye lenses were glittering like rubies.
Still unable to believe that they had managed to flee from that terrifying vortex of flame, Haruyuki asked in a hoarse voice, “Um, are we maybe alive…?”
Utai nodded firmly once more. “We are alive. But…aah, but…” The end of her sentence was husky, and it shivered and melted into the chill air before disappearing.
Ardor Maiden shifted her gaze to the cold gloom of the space around them. In an extremely, terribly faint whisper, she announced to Haruyuki, “Here…This place is inside the Castle.”
To be continued.
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