The heavy silence of the night was broken only by the distant, rhythmic crashing of the waves against the shore. On a secluded balcony overlooking the darkened ocean, Satoshi and Saori stood alone. The world below was still swarming with Guardians and operatives, but up here, the air felt thin and fragile.
Satoshi let out a long, weary sigh and scratched the back of his head, a boyish gesture that contrasted sharply with the god-like power he had displayed hours ago.
"The Untouchable Yotsuba and the Shadowy Reikage," he muttered, a dry, slightly absurd chuckle escaping his lips. "We really are a pair, aren't we? All this time, I thought I was protecting a normal girl from the darkness of my world, only to find out your family is the darkness that everyone else is afraid of."
Saori looked down at her hands, her heart heavy with the weight of the day. "I'm sorry, Satoshi-kun. I wanted to tell you. I just... I wanted us to be 'us' for as long as possible. Without the names. Without the Clans."
Satoshi turned to her, and the mocking glint in his eyes vanished, replaced by that same warmth that had first healed her. He reached out, hesitating for a second before gently tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
"Don't apologize, Saori," he said with a soft, sincere smile. "I understand better than anyone. Hiding isn't about lying—it's about survival. It's about wanting to keep one part of your life from being decomposed by the world. I'm just glad... I'm glad that if I had to find out, it was like this.
He leaned back against the railing, the moon reflecting in his bottomless eyes. But then, his expression shifted, becoming pensive."
"But there's one thing that's been bothering me," Satoshi said, his voice dropping an octave. He looked toward the door where her father had vanished moments ago. "Your father... Shiba Tatsuya. When he looked at me, he didn't just look at a magician. He said I used his magic to save you."
He looked at his right hand—the hand that held the power of Decomposition.
"He didn't mean it as a figure of speech, did he? He recognized the spell. He recognized the Information Sequence. Saori... what did he mean by 'using his power'?"
Saori felt a chill that had nothing to do with the night breeze. She realized that Satoshi, despite his "Double-Capacity" brain, had never been allowed to see the files on the Strategic Class Magicians of other clans. He didn't know that he was a mirror of the man who had just stood before him.
"Satoshi-kun," she began softly, stepping closer to him. "My father is the only other person in the world who possesses the innate abilities of Decomposition and Regrowth. In the Yotsuba, they call it the 'Demon's Right' and the 'Divine Left.' The spell you used today—Mist Dispersion—is his signature. He spent his whole life being called a monster for the exact same power you've been carrying in the dark."
Satoshi's eyes widened, his breath hitching. The isolation he had felt his entire life—the belief that he was a singular, cursed anomaly—suddenly cracked. He wasn't a lone demon. He was a successor to a legacy he hadn't even known existed.
Satoshi stared at his right hand for a long, agonizing moment before a jagged, hollow laugh escaped his throat. He brought his palm to his forehead, a full-blown facepalm that muffled his voice.
"A cosmic joke," he muttered, his shoulders shaking with the absurdity of it all. "I spent my entire life thinking I was a singular freak of nature—a one-of-a-kind demon designed by a secret institute. And it turns out, the most famous magician in the world, the 'Untouchable' of the Yotsuba, has the exact same blood on his hands."
He dropped his hand, his eyes wide and searching Saori's. "So... did he go through the same thing? Was he the golden prince of the Yotsuba, feared and worshipped like a god-weapon from the day he was born?"
Saori looked away, the moonlight catching the sadness in her eyes as she thought of the man the world called a god. "No, Satoshi-kun. It was the opposite. For my father, it was much worse."
Satoshi tilted his head, his Double-Capacity MCA struggling to process a reality where Decomposition wasn't seen as the ultimate power. "Worse? How?"
"In the Yotsuba, if you cannot use 'Normal' magic, you are considered a failure," Saori explained softly, reciting the history of the Fourth Institute with a pained clarity. "Because my father's brain was almost entirely occupied by those two innate abilities, he couldn't cast standard systematic spells. To the Clan, he was a Rettousei—an irregular. An 'extra.' They didn't fear him; they treated him with contempt."
Satoshi's breath hitched. "Contempt? For a man who can turn a fleet to mist?"
"Before he proved his merit in Magic Engineering and CAD design, he was treated as a servant. A bodyguard. He was a tool to be used and discarded." Saori's voice dropped to a pained whisper. "Satoshi-kun... my father was nearly killed by his own family the moment he was born because they were terrified of what his power represented. He didn't have a throne. He had a leash."
Saori kept the darkest parts buried—the Mental Design Interference that had stripped her father of every emotion except his love for her mother, and the brutal experiments of the Artificial Magician Project. That was a secret for another time.
Satoshi stood frozen, his eyes blown wide. He thought of his own life—the terrified servants, the cold but prestigious dinner table, the "Young Master" title. He had been a "Demon Prince," but Shiba Tatsuya had been treated as a "Demon Slave."
"He was the strongest man in the world," Satoshi whispered, the realization hitting him like a physical weight. "And they treated him like trash. At least my family was afraid of me... his family just wanted him to disappear."
He looked back out at the ocean, the resentment he had felt for his own life suddenly feeling small in the face of the Shiba legacy.
"I thought I was the only one in a cage, Saori," he said, his voice cracking with a strange, newfound respect. "But your father built a palace out of the scrap metal of his own execution. He mastered the very magic they said he couldn't use, while I... I just sat in the dark and let them call me a god."
He turned back to her, a look of grim determination replacing his shock. "If your father could endure that and still become the man he is... then I have no excuse to keep hiding behind this 'Hanamiya' mask."