A petite girl stepped out from behind a large marble pillar, acting as if she had been waiting there for a long time and stopped directly in their path.The girl had short pristine silver hair that shinned brilliantly under the sunlight filtering through the corridor windows.
Her eyes were the color of clear emeralds.
She looked solely at Ikki, her gaze so intense and completely devoid of anyone else that it felt as if the rest of the world had simply ceased to exist for her.
Bathed in the sunlight, the girl radiated a dreamlike aura.
She captured the attention of every student in the hallway.
Stopping a few paces away, the girl showed a dazzling smile.
Then, to Ikki's utter shock, she called out in a sweet voice, "Onii-sama! It's been four years. I've missed you so much!"
Without missing a beat, the girl bolted toward Ikki with brisk eager steps.
She pushed lightly off the tips of her toes, leaping into the air and diving toward Ikki's embrace.
Her cheeks were flushed with the joy of a long-awaited reunion but there was something else there too...a lingering affection that looked far more like a lover's greeting than a sister's.
Ikki froze in place.
He was overjoyed by the reunion but completely paralyzed by the girl's aggressive movement.
With his superhuman kinetic vision, he easily caught that strange, intense emotion on her face and it made alarm bells ring in his head.
He hadn't quite figured out what that strange feeling was yet but it was definitely not normal sibling affection.
Mid-leap, the girl closed her eyes.
Her expression shifted into one of shy, timid devotion...as if she were mustering all the courage in her heart to offer a passionate kiss to her lover.
Just as the girl was about to crash into Ikki's arms, Roy casually reached out, grabbed Ikki's collar and yanked him backward and swapped positions with him.
The girl had no idea that her target had been swapped.
As if she had rehearsed it a hundred times in her mind, she expertly threw her arms around Roy's neck and without a second of hesitation, planted her lips against his.
At the moment of contact, Roy could feel the girl's overwhelming enthusiasm.
Shizuku Kurogane seemed desperate to pour four years worth of pent-up affection into a single instant.
It was urgent and surprisingly sweet.
Being a man of culture, Roy simply accepted the unexpected gift.
The entire corridor fell dead silent.
All eyes were glued to the two people passionately kissing in the middle of the hallway.
"Shizuku..."
Ikki's weak, thoroughly embarrassed voice finally broke the silence, reaching the girl's ears.
"Hmm?"
Hearing her Ikki's voice coming from beside her, Shizuku froze.
She felt a sense of confusion.
'Wait... my Onii-sama's lips should be sealed by mine right now.'
'There's no way he could speak normally.'
'So where is that voice coming from?'
A terrible sense of dread settling in her stomach, Shizuku opened her eyes.
What came into view was a face that was undeniably handsome...perhaps even more handsome than Ikki's but it was also a utterly unfamiliar face.
Shizuku froze.
Roy blinked down at her.
The two of them stared at each other in dead silence for a full second.
The next instant, Shizuku let go of Roy's neck as if she had just been electrocuted.
She leaped backward frantically, looking as though she had just touched something highly contagious.
"How dare you..."
Shizuku glared at Roy, the hatred in her eyes intense enough to spontaneously combust him.
A ball of pure, condensed water instantly formed in her hand.
She shoved it into her mouth using her water-manipulation Noble Art to frantically gargle and rinse her mouth out over and over again.
In the blink of an eye, the girl had transformed into a frantic, neurotic mess.
"Shizuku, are you alright?" Ikki asked awkwardly.
He didn't dare approach her, still thoroughly spooked by her aggressive behavior.
If Roy hadn't pulled him away, he would have been the one kissed just now.
Kissing his own sister on the lips, in the middle of a crowded hallway... if that had happened, he would have died of social embarrassment.
Ikki felt lucky to have escaped but he was now deeply worried for Roy's life.
"You bastard! How dare you steal the first kiss I so carefully prepared for my Onii-sama?!" Shizuku snarled, wiping her mouth furiously.
She looked like she wanted to tear Roy limb from limb.
"Hey, don't act like you're the only victim here."
"You stole my first kiss too and for absolutely no reason," Roy sighed, putting a hand over his heart in mock devastation.
'Well, my first kiss in this specific universe, anyway. It refreshes with every new world!'
"Roy's... first kiss..."
Standing a few paces away, Stella was completely petrified.
She stood rooted to the spot as if she had been struck by lightning, her soul practically leaving her body.
'Roy's first kiss was taken by some random woman!'
'Roy's first kiss was taken by some random woman!'
'Roy's first kiss was taken by some random woman!'
The words echoed in Stella's mind like a blaring siren, short-circuiting her brain entirely.
"Who cares about your first kiss?!" Shizuku's face darkened.
Her bright, maidenly aura from moments ago had completely collapsed into dark, terrifying yandere energy. "That's it. I'm going to kill you."
"As long as I kill you, the incident just now will cease to exist and I can dedicate my pure first kiss to Onii-sama all over again!"
"Flow and sever - Yoishigure!"
Shizuku chanted her activation phrase.
With a magical light, her Device manifested in her hands.
It was a beautiful, delicate Japanese-style silver nodachi.
"Shizuku, stop! Without a teacher's permission, you cannot summon your Device on school grounds!" Ikki shouted, panicking as he saw his sister draw her weapon.
"Don't worry, Onii-sama. I kill very quickly and it's completely painless," Shizuku smiled, her eyes completely devoid of light as she stared fixedly at Roy.
"I'll just freeze him completely solid, then shatter him into a million pieces with a single bang."
"See? It's very convenient! It won't dirty the hallway floors, and it even saves us the trouble of a cremation!"
"You're not listening to a word I'm saying!" Ikki cried out in exasperation.
"Stella, hold her off for a bit. Ikki and I are going to tactically retreat," Roy grabbed Ikki's shoulder, fully prepared to drag the guy out of the warzone.
"Huh?"
Hearing Roy's voice, Stella finally snapped out of her catatonic state, waking up as if from a nightmare.
Her crimson eyes locked onto Shizuku.
"No problem," A terrifying aura of heat erupting from her body.
"I won't let you touch a single hair on his head! You shameless thieving cat!"
"Come forth and incinerate - Lævateinn!"
Stella roared her own activation phrase.
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