Aiko continued to smile as she placed her hands behind her back and began hopping toward Oliver. "Looks like you found the figment—or figments, it seems—that Aihara-sensei sent me looking for," she said, reaching him and giving him a once-over. His clothes were bloodied, hair a mess, dick still out of his pants, and the scent of another woman clung to him like incense smoke.
Her gaze shifted first to the thin girl in his arms. She ruled her out instantly—disheveled, sure, but not freshly plowed.
Then she scanned the room.
And there—trembling and panicked—was the culprit: a mature woman covering her flushed, sweaty body with a single bedsheet.
"Hmm. Does this mean Sakura-chan's getting a sibling?" she mumbled to herself, ignoring the sounds of slaughter echoing from below. From behind her magician's cloak, she pulled out a steaming bowl of yakisoba. "Ta-da~ Since you vanished so suddenly, I decided to get you something from the yakisoba place!"
"Thanks," Oliver said, unsure what to do with the gift, his attention swinging between Kaori and her mother, who was now walking toward them. "What are the chances you can teleport us out of here?"
He looked at Aiko, one hand still clenched around his teleportation talisman. That grip also anchored his mind, helping him push his spiritual senses outward—and what he sensed chilled him.
More than fifty of those invisible, lanky monsters were in the hotel.
And all of them were heading their way.
The talisman felt heavier in his pocket now, its presence whispering escape. But if Aiko could do it for him, he wasn't going to waste it.
"The chances are... zero," Aiko said cheerfully. "But if you finish your yakisoba while I clean up these fragments for Aihara-sensei, I'll teleport us back to Hoshizuki~" Her voice trailed into sing-song, her mind drifting somewhere only she could follow.
Oliver felt the figments approaching. He could hear their claws tearing through drywall, smell the blood they dragged behind them. His instincts screamed at him to use the talisman—flee, now, before it was too late.
Instead, he sighed and slowly removed his hand from his pocket.
"You better not get us killed. I barely have enough strength to maybe fight off a dozen of those things," he said, slipping his scissors back into his pants pocket and releasing Kaori gently. "But if you can deal with them like you did with the one on the ceiling... then I've got nothing to worry about."
He nodded toward the translucent mass pinned to the ceiling, still twitching beneath a thick pink ribbon.
Then he took the bowl of yakisoba from Aiko's hands.
"And I can help you find them. Heads up—one's about to burst through that door." And as if on cue—
Bang
Three of those creatures he was actively monitoring using the talisman still firmly within his grasp as he held the yakisoba in his hands, pinning the talisman between the bowl and his palm.
"Thanks for the heads up, Oli-kun~" Aiko said as she turned around with deadly precision and threw a full deck of cards at the translucent monsters. But these cards didn't seem ordinary as they effortlessly pierced through the creature's skin, causing them to let out an ear-piercing battle cry that shook the mother and daughter pair that now found themselves hiding behind Oliver.
The creatures charged into the room, shrieking in unearthly pitches, their elongated limbs flailing as they crossed the threshold.
But they slammed into something invisible—a clear wall of reinforced tape, tightly stretched across the room like an artist's trap. It trembled from the impact, briefly halting their momentum, just long enough.
They pushed against it, confused and screeching, their claws scratching furiously.
"I guess you guys didn't like that trick," Aiko said with a lopsided grin. Her hands dipped out of sight beneath her cloak, then reemerged—each holding a small, twitching white rabbit. Both wore strapped-on bomb vests adorned with cartoonish stars and blinking lights.
"But I know you'll love these~"
She lobbed the rabbits with a magician's flourish, and they arced through the air with a comical squeak.
Boom.
Boom!
Twin explosions rocked the room, engulfing the front line of figments in twin clouds of fire and shimmering confetti. The confetti melted to ash before it could even land, devoured by the raging heat. Chunks of wall and ceiling cracked and fell. The force blew out the windows, turning them into glittering shrapnel that sprayed outward into the night.
The floor buckled. A deep rumble echoed as structural supports groaned under the pressure. The hotel, already weakened from the earlier chaos, howled like a wounded beast.
Kaori and her mother screamed, clutching onto Oliver's blazer like lifelines, burying their faces in his back as the shockwave swept over them.
Oliver clenched his jaw, bracing for pain—impact—anything.
But when the dust and flames cleared, they were untouched.
Instead, the remains of the floor floated—suspended in a strange pink smoke that curled lazily around their legs and feet, holding them aloft like stepping stones across a ruined dreamscape.
Below, they could now see the floor beneath them… or what remained of it. Half of it was gone. Burned. Torn open. And through that massive hole, dozens more figments swarmed upward like skeletal ants crawling from a nest set ablaze.
"Not bad, right?" Aiko beamed, brushing soot off her sleeves. "I bet the fireworks made me look amazing! Right? Oli-kun, I was amazing, right?"
Oliver glanced at her, then back at the swarm of monsters clawing their way up through the wreckage.
"If I wasn't caught up in the blast, I might've given you a proper answer," he muttered, brushing ash from his blazer. "But seeing as I'm still in one piece… I guess you were amazing."
He leaned forward, eyes narrowing as he looked down through the gaping hole where the floor used to be. The explosion had ripped through at least three levels of the hotel.
"But I don't suppose you have any more explosive rabbits, do you?"
Aiko gave him a wink. "Nope~ But I do have a haunted jack-in-the-box that eats figments."
She tossed the box into the air—it landed in the center of the floating rubble with a clang, then began cranking itself with a childlike tune. The melody echoed in the room, and the creatures paused—just for a second.
That second was all she needed.
With a flick of her fingers, the box snapped open. A twisted jester's head burst out, latching onto the nearest figment with invisible teeth and pulling it in with a distorted laugh.
Aiko leaned back, hands on her hips. "Alright, Oli-kun. You eat, I'll handle these weirdos."
Oliver sighed and took a reluctant bite of the yakisoba, still steaming in his hands.
"This is… kinda good, actually," he mumbled.
Aiko grinned without looking at him. "Told you. That yakisoba place was really good. You should've tried the melon soda."
From below, a figment let out a shriek and leapt—straight toward the floating slab of debris they stood on.
Aiko's ribbons snapped like whips.
"Let's dance."
Her ribbons shot out, binding the creature's limbs mid-air. In the same breath, she pulled out a deck of cards and flicked them forward with deadly precision. Each card zeroed in on the figment's head, piercing it cleanly. The monster convulsed once—then dropped.
But this wasn't a one-on-one fight.
Five more figments launched themselves through the wreckage toward them.
Aiko grinned and tipped off her magician's hat, aiming it at the oncoming horde.
"Oh, Oli-kun, I lied. I have hundreds left~"
As she spoke, a flood of baby rabbits tumbled out of her hat—each clutching a single, sparking stick of dynamite.
The first rabbit hit the rubble with a soft thump. Then another. Then a dozen. Then too many to count. They tumbled like plush toys, squeaking as they bounced off walls, furniture, and even each other—each one gripping a sizzling stick of dynamite like it was a party favor.
Oliver barely had time to mutter, "Oh shit."
Then the world turned white.
The explosion wasn't a single detonation—it was a choral eruption of overlapping blasts, each one erupting with a cartoonish POP-BOOM as flames bloomed like fireflowers. The floating debris shuddered violently under their feet, and what remained of the penthouse suite around them disintegrated into dust and shrapnel.
The figments that had launched toward them were instantly consumed. One managed to scream before its torso disappeared in a pillar of fire. Another tried to leap away—only for a rabbit to latch onto its back and explode mid-air, tearing the creature apart in a splash of translucent gore.
Five floors of the hotel simply ceased to exist.
Wooden beams snapped like toothpicks. Screams echoed from below—some human, some not. Plaster and concrete exploded outward in chunks, hurtling into the dark street outside. One wall was thrown clear into the building across the street, embedding like a knife into glass and steel. A fire alarm finally wheezed to life somewhere far below, only to be silenced a moment later as the electricity died.
When the smoke began to clear, the floor beneath their feet was no longer a floor—it was a shattered archipelago of floating rubble and pink ribbon supports, hovering over a gaping vertical shaft of destruction.
Kaori clung to her mother, both of them curled into a trembling ball behind Oliver's legs, their eyes wide and reflecting the firelight.
Aiko casually adjusted her sleeves and took a dramatic bow.
"And that was my opening act," she said with a wink, soot coating her cheeks like warpaint. "I call it: 'Blossoms in Bloom: The Exploding Spring'."
Oliver blinked at the carnage, then at the magician still radiating smug pride beside him.
"You're fucking insane."
"Insanely effective," she said, spinning her hat back onto her head with a flourish. "And don't act like you're not impressed, Oli-kun."
More monsters stirred in the smoke. Broken walls still trembled. But for the moment, the world was silent—burning, broken, stunned into stillness.
Then came the sound of something else. Heavy. Wet. Crawling.
Oliver gritted his teeth and reached into his blazer.
"Your encore better be even better," he muttered.
Aiko's eyes gleamed as her ribbons began to twist around her again, coiling like serpents.
"Oh, darling," she whispered, "you haven't even seen the second act."