“Ryouha-tan?”

Ryouha just laughed in her seat. I’ve never seen her like this before. Did she really just prank Nagisa like that?!

“Ryouha-tan, you did this?” Nagisa said.

“Yeah.”

“Eh…” Nagisa more of the cream off her face. “Not gonna lie, you did well.”

“Nagisa-san!”

“You’re not supposed to say that!”

“Hey, I’m sorry, guys. I just wanted to have a little fun. I mean, that WAS funny, right?”

All of us remained silent, staring at Ryouha as she walked off, laughing. We all knew something weird was happening, so we went to find Yuko and Ayaka.

“Yu-AAAAAH!!!” I slipped on a banana peel and saw there were almost thousands of them on the floor in their office.

“Watch your step. Ryouha put them almost everywhere,” she said. I noticed she had a towel on her head, drying her wet hair.

“Ryouha did this?”

“She also made a fake bouquet of flowers and had it sent to me. Then I got sprayed with water.”

“That explains the hair.”

“Is Ayaka okay?”

“Uh, no, I’m not.” We looked behind us and saw she was standing behind us, but her feet seemed stuck to the floor. “She glued my feet to the floor!”

“Why is Ryouha acting like this?”

“She’d never pull pranks like these.”

“Oh, speaking of which, I would’t sit on any of those chairs if I were you,” Yuko said, pointing at a row of chairs in the room. “I learned that the hard way.”

“Lemme guess… break-away?”

“All of them.”

This is really weird. What’s gotten into Ryouha?

…..

“Do you like your new toy, Hayate?” Momo asked as she watched the girls become pranked, one after another, by Ryouha.

“I do.” Hayate was playing with a clown doll, a green gem in the center of its bowtie.

“That was too easy. I can’t believe they didn’t let me do this ages ago.”

Flashback

“Now, hold out your hand.”

Ryouha’s hand slowly went up, her eyes empty as she had fallen deep into a hypnotic trance.

Momo coated her hand in a black aura and held it over Ryouha’s ring. Slowly, a small fragment of the emerald Heart fragment broke off and attached to the clown doll.

“You’re under my command now.” She snapped her fingers and a dark aura burst out of the doll.

It took the form of a person and turned into another Ryouha.

“Now go, my puppet.”

“Yes, Master.”

End of Flashback

Momo kissed her er as she saw her “puppet”, laughing as loud as she could with a dark aura surrounding her, one no one else could see.

“By the way, Momo-nee,” Hayate spoke up. “What are we going to do about the other onee-chan?”

“Ah, the real one? Don’t worry about her.” Momo said with a smirk. “I took away something important from her.”

“Eh~?”

“Something that will prevent her from ever stopping me.”

…..

Meanwhile, the real Ryouha was at a nearby café in Akihabara with the ikemen she recently ran into.

The whole time, her heart was pounding and she couldn’t stop blushing. He was so handsome, and he was always smiling at her.

“Hey, you okay?” the young boy asked her, bringing her back to reality.

“Eh?”

“You’ve been spacing out a lot.”

“Oh, yes, I’m fine…” Ryouha clenched both of her fists tightly, biting her lip.

After the waitress came, the both of them ordered cake and waited patiently. The boy could not take his eyes off Ryouha; he smirked.

“So, uh, what’s your name?”

Ryouha jumped back a bit. At this moment, she felt more shy than normal.

“Ki… K-k-Kita..gawa…”

“Hm? I can’t hear you.”

“K-k-k.. K-kita…”

The boy smiled and held Ryouha’s chin, looking into her eyes. She couldn’t stop blushing, and she felt her body shaking from how fast her heart was beating.

“Kitagawa Ryouha,” the boy said aloud. “Ryouha-tan then.”

“E-e-eeeh~?!”

“Kitagawa Ryouha, 15 years old. Birth place, Aichi, Nagoya.”

“Wha-? How did he…”

“Your favorite colors are pink and purple, you love cherry blossoms, and your favorite novel is ‘Blue Spring Ride’. But, recently, you’ve started reading ‘Wolf girl and Black Prince’, mostly because you love romance movies and stuff in that genre. You’ve never had a boyfriend, right? I can understand.”

“H-how did you know all that..?!”

“It’s easy for me to tell.”

Ryouha held her chest, she’s never felt her heart pound this much before. Even with the young boy talking to her, her head was spinning and she couldn’t think.

“S-so… what’s your name?”

“Oh, it’s—” Just then, the boy’s cell phone rang. “Ah, excuse me a bit.”

The boy got out and looked at his phone. He smiled when he saw the name of one of his closest friends.

“Yo! What’s up, Umechan?”

“WHERE ARE YOU?!?!?!”

“Whoa. What’s wrong?”

“We’ve got a little problem over at the agency. You need to get over here, NOW!”

“Okay, okay. I’ll be there, but, I ran into this cute girl in Shibuya and we’re at a cafe. You probably know her. Her name’s Kitagawa Ryouha.”

“Wha-? Ryouha?!”

“Yea, I gotta go. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Bye!”

“Wait—” The boy didn’t hear the rest of her sentence and hung up, walking back to the table.

“Sorry, work kinda caught up to me.”

“Where do you work?”

“I work at a music company in Nagoya. But, I’ve also recently come back from doing some work in China.”

“You’ve been to China?”

“Yup. But, I knew I had to come back. This place is my home, after all.”

“Wow, that’s amazing!”

“So, what do you do, Ryouha-tan?”

“I…” For some reason, nothing came to mind. Even though she felt like she could say something, everything in her head was white.

“Hm?”

“Actually, I don’t know…”

Just then, the waitress came with the cake. The boy didn’t even hesitate and started eating. He looked so happy, like a child. Ryouha thought it was honestly cute, for a boy.

“Oh, hey, that’s a cute ring,” he said, pointing at Ryouha’s hand. “I noticed it before, but forgot to mention.”

Ryouha looked at the ring on her hand in confusion, staring at the green gem in the middle.

“When did I get this..?”

…..

“Say what?!”

“Another Ryouha?”

“It seems like it,” Ayaka said as she rubbed her stiff feet. It took some skill, but we were able to get Ayaka out of her shoes and remove her from the glued floor.

“So, there’s a demon worshipper who’s able to impersonate others?”

“It’s either that, or one of the Ryouha’s is a *doll.”

“A doll?”

“Momo.” Yuko spoke up. “If she has anything, a lock of hair, a drop of blood, even any jewelry or torn piece of clothing in her hands, she can attach it to a doll and create a puppet who looks exactly like them.”

“And Momo took something from Ryouha to make a puppet?”

“Most likely. Mako, you said the two of you went to a psychic, right?”

“Yeah.”

Just then, I saw Ryouha and walked over to her. I held her hand and looked at her finger. Her ring was missing.

“What’s wrong, Mako?”

“You… are not Ryouha.”

Her eyes suddenly grew dark. curved in a twisted smile and she threw down a smoke bomb. When the cloud cleared, she was wearing a clown costume with a mask at the side of her face.

“Catch me if you can!” The puppet said as she jumped on top of a ball and ran away on it.

“She’s heading to the roof!”

“Come on!”

We chased the puppet doll as it bolted up the stairs and went up to the roof. When we got there, we saw a young boy, holding a clown doll.

“Wait, that’s not Momo.”

“I’m Hayate. It’s time to play, onee-chan-tachi.”

I looked and saw a green gem that looked just like Ryouha’s Heart fragment.

“Ayaka, that’s..!”

“Yup. That must be what Momo used to create the fake Ryouha.”

“It’s a small fragment of the Heart fragment, but it can still effect the real Ryouha.”

“How?”

“The most common is…” Her look grew dark, her lips pursed together before speaking again. “*Memory loss.”

…..

Ryouha couldn’t help but keep looking up at the handsome boy in front of her. Whenever he turned his gaze to look at her, she stared back at her feet.

The boy smiled and stopped, turning to face the shy girl.

“You’ve been quiet since we left the café. You sure everything is alright?”

“Y-yes… Just got a lot on my mind.”

“C’mon, tell me,” the boy patted her shoulder, increasing her heart rate and making her clench it tight.

“Well… it seems like all day… I’ve felt like a part of me was missing… I’ve also felt like I’ve forgotten something very important… But.. whenever I try to think of what…”

“Hey, it’ll be okay, Ryouha-tan.”

Ryouha looked and saw her ring seemed to be glowing. She could feel it pulsing, as if it did so along with her heart.

“Could it be… I’m..?”

“U-um…”

“Mm?”

“Uh, listen… I-I… a-ab-bout you… I r-really..!”

The boy’s eyes widened, as he finally realized what was happening. He couldn’t keep in his emotion and burst out into laughter, surprising Ryouha a bit.

“Oh my gosh. It’s like that, huh? Hahaha…”

“Eh?”

“I think I know what’s going on.” He walked closer and cleared his throat, nervously rubbing the back of his head and messing with his short hair. “Sorry, Ryouha-tan, but the truth is, I’m a—”

Just then, there was a loud explosion. They both looked up and saw a cloud of pink smoke.

“What the heck?!”

Suddenly, Ryouha felt something click.

“Mako..!”

She quickly looked and bowed towards the boy.

“I’m sorry, but I have to go. My friends need me.”

“Ah, wait! Ryouha-tan!”

“Mako and the others are up there! They need my help!” she said before bowing one last time and running inside the building.

“Mako…” The boy looked up at the top of the building. “Kojima… Mako.”

He smiled and held out his hand, letting a sakura petal fall into his hand. The wind started rising and soon he was almost surrounded by pink sakura petals as they blew around him.

“Looks like my other search will have to come to a short stop.” The wind strongly blew past him and revealed an earring on his left ear. A dangling chain with a blue sapphire and a crescent moon charm.

He took the petal and put it in his mouth, swallowing it as the petals grew heavy and coated him completely.

…..

“C’mon, let’s play.” Ryouha balanced on one foot and spun on her ball. At her sides, dark shadows in the forms of little girls appeared.

The six of us transformed and summoned our weapons. Nana was the first to attack, breaking apart her spear and attacking the shadows.

However, each time she slashed them, they just reformed back to their original shape. One of them shot a dark energy at Nana, however Miki stepped in and blocked it with her daggers. She threw one of them at the shadow, but even after it dispersed, it reformed again.

“Is there no way to get rid of these things?!”

“Lemme try!” Mio threw multiple of her throwing stars at one time at the shadows, and as it was cut up, it eventually disappeared. “Just keep cutting it into tiny pieces.”

Meru swung her large hammer and crushed three of them at once. After they reformed, the three combined as one large one. Meru kept swinging, but it wouldn’t disperse, then Nagisa created a large wave and binded it in a whirlpool, making it vanish.

“Awesome, Nagisa!”

“Guys…” Nana pointed and saw Ryouha had already created more of her minions.

“I’m not ending the game now.”

I grasped my sword tight and swung at the shadows. This time, they were able to block it and were harder to destroy.

I swung my sword at the puppet, but she created a strong barrier that stopped my attack.

“You can’t beat me so easily.”

Nagisa put up her shield and ran towards the barrier, letting out a loud scream, but she hit it hard and was taken aback, falling to the ground.

“Nagisa!”

“Aw~ have you given up already?” Hayate said as he giggled. The puppet snapped her fingers and the shadows formed into one. “Looks like I win.”

No, it can’t be…

Just then, I saw a sakura petal flutter and drop slowly to the ground. I noticed more kept falling and almost surrounded the entire area.

The shadow began to shrink, as if the petals were affecting it somehow.

“Hey, no fair!” Hayate screamed in frustration.

“Who’s doing this..?”

Just then, I looked and saw a figure standing not too far from us. It was a very beautiful young woman, dressed in a light blue kimono. There was a blue rose in her hair, and she had one dangling earring while another wrapped around her other earlobe.

She moved away the fan to reveal her eyes. They were beautiful, so bright and captivating. I knew she was pretty, even without seeing her full face.

“Who is this onee-chan?”

“Looks like you wanna play, too, huh?” The puppet sent more of her shadows towards the woman, however she dodged all of them, spinning as if she was dancing.

As they moved to attack her again, I saw a symbol glow on her hand and she shot a blue fire at them, destroying them instantly.

“What was that?”

“*The Blue Flame.” Yuko spoke. “But, the only person I know who’s ever mastered that is…”

The woman looked at us and smiled.

Ayaka smiled widely. “Sae!”

==========================

Footnotes

*1. Doll - A puppet used in voodoo. Once a piece of someone(hair, fingernail, jewelry or cloth, blood) is attached to a doll, the wielder of the doll has full control oft hat person. It also has the capability to become an exact copy of the afflicted person.

*2. If a Heart fragment shatters, depending on how big the broken shard and also how much of it had shattered, the holder of it will experience memory loss. How much memory is missing depends on how severe it had shattered.

*3. The Blue Flame - A powerful flame that was mastered long ago by an unknown sorcerer. It is a rare spell, and only few can master it. It is also known as “the Eternal flame”, as it is said to “never burn out”.