“Still no ransom demands?”

  “No contact at all. How’d your end go?”

  “We’ve interviewed the students, checked all the footage, and now have a full timeline.” The investigator set down a stack of papers on the desk.

  “And the three missing students?”

  “No one saw them in the auditorium.” The investigator sighed and pulled out a pack of smokes. “Do you mind?”

  “No. Go ahead.”

  “Thanks.” He lit one and took a drag. After his puff, he flipped open the papers on the desk and tapped on a picture of a hallway that wraps behind the cafeteria—one that few kids use. “CCTV footage shows the three missing students entering this hallway and loitering around.” He flipped to another page showing a headshot of Harper Tomtom. “This girl entered the same hall after them. The footage that followed was hard to parse.”

  The next few pages showed frame-by-frame screenshots of security footage. The investigator expined the screenshots: “One of the missing girls, Maya, uses her short-range spatial movement ability to jump behind Harper. She pushes Harper forward into the middle of the three girls. This is at 1:07.” He pointed to the next image. “The next frame still shows a vertical cut in space and what looks to be slender fingers reaching through it. The camera runs at 24 frames per second, and the process was lost between frames, so this happened fast. Finally, the third frame…” He pointed to the final image of an empty hallway. He took another drag of his cigarette.

  “And the Harper girl—”

  “Showed up in the auditorium around that time according to the interviewed students.”

  The executive for Green Stone Securities frowned. He looked up at the investigator. “Were you able to interview Tomtom's girl?”

  “No. She left the school with the Returnee after the css. Her parents are also not willing to cooperate with us, but that was to be expected.”

  “Then, do you think…”

  “It’s too early to make a clear call, but I suspect the same as you. The only one who could have done this was indeed—”

  “Princess Scale.” The executive trembled as he said the name. He looked down at the image of the three missing girls. One of them was the daughter of the CEO of Green Stone, his boss. The other two had equally big backgrounds. “Do we have any hard evidence?”

  “None.” The investigator shrugged. “Far as I know, there are as many different abilities as there are humans in this world. Without hard evidence you’ll get nowhere. I need a lead to work with.”

  “There is something.” The executive stood up and paced towards the window in his office. “The CEO called in some specialists to see if they could track his daughter, or at the very least find her remains.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing. Even The Hound failed. Couldn’t even find a trace of their bodies.”

  The investigator whistled in surprise. "Even the Hound failed? Then that means they’re—”

  “They’re in a Gate.” The executive ughed. “And from what the students have said…”

  “The Returnee opened a Gate in the auditorium,” said the Investigator. His eyes widened and he bit the end of his smoke before stamping it in the nearby ashtray.

  “Is that enough of a lead?”

  “I’d say so.”

  Three moons danced in the sky. Scale watched the rotating stars from the roof of her house. Dark circles wreathed her bloodshot eyes. It’d been two days since her ‘lecture’ and she was summarily removed from the campus and told never to come back. When the news about her deploying monsters on the children spread, she faced incalcuble backsh.

  But Scale didn’t really care about the political/societal backsh—nor did she care about the angry parents or media attention. Instead, her mind continued to repy the conversation she had with Harper on the way home. She repyed it in her mind over and over again. The hollow in her eyes stretched to infinity. Her heart felt empty and her mana roiled inside, threatening to undo her.

  She felt sick to her stomach. Both her guilt and the aftereffects of her grand magic were pguing her insides. To move time involved a level of magic so grand that it put the [System] to shame. It carried a price and, while she could afford to pay it, it wasn’t something she wanted to do often. One of those after-effects seemed to be the looping of regretful scenes in her mind. She grimaced as the stars turned into the road and the moons into Harper’s face again.

  On their slow walk home, after a few probing thoughts, Harper turned to Scale and simply asked, “What have you done?”

  “I saved you,” Scale replied.

  “Did you hurt them?”

  Scale paused at Harper’s follow-up question. She regretted that pause. Her silence spoke for her.

  Harper’s fists started to shake. “Are—Are they—Are my friends still alive?”

  “Yes.” Scale looked up and met Harper’s eyes. “Though I don't like you calling them friends. I didn’t want to take away your revenge, so I made sure—”

  “Revenge?” Harper looked aghast.

  “Of course.” Scale didn’t seem to realize just how unnerved her conversation partner was. “They tortured you, Harper. They killed you. I captured them for you. I made sure you’d remember everything, too, by healing the memories from the other timeli—”

  “I don’t want revenge!” Harper was shaking like a baby fawn. The phrase ‘captured them’ was thundering in her head. “Wh-where are they?”

  “Somewhere safe.” Scale finally looked at Harper and realized the two weren’t on the same page. “If you can’t handle it yet, I’ll keep them in stasis until you’re ready. With my healing magic I can preserve—”

  “What is wrong with you?!”

  Scale tilted her head to the side. Her white hair bounced. “What do you mean?” She failed to understand. “Isn’t it normal to punish criminals?”

  “You’re not a judge! You're not a jury. You're not an executioner!” Harper stopped stuttering. Tears were forming in her eyes.

  “They’ve been bullying you for a long time, Harper. This time they went too far—”

  “Then arrest them. Send them to jail. Call the police. Don’t just kidnap people and put them in some kind of magic stasis!”

  “That’s not an option. Those three have connections and money. They’d never face real consequences.” Scale spoke so matter-of-factly that it came across as emotionless. Harper looked heartbroken.

  “I thought you were a good person.”

  “I’m not even a person.” Scale ughed as she quipped, oblivious to the tone difference between the two.

  “Let them go.”

  “What?”

  “I said, let them go.”

  “I can’t do that.” Scale shook her head. “While they were probably knocked out too fast to have seen me, I can’t risk someone with a strong ability using them to find me.” While she firmly believed that even if she were identified as the culprit she would be fine, she also firmly believed that the outcome would be genuinely annoying. She had too many people she cared about in this world and they would make for easy targets. While she could protect them with her power, there were exceptions to that; nobody, not even Scale, could foresee every possibility. For example, she could easily be distracted by a rge enough coalition of powerful consteltions and allow one of her loved ones to be taken hostage. "Everything is just more convenient if I hold onto them."

  “You’re a fucking monster,” said Harper.

  The conversation ended. Harper ran home and Scale finally realized that she messed up their little talk.

  The scenery turned back into the stars again. Scale watched the heavens and frowned. She closed her eyes. Even now, she didn’t think her actions were wrong.

  The only variable she could see was Harper. Scale decided that it didn’t matter all that much. Even if Harper ratted her out to the authorities what could they do? Would they risk trying to arrest her? Scale knew the world didn’t work like that. She was a strategic deterrent, a national power level individual who could make entire countries bow.

  She would feel awful if she were stabbed in the back again, but she didn’t intend to face any consequences for doing what she considered to be the right thing. Scale firmly believed that those three girls were beyond redemption. Their upbringing, carrying so much power, had corrupted them.

  “Power corrupts.” She spoke a ptitude without internalizing anything. She would protect Harper even if the foolish girl didn’t want it. Scale had had enough of seeing the pathetic sight of her only student coming home after suffering abuse… Even if she did feel guilty about it, Scale would not back down. She made her choice.

  Scale reached up and mimed grabbing a star. She felt like she had the whole world in the palm of her hand. She closed her fist and let her arms fall limp. The sea of pinprick lights overhead remained undisturbed. She fell asleep for the first time in two days there on the roof.