Chapter 453: You really are a sly girl

"I’ve been wondering about something for a while now," Yuka said, looking at Chiemi with a curious expression that gradually turned more amused. "What kind of fascination did you actually develop toward him that made you pay this much attention to him? I didn’t expect you to look at him so closely, especially with the way you’ve been watching him lately. Somehow, I get the feeling that what you have with him isn’t really as simple as ordinary interest, is it?"

Yuka had already figured out that Chiemi could see something concerning Kouhei, although she still did not know exactly what Chiemi had seen or how much of it she had managed to understand. That uncertainty was precisely what made Yuka curious, because Chiemi was usually not the type to become attached to someone without having a reason behind it.

"Well, I think you might actually be right about that, Yuka," Chiemi replied, giving her a small smile. "You are the only person who knows about my ability, aren’t you? If you already understand what my ability can do, then you should probably have a pretty good idea why I would be interested in him."

The answer immediately reminded Yuka of how unusual Chiemi’s circumstances had been from the beginning.

Yuka was the only person who knew about Chiemi’s ability, and Chiemi had deliberately kept it that way. She had never told anyone else what she could do, not even the people who might have been closest to her during her childhood. Her parents had been gone for a very long time, having died before Chiemi had even grown old enough to properly understand what it meant to be left without them.

Because of that, Chiemi had eventually been taken into a human orphanage and raised among ordinary humans. She had grown up surrounded by people who had absolutely no idea what she really was, and somehow, she had managed to keep the truth hidden from all of them.

Nobody at the orphanage had noticed that Chiemi was a demon.

Considering how difficult it could be for demons to remain unnoticed among humans, Yuka had always found that fact somewhat impressive. Chiemi had managed to live an ordinary life on the surface while carrying around a secret that could have completely changed how everyone around her treated her.

Yuka had been the one who eventually discovered the truth.

Chiemi had been sixteen years old when Yuka first found out what she was, while Chiemi was twenty-seven now. More than ten years had passed since their first encounter, although Chiemi’s appearance had not changed nearly as much as a human’s would have during that amount of time. Since she was a demon, reaching adulthood had eventually brought her physical growth to a halt, leaving her body largely unchanged as the years continued passing.

"Do you remember when we first met?" Chiemi asked.

"I do," Yuka answered.

There was simply no way Yuka could forget an encounter like that, because their first meeting had been strange enough to stick in her memory for years. In fact, calling it strange was probably being generous, because from Yuka’s perspective, the entire situation had felt wrong from the moment she first encountered Chiemi.

At the beginning, Yuka had not even felt like talking to her.

She had not been interested in approaching Chiemi, and there had been no particular reason for her to do so. Chiemi had simply been another person in front of her, and Yuka had initially regarded her with the same level of attention she might have given anyone else.

Essentially, Yuka had no interest in her whatsoever.

That changed when Chiemi approached her first.

The strange part was that Chiemi did not begin their conversation with an introduction, a question, or even some ordinary greeting that would have made the situation feel normal. Instead, she looked at Yuka with an eerie smile and calmly said something that immediately made the hairs on the back of Yuka’s neck stand up.

"I didn’t think you would come to get me this soon, Yuka."

Yuka remembered that moment clearly.

She had not known who Chiemi was at the time, and from what Yuka understood, Chiemi should not have known who she was either. Yet Chiemi had spoken her name as though they had already met before, and she had done it with such certainty that Yuka could not simply dismiss it as a lucky guess.

The smile on Chiemi’s face had made things even stranger.

It was not the kind of smile someone gave after recognizing an old acquaintance. Instead, there had been something almost unsettling about it, as though Chiemi already knew how their meeting was supposed to unfold and was simply waiting for Yuka to catch up.

That was when Yuka understood.

She did not understand Chiemi herself immediately, but she understood the nature of her power.

Chiemi could see the future.

Once Yuka realized that, the strange things Chiemi had said suddenly made considerably more sense. The girl standing in front of her had not necessarily met Yuka before in the conventional sense. She had simply already seen her coming.

Yuka looked toward Asami for a moment, and Asami immediately understood what she was trying to communicate without needing a lengthy explanation. The two women had enough familiarity with one another that a simple glance was enough to get the message across.

Yuka and Chiemi needed to speak privately.

Asami did not interfere.

She could have used her Clairvoyance to find out what the two of them were discussing, but she had enough respect for Yuka’s trust to leave the matter alone. Yuka trusted Asami not to pry into conversations that were not hers, and Asami was loyal enough that she would not abuse that trust simply because she happened to possess an ability that could potentially give her the answers.

"Well, you understand my ability now, don’t you?" Chiemi asked after the two of them were finally alone.

"I understand the theory behind it, at least," Yuka replied. "The practical details are another matter, though."

Chiemi smiled faintly.

Her ability itself was fairly straightforward when explained in simple terms.

Chiemi could see the future.

There were certainly complications involved in understanding exactly what she saw, but the basic principle was clear enough. She was capable of looking ahead and witnessing events that had not happened yet, which explained how she could have known about Yuka before they had properly met.

"If you understand that much, then you should understand why I’m interested in him, right?" Chiemi asked.

Yuka stared at her for a few moments.

Then the answer finally clicked.

"So the reason you’re interested in him is because of the future, isn’t it?" Yuka asked.

"That’s right," Chiemi replied.

Her expression became more serious as she continued.

"The future I saw is bleak, if you ask me. Things don’t exactly end in a way that I would consider pleasant, and the Child of Anti-Prophecy still wasn’t able to change the future I saw. I had hoped there might be some possibility that things would turn out differently, but what I saw did not give me much reason to feel optimistic."

Yuka listened carefully.

"But you think that future can still be changed?"

"I think it can be prevented," Chiemi said. "The Child of Anti-Prophecy might not have been able to change the future on his own, but I don’t think that means the outcome is completely fixed. If he is guided in the right direction, then maybe the future I saw doesn’t have to become reality."

Yuka narrowed her eyes slightly.

"So you’re trying to prevent the Prophecy from coming true?"

"Not really," Chiemi answered. "I just want to stay alive, that’s all."

Yuka paused at the bluntness of the answer.

Chiemi gave a small shrug before continuing.

"I’ll let you in on one of my secrets, though, since you’ve already figured out the important part of my ability. My power only works on me. That means I can only see my own future. I can’t look into yours, and I can’t look into the future of the Child of Anti-Prophecy himself."

She folded her arms while explaining it.

"My ability doesn’t let me walk around looking at everyone’s future whenever I feel like it. It only shows me what happens to me. If I see something that leads to my own death, then naturally, I’d rather do something about it than just sit around and wait for that moment to arrive."

Yuka listened without interrupting.

"So I’m protecting myself," Chiemi continued. "That’s basically all it comes down to. You could call it self-preservation if you want, because that’s exactly what it is. I don’t have some grand heroic goal where I’m trying to save the entire world just because I happened to see something terrible coming."

She smiled slightly.

"I want to live."

The simplicity of those words made her reasoning surprisingly difficult to argue with.

"I want to live for as long as I possibly can," Chiemi continued. "If the future I saw leads to my death, then I need to change something before I reach that point. I can’t control everything that happens, but I can at least try to influence the things that are within my reach. If changing the future means getting closer to someone who might have an important role in it, then that’s exactly what I’m going to do."

Yuka finally understood.

The interest Chiemi had shown toward Kouhei was not merely curiosity, and it certainly was not some random fascination that had appeared without a reason. Chiemi had seen something connected to her own future, and Kouhei was somehow involved in the path she believed could lead her away from the fate she had witnessed.

Yuka suddenly remembered something else.

Her expression shifted, and then she started laughing quietly.

"I see..." she said, amusement spreading across her face. "Is that the reason you called me out back then?"

"Yup," Chiemi replied without hesitation.

Yuka continued staring at her.

"I saw the future where I would be hunted by demon hunters," Chiemi explained. "Eventually, I would be found and killed, and there wasn’t much I could do about it if I simply followed the path I had seen. Then I saw another possibility, one where my chances of surviving became considerably better if I became one of your members."

She gave Yuka a rather innocent-looking smile that did absolutely nothing to hide what she had actually done.

"So when I got the opportunity to meet you, I took it."

Yuka’s smile widened.

"You planned all of that?"

"More or less," Chiemi replied. "I didn’t exactly know how everything would turn out, but I knew that becoming one of your members gave me a future where I survived. That was enough reason for me to take the chance."

"So you used me."

"I prefer to call it making a mutually beneficial decision," Chiemi said.

Yuka stared at her for a second before bursting into laughter.

"That’s a pretty convenient way of describing it," Yuka said.

"I thought so too," Chiemi replied, smiling as though she were rather pleased with herself.

The more Yuka thought about it, the funnier the entire situation became. Chiemi had essentially looked into her own future, found a possible way to survive, and then quietly maneuvered herself into the position she needed without telling Yuka the full story.

Yuka could have been annoyed about being manipulated.

Instead, she found herself more impressed than anything else.

Honestly, Yuka almost had to respect the sheer audacity of it.

"Chiemi," Yuka said, "you really are a sly girl."