“What are you playing at?” Mirai shoves Sora against the wall. 

Sora stares stupefied at the woman—the very same one that he had just seen pinned against the wall dozens of meters away. And now she was here in front of him, and now he was now the one pinned against a wall. 

He didn’t know where to start processing what was happening to him.

As it turns out, the man Sora saw moments before was Mirai’s target, and Sora spooked him. 

If Sora hadn’t frozen up moments before, he would have been pleased to see the man back off. Though, he wouldn’t have been able to understand why, and if he knew that he was responsible for spooking the man, he would have found himself even more disheveled than he was now.

But to Mirai, Sora had gotten in her way, and it could have only have been intentional. That was not something Mirai could take lightly. For all she knew, this man was an enemy. This man could be after Nozomi. 

At minimum, Sora stripped her of her means to feed Nozomi a dinner the next day, and for that he could not be forgiven. He would make up for it right here and right now.

Unfortunately for him, Mirai’s question was merely rhetorical, and he began to feel the same foreign fear rise within his chest again and pour out through his finger tips.

“What is happening?! Where am I, who is this person, what have I done? Why is this happening to me?” his body screamed at him, as his heart welled with confusion and helplessness.

He opened his mouth as if to respond but nothing came out.

To truly complicate the matter, it felt like his heart was being drained of these feelings through his finger tips, which only caused them to arise within him again in a cycle of shocks.

It became a vicious feedback loop.

“What is happening?! Where am I? Who is this person? Why is this happening?”

His desire to understand extinguishing, before reigniting just as quickly. His fingertips burning.

“What is happening?! Who is this person?”

Sora could not understand, and his heart screamed. The very same feelings were extinguished, then reignited, then extinguished. A cycle that fed on itself, and drained away his energy with each occurrence.

Anyone else in this world may not have understood what was happening either, but they would have known that Mirai was responsible and how to resist it. It was just some manifestation of magic, and everyone knows the basics of defending themselves, if only by instinct.

Had he simply wished for this — whatever ‘this’ was — to stop, then he would at least be able to put up some resistance to the effects.

But Sora was not born of this world, and he did not have, nor did he have an opportunity to learn, these instincts. And he was in disarray. It felt like there was less and less room in his heart. Until there wasn’t much room left at all.

“What is happening?! Who is this person?”

“What is happening? Who is this person?”

“What is happening who is this person”

“Who is this person”

Sora didn’t know why his heart landed on this question. If he had the time to think, there were plenty of questions more important than this one. And truly, now was not at all the time for questions. 

Nonetheless, this is where his heart landed, as though he had been forced to choose the one most important thing over the others.

Mirai’s eyes widened and her pupil’s dilated.

“What is this man doing? Is he a child?” she thought, as she felt the cascade of Sora’s confusion and hopes overwhelm her body.

“Who is this person?” Sora’s heart continued on repeat.

“This person...”

“Who are you?”

As Sora felt this incomprehensible cycle reaching its culmination, his heart turned its pleading directly with the girl before him. Why he did this, he did not know.

“At this rate...” Before Mirai could finish her thought, Sora’s eyes glaze over, and he collapses.

Mirai stares at him at a loss for what to do, with his hopes circulating within her. She did not understand. What is happening? Who the heck is this person? She was confused.

It was as if he tipped over and shattered from pressing a single finger to his chest.

But most of all, she was angry. And now for a different reason than before.

Hopes were the language of the heart, and in this new world Sora found himself in, that language spoke more loudly than the world he knew. 

Hopes were the origin of this world’s magic, and thus power. Sora’s carelessness with that power brought a deep seated anger to her heart.

She didn’t have the privilege of being so careless. She had things to protect, and it took her every ounce of power that she had to survive. 

And yet...this man threw all of his hopes—all of his power—away in only a few moments.

Taking a breath, Mirai presses down that anger, confining it to her body, and returns her gaze to Sora.

She breaks down Sora's hopes into their substance and distills them into her own power. She would condense these and use them to pay for tomorrow’s meals.

She is shocked that she was able to absorb so much so quickly. 

What just happened was not normal.

Usually, it takes hours for her to absorb enough to pay for a day’s worth of meals at the inn, but she was able to take 10 times that amount from Sora in mere minutes. In fact, most of it was given freely to her by Sora. She barely had to take any of it by her own hand—a unique power of hers that, if the wrong people knew of, would put her and Nozomi at far greater risk than they already were.

But now she had an unconscious man before her. 

“Tch. Really, are you a child? At least put up a semblance of self-preservation. You’ll never survive if you let your expose yourself like that,” she clicks her tongue.

As she begins to walk away, she pauses, and she frowns. “How could you possiblye have survived like this?” And a faint echo, "Who are you?"

The world is cruel to those who wear their heart on their sleeve, and in this world, even though he didn’t know it, Sora did just that.

It is a bad idea, she thinks. Surely an effect of this man's emotion whirling within her body. Never had she experienced such heavy backlash from her power before.

She lifts Sora from the ground and carries him back to the inn.