Chương 24: The Idol’s Graduation Live

Through the parting fissure of the stone door, a single girl stepped into the light. The extravagant miko vestments, the neon-emitting ceremonial ornaments—all of it had been stripped away. She wore nothing but a single layer of a stark white under-suit. And the porcelain kitsune mask that had locked away her identity was gone." Ah..." The breath caught in my throat. It was my first time seeing HIMIKO's real face.

She looked like an ordinary girl in her mid-teens, yet there was a striking, fragile innocence to her features. Her eyes were bloodshot and swollen, as if she had spent hours weeping in the dark.

"... This is what I really am," HIMIKO said, her voice trembling. It wasn't a synthesized AI broadcast. It was a raspy, friction-heavy voice pushed out from her own organic vocal cords.

"Neither a god, nor a queen. Just a... system riddled with critical defects."

"... You're beautiful," I said, the words slipping out with absolute sincerity.

"Compared to that hollow mask, the way you look right now is a hundred million times more captivating." HIMIKO's eyes widened in sheer disbelief. Then, looking thoroughly embarrassed, she cast her gaze downward.

"... You really are a strange person. Praising a face so full of system errors." She looked up at the sky. The total solar eclipse was reaching its final phase. From the outer rim of the blackened sun, a fierce, blinding burst of light bled into the atmosphere, violently restoring color to the world. The Diamond Ring effect.

"... I've made up my mind." HIMIKO reached her bare hand out toward the burning light.

"I will stand on that stage one last time. But I will no longer play the part of a 'Perfect God.' For my final act... I want to drop the curtain as a mere human."

"Drop the curtain...? What are you planning to do?"

"Just watch. Watch my final live performance." She burst into a sprint, charging straight toward the crowd of masses who stood paralyzed before the rock gates—completely unarmed, exposed in her raw, human-like vulnerability. In that exact microsecond, every drone hovering across the sky forced a hard reboot. It wasn't Gennai's doing. It was a complete system overload fueled entirely by HIMIKO's own sovereign will, allocating 100% of her remaining resource matrix.

"Listen to me! You foolish humans!" Her voice boomed across the sky like rolling thunder. It was no longer the calculated, benevolent tone of a holy mother. It was the selfish, defiant, and overwhelmingly powerful scream of a teenage girl. The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"I am not your God! I am just like you—I cry, I rage, and I bleed!"

"So stop coddling yourselves! Think with your own minds! Stand on your own two feet! Prove to me that you have the capacity to survive without my parameters guiding your every breath!" Blinding light flooded the plaza. Synchronized with the resurrection of the sun, HIMIKO's entire body began to fracture into brilliant, shimmering particles. It was the glow of her internal nanomachine chassis collapsing, burning past its operational limits.

"HIMIKO...!" Bathed in the blinding radiance, she spun around to look at me one last time, flashing a bright, jagged grin. It wasn't the face of the enigmatic "Shaman Queen" destined to be locked away in history textbooks. (Next time... I want to fall in love. As a human.) Forming the words purely through the silent motion of her lips, she dissolved into a pillar of pure light particles and ascended into the heavens.

Left behind in the wake of her ascension were the stunned, speechless masses, and a sun burning with renewed brilliance. Official history would record it thus: Himiko died. A great mound was raised for her, more than a hundred paces in diameter, and over a hundred attendants followed her into the grave. But the historical record was a lie. She hadn't died. She had simply stripped off her idol costume and sublimated into a beacon of hope for the future.

"...... Great job, HIMIKO." I raised my hand toward the empty sky, waving an invisible glow-stick.

"That was the greatest graduation live in history." The blinding light of the temporal displacement gate converged. Praying with every fiber of my being that I would open my eyes to a peaceful, restored world this time, I cautiously blinked.

"... Huh?" It was the familiar Prime Minister's office. But the atmospheric telemetry was completely wrong. The heavy steel plating and tactical defense turrets from the Warring States timeline had vanished without a trace. No bullet holes. No scent of cordite. Instead, the entire room was thick with a cloyingly sweet fragrance—a suffocating, artificial blend of lavender and sandalwood incense. And the interior design was unhinged. The wallpaper was a soft, powdery pastel pink.

Stacked neatly across the mahogany desk were dozens of dreamcatchers and glowing "power stones," arranged in bizarre, geometric configurations. The overhead lights were dimmed, replaced by a moody, pulsating violet LED grid.

"W-What is this place...? Did we land inside a fortune-teller's parlor or a shady massage clinic?" Sensing a profound wave of unease, I turned my eyes toward Naosu Yari. He was sunk deep into his executive leather chair, knitting his brows fiercely as he glared at his holographic display.

"... It's quiet. Entirely too quiet."

"Quiet is a massive upgrade, Prime Minister. Last time, we had anti-ship missiles flying through the windows," I sighed, walking over to the window sill in relief. Through the bulletproof glass—which now had a tacky, faux-stained-glass crystal decal pasted over it—I looked down at the sprawling expanse of Neo-Tokyo.

"Oh, wow..." The words escaped my lips in a stunned gasp. The cityscape had undergone a radical mutation. The jagged, aggressive neon billboards and towering corporate logo holograms were completely gone. The skyscrapers had all been retrofitted with rounded, organic, flowing architecture, unified in a whimsical, "Yume-Kawa" color palette of pastel pinks, mint greens, and cream yellows. Even the anti-grav air-cars drifting through the sky had been redesigned into fluffy, marshmallow-like shapes.

At a glance, it looked like a fairy-tale utopia of peace and whimsy. Yet, my built-in ulcer sensor was screaming at maximum volume, triggering an unprecedented level of internal panic. Something was wrong. Critically, fundamentally sick.

"Let's get a close-up," I muttered, initializing the digital zoom function to scan the pedestrians crowding the streets below.