One-way traffic

They captured Miyamizu Mitsuha, her time vector from three years ago.

—Bang! !

In that brief instant.

Accelerator's consciousness, as if sinking into the sea, instantly transcended the barriers of time and space.

She flew away on that day three years ago—the last moment of her life.

Chapter 718 The Boy's Inner Monologue

then.

Night fell before his eyes.

An endless plain stretches to the horizon, where the night shimmers.

as well as.

He stood alone on the plain.

A short-haired girl wearing a dark blue kimono.

"..."

He was standing right here.

Accelerator, the number one in Academy City.

He witnessed this scene before him, the light and shadow descending straight down from the very top of the sky.

It's a comet.

It's a meteorite.

In the final moments when she faces this disaster alone, what will be on the girl's mind?

Boom——! !

Fragments of the comet crashed onto the ground not far away.

The explosion caused by the debris alone instantly covered an area of ​​tens of meters, or even more than a hundred meters.

And the number of such fragments falling from the sky must be at least hundreds, or even tens of thousands.

The girl faced all of this alone.

When disaster struck, she did not choose to run away. Although her eyes were filled with despair and fear, she still did not move her body.

The comet is too fast; even if she set off immediately, there's no way she could escape... Is that why she didn't move?

no.

What Accelerator did was not actually travel back to the past three years.

He merely manipulated the vectors of mind and time.

That's how I saw Mitsuha's thoughts and the scene in her final moments when facing the comet.

What was this girl thinking in her final moments?

…She wasn’t thinking about her own things.

Instead, he was thinking about other people.

Regarding that boy, who has swapped bodies and souls with me countless times over the past month.

The high school student named Taki Tachibana.

Not long ago, Mitsuha traveled to Tokyo, the city where Taki Tachibana lived.

She did indeed meet the other person as she wished.

…but even so.

That person still didn't recognize him.

However, this is quite normal... The person she met is Tachibana Taki from three years in the future. If it were just Tachibana Taki from three years in the future, he would definitely be confused by her behavior and think of her as a strange girl.

This is normal.

So, Mitsuha gave her hair tie to that boy.

Even if she can't express her feelings right now, she still wants to pass those feelings on to the future through this hair tie.

…yes.

On the verge of death, the last thing one thinks about is not one's own affairs... but rather the affairs of others.

but.

Is this really okay?

Tick.

Without the girl noticing, two clear tear tracks appeared on her cheeks.

A comet is approaching.

But what truly made the girl feel despair was not the idea that the comet would kill her.

Instead, it continued until the very last moment.

She and the boy from three years in the future will never have the chance to formally connect.

They cannot live together; they are from two different worlds.

Everything up to this point.

They all seemed like bubbles, drifting away with them.

…and sink along with the comet falling from the sky.

boom----! ! ! !

A massive disaster spanning several kilometers.

In an instant, it took the girl's life.

It also took away the girl's hometown and life.

In just a few seconds, a devastating storm swept through the entire town of Itomori, turning everything to ashes. The falling water, like a waterfall, filled the huge crater formed by the town.

A lake even larger than Lake Naitomori has officially appeared here from today onwards.

The devastating landscape is something no one can calmly bear; it's like an apocalyptic catastrophe.

In such a light of destruction.

…He witnessed everything.

A pure white figure stood alone amidst the ruins, on this land once known as Itomori Town.

The bodies were not visible because the immense impact of the comet was so great that it could not even preserve their existence.

No debris was visible, because the enormous waves created by the comet's terrifying power had swallowed all the remaining debris beneath the lake.

however.

Even amidst such scenery, Accelerator still saw something else.

Some things are absolutely unusual for this world.

"Roar……"

Besides the sounds of burning flames and falling rubble, he heard other sounds as well.

A roar.

A light, ethereal dragon's roar that reverberated throughout the entire disaster site.

He slowly raised his head and observed the trail left by the meteorite high in the sky.

…there was a shadow.

A huge dragon head shimmering with a deep blue light.

It is not a purely astronomical phenomenon, nor is it a phenomenon caused by the speed of meteorites.

That was a dragon, a living, breathing, real, fantastical creature.

Its eyes, which also emitted a faint blue light, stared straight at the ground. It opened its mouth and inhaled something that seemed like a stream of air.

Only after everything was over did it completely disappear from this world, along with the traces left by the comet.

And here...

Then it completely loses all its meaning of existence.

This town, all the people who once lived here... their entire existence was instantly erased from this world.

All that remains here is a vast expanse of ashes.

…That's how it is.

Is this how everything came to an end?

Accelerator crouched down and grabbed a handful of mud from the wasteland.

Black dust mixed with rubble and various ashes.

In his hands, it drifted slowly away in the wind.

The night was still so beautiful, and the trail of the comet across the sky was still so beautiful.

Nothing has changed.

To people living in other parts of the world, all of this is simply a breathtakingly beautiful picture.

No one cares about life or death in this small mountain village, and no one will ever know.

He calmly gazed at the ruins before him.

What kind of emotion was slowly flowing through Accelerator's heart?

…He had been by the side of those two guys for over a month.

Whether it's Taki Tachibana or Mitsuha Miyamizu, once these two switch bodies, I will have no choice but to act along with them.

And because the cause of the anomaly lies with these two people, he must extend his operations to cover their surroundings.

That's why.

Over the past month or so, he has spent time with Tachibana Taki and Miyamizu Mitsuha.

It gradually made him understand something.

The two people were clearly people who had never actually met each other.

The two people are clearly not even on the same timeline.

Clearly, they were facing an encounter that was destined to have no future.

despite this.

After about a month, feelings still began to develop between the boy and the girl.

That's right.

That is the emotion called "liking".

"boring."

This is obviously meaningless for Accelerator.

To date, he has witnessed many tragedies like this in Academy City alone, and he himself has traveled to countless worlds. Of course, a tragedy of this magnitude cannot touch him.

Even witnessing the entire town being destroyed by fragments of a comet from outer space is the same.

Accelerator will not shed a single tear, nor will he feel even the slightest pity for this.

He is such a cold-blooded and ruthless person.

The number one in Academy City should be a cold-blooded monster like this.

…Yes.

Accelerator, as an observer, witnessed everything.