* * *

When she heard the deafening explosion, Tata closed her eyes and thought, 'At last.'

It wasn't that she had felt no unease. Limon had arrived far earlier than she had originally foreseen, and her visions of him had kept wavering after he drew his sword.

But that worry had been needless. Now that the studio had been blown up in a catastrophe that left people dead and injured, Music Challenge would never air again.

Limon would never forgive her for doing this, but that didn't matter. They were traitors who had acted on their own, so he would not hold Ainsha responsible.

Only one thing remained: her death. That would complete the vision and bring the destined future to pass—the ending in which Limon and Ainsha were united.

Tata would gladly die to bring about that future. She was a member of the White Dragon Clan, ready to give everything for her revered princess, and Ainsha's one and only nanny—and her family.

"...?"

But as she awaited her end, Tata sensed something strange and opened her eyes again. Stupefaction spread across her face before she knew it.

"That gave you all quite a surprise, didn't it?"

"To live up to your expectations, we're kicking things off with a spectacular fireworks salute!"

"Everyone, take the challenge!"

"Music~ Challenge!"

CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP!

The bombs had definitely gone off. Yet instead of collapsing in a blaze, the studio was completely unscathed, and the oblivious audience was applauding. The broadcast had begun as though nothing had happened, with the hosts utterly composed. Tata could only gape.

"Why?"

Tata murmured blankly. Limon answered her with a cold sneer.

"I'm too late, am I...? Want to hear something interesting?"

"..."

"When you asked how I knew you were here, you specifically said you wanted the complicated explanation."

Tata remembered how strangely obliging Limon had been as he explained how he had tracked her down. She also remembered the two choices he had offered before answering.

"But I had a simpler answer."

A complicated answer and a simple one. Since Tata had chosen the former, he had never had the chance to give her the latter. Now he revealed it in an even tone.

"I knew from the start."

"... What do you mean?"

"I mean I could easily have tracked your presence without hunting down every last clue."

"...!"

Limon chuckled as Tata's eyes widened at an answer she had never imagined. He was a Sword Master—a superhuman who had once hunted down and beaten a Demon God that fled to the other side of the planet.

It might have been different had he never seen her before. But Tata had already been tailing him. If he had truly wanted to catch her, three steps would have been enough from the outset.

"Then why do you think I came so late?"

Only then did Tata realize the truth. She had thought Limon and Ainsha had arrived far earlier than her vision predicted. In reality, they had appeared only after wasting all the time they could.

"And why do you think I played along when you tried to stall by asking for a complicated answer—something no White Dragon Clan member would normally do?"

... She also realized that she hadn't been the only one buying time.

* * *

BOOOOOM!

["Wow, that's quite a display."]

At the very moment the thunderous noise rang through the studio, Yu Na-gyeong was admiring the bombs bursting into brilliant blooms of fire in the darkening sky. Li Qingyu calmly praised her contribution.

"Thank you for your hard work."

["It wasn't much work. All I did was take them out while Team Leader kept everyone distracted."]

"Even so, secretly removing that many bombs is no easy task."

["In that case, you did more of the hard work, Princess. You're the one who found out where the bombs were."]

"Not at all. I merely asked a few questions."

Li Qingyu smiled. They had come out onto the rooftop to launch the bombs Yu Na-gyeong had retrieved into the sky and detonate them. Looking toward one corner, where Divine Dragon Unit members sat slumped in a row with vacant faces, she continued calmly, her eyes gleaming with an uncanny obsidian luster.

"If we must assign credit, it belongs to these people who so kindly answered my questions, and to the others."

Meanwhile, in the studio beneath their feet, another whispered conversation was taking place.

"Producer, weren't that explosion and those visual effects a bit much after all? It's not like we're setting off bombs..."

"It's what the investor wanted!"

"Oh, then of course we have to."

"Then stop worrying about other things and make sure we don't have another mishap on air. If anything goes wrong this time, our station is finished!"

"Hahaha, don't be ridiculous. Surely we won't have two broadcast mishaps in a row."

While Producer Kim Seung-jun focused on the broadcast, people in a place far removed from him were focused on something else.

["Team One. Guarded target secure."]

["Team Two. Surveillance target, all clear."]

["Team Three. A White Dragon Clan attacker targeted our protectee, but we subdued them before they could act."]

["Team Four..."]

A man listened silently to the radio reports. Wang Lun, the new head of the Wang family of Shanghai and the newly appointed chief of Guardian's security team, spoke in a rigid voice.

"Do not let your guard down. Remember that the fate of our Wang family of Shanghai depends on how successfully we bring this operation to a close."

* * *

"You'd better abandon the idea that stalling any longer will change anything."

"... You knew? Everything?"

"Yes."

The planted bombs. The attackers she had held in reserve. The scheme to halt the broadcast by killing those involved or destroying the facilities. Limon calmly told her that the measures he had arranged before coming here would already have taken care of it all.

"But you don't even have precognition! How could you...!"

"You don't need that paltry precognition to manage this much, you idiots."

Tata's lips trembled. She had accepted even death calmly, but she could not hide her shock at seeing all her plans come to nothing.

After that sharp retort, Limon looked coldly at Tata and the other White Dragon Clan members and continued.

"You see the future in fragments."

"..."

"You always look into the future and act to bring your visions to pass. You never think about the processes or reasons that actually matter."

Every member of the White Dragon Clan was the same. They foresaw several futures, then reproduced a vision exactly to reach the future they wanted—dressing, eating, speaking, and acting just as they had seen.

In terms of results, perhaps it wasn't a bad choice. After all, it was a way to obtain the best future they desired. But because that best future was already decided, they never stopped to think.

Why were they saying these words? Why were they imitating this emotion? Why did this action produce that result? They shut down all thought and blindly followed a process whose reasons they themselves did not understand.

"That's why you do something stupid every time you try to change the future."

When they foresaw the future, they could respond perfectly to every situation, because they knew what they had to do. But when they could not foresee it, everything they did became a mess, because they had no idea what to do or how.

It was like a student who routinely scored full marks by copying answers with uncanny skill: once they could no longer cheat, they had no choice but to guess blindly.

"And you even have the moronic idea that if you remove only the bad outcome, the rest of the future will happen exactly as before."

They simply believed that killing a villain who would commit a crime in the future must make that future better. They never considered that the villain's once-kind younger sibling might become an even more terrible villain out of a desire for revenge.

They failed to understand that obstructing the development of a dangerous weapon could kill countless people who might otherwise have been saved by technology born from that development.

To them, the future was fixed. It did not change of its own accord before they saw it and made their choice. Believing the future would remain unchanged while trying to alter only their visions was a contradiction. Their actions could hardly be anything but foolish.

"Knowing that, I deliberately tracked you down one step at a time."

Limon sneered coldly. Had he gone straight to Tata, the terrorist attack would have succeeded. She knew the future in which he killed her, so she had planned the attack on the assumption that she would be found.

Instead, Limon had deliberately pursued every clue she left behind. He had done so to piece together the causes and processes Tata neglected as she acted with her eyes only on the outcome—just as she had burned the case from Moon Cheon-yeop without even opening it.

This was the result: a reality in which every intermediate step had been blocked, wiping out even the successful outcome she had foreseen.

"Well? Do you still think I arrived too late to stop you?"

"..."

Tata remained silent, looking utterly hollow. Both Limon's blade-sharp words and this reality that precognition had changed were enough to leave her stunned.

Limon, too, paid no further attention to Tata or the Divine Dragon Unit. All their plans had failed. No matter how desperately they struggled now, they had no way to achieve their goal.

That was why he swung his sword toward Tata.

SHICK.

As soon as the flash of his sword cleaved the air, a single strand of thread fluttered down. Having thwarted the covert attack that had tried to wind itself around Tata's neck, Limon slowly turned.

He looked at the person responsible—Ainsha, standing expressionlessly on the opposite side of the ceiling—and smiled coldly.

"Now you're the only one left."

"..."

"Do you still think you have to execute your nanny?"

"... Of course."

"They betrayed you for your sake, and in the end all they accomplished was a whole lot of pointless nonsense."

"Betrayal is still betrayal."

Ainsha's declaration was blunt.

Limon chuckled at the sight of her, like a doll devoid of emotion itself.

"Well, it's nice to see you're persistent. Makes it all the more remarkable how easily you changed your mind about wanting to save your nanny."

"That is different from this."

"Is it? I don't see much difference."

"It is different. It is clearly different."

"Well, if that's what you want to believe, go ahead."

Limon lifted the foot pinning Tata down and stepped forward. Planting himself firmly between Tata and Ainsha, he extended his sword straight ahead, pointing its tip at Ainsha as he continued quietly.

"If words won't get through to you, I'll simply have to teach you with your body."

Limon wore a cold smile; Ainsha remained expressionless. In the studio filled with dazzling lights and boisterous noise, they held each other's gaze in still silence.

Then Limon drew back his sword, and Ainsha spread one hand. In that instant, a mighty storm of psionics collided with a chillingly sharp flash of steel.