* * *

Ainsha was the White Dragon Princess. Born with the very essence of psionics, she had spent her life reading the future as naturally as breathing.

To her, reality was little different from a dull play in which everything she had already foreseen simply came to pass.

But in this moment, the scene unfolding before her eyes was enough to overturn that belief entirely.

"... Why?"

Before Limon's sword could pierce her, Tata had stepped into his path to take the blade in her place. Then the sword, thrusting forward as though it could pierce anything, had suddenly stopped in midair.

And...

"Why on earth?"

Limon had caught the threads she had unleashed unconsciously with his hand instead of simply cutting them with his sword.

Perhaps because he had seized Celestial Silkworm thread imbued with psionics powerful enough to take the shape of a dragon, it cut his hand, spraying blood. Yet Limon paid no attention to that at all.

He merely met Ainsha's blank stare squarely with his golden eyes and spoke calmly.

"Look at where you're standing now, and you'll have your answer."

Without thinking, Ainsha checked.

She had been so intent on killing Tata. Yet when Tata leaped in front of the blade, Ainsha had instinctively shielded her, stepping forward in her place.

It made no sense.

She was the White Dragon Princess, the most exalted member of the White Dragon Clan. Especially since she had yet to produce a successor, her life was worth more than those of every other clan member combined.

For her, who understood that better than anyone, to do something so reckless should have been impossible.

As though reading her confusion, Limon gave a faint chuckle.

"You don't even know why you're standing there, do you?"

"..."

"But, foolish princess, not everything in this world needs some complicated reason."

Because she could see the future, the girl had grown far too accustomed to living her present to match it. As a result, she had become a foolish princess who could do nothing without a reason. Limon addressed her calmly.

"Just like all those reasons you tacked on when you fought me to kill a traitor, or said you'd kill me to change the future for your clan."

"... I did not tack them on. They were real."

"Don't lie."

Limon's reply was firm.

However important disposing of a traitor might be, it was no reason to risk confronting Limon. Likewise, even if Tata was a clan elder, she could not compare to the destined partner on whom the White Dragon Princess's very survival depended.

Ainsha had only pretended to act rationally. In truth, rationality had been absent from her actions from the start.

And Limon could make a fair guess at what had driven her.

"In the end, you just love your nanny so much that you were sulking just as hard."

Her blunt demeanor had merely concealed it.

Ainsha had tried to change the future because Tata mattered more to her than her destined partner. That was why she had been furious with Tata for deciding to die without consulting her, and why she had ultimately shielded her.

Limon had stripped away rationality and calculations of gain and loss to pinpoint motives born entirely of emotion. Ainsha objected.

"I reject that. I am not a child."

"But you are a fool."

"I am not a fool either."

"Yes, you are."

Limon flatly dismissed her protest. He looked into the girl's eyes, which wavered uncontrollably despite her expressionless face.

"What else do you call a fool who's so preoccupied with the future that she can't even understand what she's feeling right now?"

Her eyes alone told him enough.

Ainsha was by no means emotionless. She was simply so accustomed to concealing her feelings that she had forgotten she was a person capable of feeling them.

That made her a foolish princess—the greatest fool of all those who lived looking only at the future, and the most ignorant of reality.

At Limon's mocking words, Ainsha asked bluntly,

"... I would like to know what you want from me."

"What I want? It's simple."

Limon did not bother adding any more unnecessary words. He merely gestured with a glance behind Ainsha.

"For you to look behind you."

"..."

At those words, Ainsha slowly turned around.

The woman who had shielded her, and whom she had shielded in turn, stood there anxiously worrying about her, unable to dare interrupt the conversation given her position.

Looking at Tata, Ainsha hesitated.

Normally, there would have been no need to hesitate. She could simply speak, act, and choose as her foresight instructed.

But with her immediate future obscured in the aftermath of Limon tearing it apart, she did not know what to say.

"Tata."

Instead, Ainsha could feel.

There was a faint stirring she had never noticed before, buried as she usually was in the future her foresight revealed. Amid that torrent of emotions—anxiety, impatience, and relief—she understood what Limon had been trying to tell her.

And so, rather than speaking to follow or change the future, Ainsha tried saying what she most wanted to say right now.

"Are you hurt anywhere?"

Tata's eyes widened. She stared blankly at Ainsha for a moment, seemingly surprised or perhaps bewildered.

Then her face contorted, and she shouted as though she could no longer contain herself.

"That is what I should be asking! Why did you do something so reckless?!"

From her clothes, torn in several places, to her bruised skin, Ainsha could hardly be called unharmed even if she had suffered no sword wounds. Tata lamented the sight.

"All that needed to happen was for me to die! If you had only refrained from trying to change the future, you could have been happy, Your Highness!"

"That is incorrect."

"What do you mean, incorrect?"

"There is no happiness for me in a future gained through your death."

"That cannot be. In the future I saw..."

"Tata, look at me."

Ainsha interrupted her. Cupping Tata's cheeks in both hands and making her meet her eyes, she continued softly.

"I decide what makes me happy. Not the future."

"...!"

"And the happiness you give me by being at my side matters more to me than the happiness the future has decided for me."

She was not unhappy. So Tata should not pity her. She should not make Ainsha unhappy now for the sake of happiness in the future.

Tata stared dazedly at Ainsha, whose face remained expressionless and whose voice remained blunt, but whose hands held her with such warmth.

Her lips moved as though she wanted to say something—or as though she did not know what to say. Only after a long while did she finally speak.

"... Big Sister Rahasha."

She flinched at the name that had slipped out unwittingly.

"No, Mother Krusha."

Yet, unable to hold back, she spoke another name.

"Do you truly believe you can only be happy if Tata... No, if I am here?"

As she asked, Tata gazed at her with wavering eyes, whether from anxiety or some other cause.

To this woman who was her aunt before she was her nanny, and who had once been a younger sister and a daughter, Ainsha replied without the slightest hesitation.

"Of course, Tatasha."

Hearing the name she had discarded the moment she decided to become Ainsha's nanny, together with the words she had longed to hear for so very long but never could, Tata finally burst into tears, embracing her like a small child clinging to a parent.

* * *

CLANK.

Limon sheathed his sword. Wiping the blood from his hand, where the wound had already vanished, he gave a faint chuckle.

'Fools, honestly. Words alone never get through to them.'

This was why the White Dragon Clan was such a nuisance. They were exceedingly difficult as enemies, but even more infuriating as allies.

Still, they were not without their merits. Their almost foolish honesty, which allowed them to readily accept something once they understood it, was a rare gift within the Seven Dragons Society.

That was why he had put away his sword.

It might have been different had they never understood. But now that Ainsha had looked into her own heart rather than the future, she would no longer try to kill Tata, and Tata would no longer throw away her life.

Tata would not die. The predetermined future had changed.

His sword had fulfilled its role.

Of course, that did not mean all his work was done.

MURMUR, MURMUR.

"Tsk. Guess letting this slide was too much to hope for?"

Limon clicked his tongue as he looked down at the people still staring up at the ceiling and making a commotion, and at the studio where the broadcast had all but ground to a halt.

Well, anyone who noticed nothing after a dragon rampaged overhead would be a goldfish, not a human.

"... Can't be helped."

Limon sighed.

He had prevented Tata from ruining the broadcast, but he actually had no particular reason to protect Music Challenge. His purpose in getting involved with the program had already been achieved.

And now that he had prevented the future in which he killed Tata, he could simply slip away, whether a mere television program failed or not.

But...

'I can't be an asshole who won't even take responsibility for what he's done.'

Seeing Kim Seung-jun turn as pale as a corpse at yet another broadcast mishap, Limon shook his head.

Then he swept his hair back and changed his appearance, shouldered the duffel bag lying in a corner, and leaped down onto the stage.

THUD!

"Huh? Who are you?"

"We're filming a live broadcast right now..."

Limon paid no attention to the host's bewilderment at his sudden appearance, as though he had fallen from the sky. He merely took an object out of his duffel bag.

Kim Seung-jun's eyes widened, and he hurriedly issued instructions. While the host followed them, talking to draw the cameras' and audience's attention, Limon rested the Violin of Deepest Black on his shoulder and grasped the bow.

EEEEEE.

A moment later, a single spine-chilling melody swallowed every sound in the world.

* * *

Even as Ainsha held Tata and patted her soothingly, she watched Limon begin to play.

She listened to his true performance, worlds apart from any recording—so powerful that the viewers forgot even the broadcast mishap from moments before.

And so she came to understand a great many things, including why Limon was doing this.

"... How foolish."

He kept calling them fools, but in Ainsha's eyes, he was no better at acting sensibly himself.

His meddlesomeness in volunteering to go to such trouble to teach fools, his stubbornness in taking responsibility on their behalf and stepping onto the stage, his idea of resolving this entire situation through his playing alone—none of it was a clever choice, however she looked at it.

Yet it did not merely seem foolish. Was that because he was the Sword Lord, or for some other reason?

As Ainsha watched him thoughtfully, she suddenly raised a hand to her chest. Feeling a heartbeat she had experienced before, but now far stronger and clearer, she let out a small chuckle.

"And I am a fool as well."

Only now had that "soon" arrived.

Chuckling at her own foolishness in having thought she was already in love without even realizing that, Ainsha spoke softly.

"Tata, I will be back."

"... Yes, Your Highness. Leave everything here to Tata, and go without worry."

For a moment, Tata was surprised to see even a faint smile on Ainsha's normally expressionless face. Then she smiled herself and released her.

As though imitating Limon, Ainsha leaped down beside him.

Then, before the cameras and the people watching his performance in a trance, she removed the cap she had been wearing all this time.

"Huh...?"

"Huh? Wh-what?"

The moment they saw her snow-white hair fluttering, the two hosts, the staff, and the audience both in the studio and at home looked as though their eyes might pop out.

Few had seen her in person, but almost no one was unfamiliar with her face.

Ainsha paid no attention to their reactions. She merely looked quietly at Limon.

'What are you doing here now?'

'I have come to take responsibility.'

'Think you can handle it?'

'Watch, and you will know.'

Though she was the White Dragon Princess, the girl was better known by another epithet.

A priestess who mediated even battles between gods through song alone in the Holy Alliance, where religious strife never ceased. A woman always counted among the world's finest singers despite not being a player.

The Singing Whiteness, Ainsha.

After exchanging their intentions through looks alone, she saw Limon give a faint chuckle and nod, and drew a small breath.

Then her pink lips parted. The instant Ainsha began to sing, the world in which the melody had swallowed every sound was painted over by a new sound that burst forth like an explosion.

The harmony reached deeper into the heart than when Limon had performed with Eugene, yet was incomparably more profound and beautiful.

That was the moment Music Challenge's future as a globally popular program became certain.

And it was the moment a musician who stood as her equal—the Violinist of Blackness—first revealed himself to the world.