Date A Mysterious Being

Chapter 36 - Truth

Curled up cross-legged on the bed, blanket draped over her head, Natsumi muttered to herself, "What... What... What...?!"
She felt like a flow of incomprehensible information was filling her head and spilling from her mouth as words. Thoughts spinning and racing, Natsumi had been groaning in this position for a while now, unable to process this confusion with no outlet.

"What exactly...is with them...?!" She yanked at her own hair as the figures of those boys and girls danced through the back of her mind. Why would they pay so much attention to her? Why would they do all this for her?
She could've understood it if she was the Natsumi turned into a beautiful young woman using Haniel's powers. Transformed Natsumi was gorgeous enough to make anyone stop dead in their tracks and turn heads. Men hiding their love and lust deep inside, and women their envy and jealousy, offered up all kinds of flowery words to that Natsumi.
But these people were different. They were saying that this Natsumi-the way she was now, not transformed with Haniel's power-was cute.

This word was supposed to have been something Natsumi had desperately longed and waited for. But...because it was the first time she'd ever been told she was cute, she was simply unable to take it in.

"It's... It's obviously a lie. Ha. Ha... R-right. They're all taking me for a ride. I mean...," she muttered, as she lifted up the blanket covering her head. Now she could see her own reflection in the mirror on the wall.

The made-over her. The cute her.

"...!" She gasped and yanked the blanket back down. Her thoughts grew even more chaotic.
After all, Natsumi was supposedly ugly. She was a hopeless disaster, grotesque, not cute at all. She had to be. She was obviously ugly.

"Huh...?" A question popped into her head.
I'm obviously ugly?
Why? How was it obvious? In what way?
"A-anyway...I can't believe that they would do that stuff to me, their enemy, without a reason. They must... They have to have some kind of objective." Natsumi placed a hand to her chest and quietly said, "Haniel."

Her hand shone faintly, and something like a mirror appeared in her palm.
"Ngh." The cut on her stomach hurt, but it wasn't so bad that she couldn't stand it.
She turned the mirror downward, toward the bed, and changed it into a bed with a hole big enough to hide one person. Then she pulled together all the stuffed animals under the blanket and used Haniel to turn the pile into a perfect copy of a sleeping Natsumi.

She wriggled around inside the blankets and slipped into the hole in the bed, leaving the dummy Natsumi on top of it. And then she made Haniel shine for a third time to close the surface of the bed up behind her and transform it, the floor, and the walls so that she could slip through them, like she was digging a tunnel.

"Perfect." A few minutes later, Natsumi came out into a deserted hallway, restored the wall to its original shape, and looked around.
There were several security cameras in the room where she'd been locked up, but this would fool them for the time being. That said, however, if she didn't touch her meal when it was served, there was the risk of someone coming in to check on her. She didn't have that much time.

In order to quickly finish up her mission here, Natsumi called to mind the faces of the people she'd met. The most convenient was probably...

"...Th-that one." Natsumi nodded and turned Haniel's mirror on herself.
The mirror flashed, and her body shone faintly. And then her silhouette gradually warped until a few seconds later, Natsumi had become an entirely different person.
A girl small in stature wearing a red military uniform. Long hair tied up in two black ribbons, determined expression on her face.
Yes. Itsuka Shidou's little sister, Itsuka Kotori.

Natsumi guessed that she was the most appropriate choice for walking around this facility and observing people.
But there was that one thing. She wore her hair in pigtails. The star of the cute-hairstyle world, pigtails. A hairstyle you couldn't even attempt unless you had supreme self-confidence. Natsumi loathed this hairstyle. So much that she had even considered turning herself into someone with national authority, revising the laws, and making pigtails illegal. But she would have to suck it up for now. It went against every bone in her body to disguise herself as a sly pigtailed girl, but efficiency was the priority at the moment.