Story:

“And then,” Violet asked, very quietly, “what did you do?”

Seira’s fingers disappeared into her sleeves. “I drew it closer.”

The chamber remained silent for a long moment. Ai blinked. Mai looked toward Shiki, who had acquired the fixed expression of someone wishing to be stationed elsewhere.

Violet pressed two fingers to her forehead. “You caught hold of an interdimensional passage.”

“I caught hold of an unidentified disturbance.”

“With people inside it.”

“I did not know that at the time.”

“And pulled.”

Seira lifted her chin. “You arrived alive.”

Kicho gave a short, incredulous laugh. “Then you announced that you had summoned us!”

“Well, what would you have preferred I tell the other miko?” Seira demanded. “‘I reached into something unfamiliar and four strangers fell into the courtyard’?”

Shiki made a small sound that might have been a cough. Seira glanced at her. The shrine miko immediately became motionless.

“So,” Violet continued, each word increasingly careful, “your grand summoning of warriors from another world was an explanation you invented afterward.”

“A provisional interpretation.”

Kicho’s hand closed around her knee.

Ai, sensing the conversation approaching another disastrous turn, leaned forward. “Kannagi-sama. Please. What about Aunty Shiro?”

Violet’s anger stopped advancing.

There it was—the question beneath all the others. “If you pulled our passage toward the shrine,” she said, “why wasn’t Shiro brought here too?”

Seira’s embarrassment faded.

For the first time since the confession began, she answered without looking elsewhere. “Because she belongs to this world.”

Ai and Mai listened closely.

“The four of you were entering from outside,” Seira explained. “Your companion was returning. Those are different conditions.”

Violet frowned, following.

“When something native to a world returns to it, the connection is much stronger than the attraction I exerted. Her return restores a separation in the dimensional structure. That bond held her to her destination.”