Saki Ryuumonbuchi
Aoyama Ruins
"Ah..."
The gentle shaking of a recently freed locket causes the latch to open seemingly of it's own accord; from the start it was simply a watch, a watch that had certainly been enchanted at one point, but opening it up earlier had failed to reveal anything of note, indeed, it was a simple gold-on-blue clock-face that had awaited curious eyes from the other side, but...
This time...
A folded picture seems to fall out of it's grasp.
"..."
The body that moves to pick it up on autopilot is your own; while you are willing to let her see the necklace for a time, the sudden appearance of something that hadn't existed before, even a small fragment of further information from that man, compels you to retrieve it in spite of how frantic and jerky a motion it becomes, and indeed...
You don't remember this being in here before, so perhaps he had slipped it in at some point before the last battle? There is writing on the back, but what truly reaches your eyes first...
Is the image of a familiar classroom, along with familiar students. While at first you look to it as some sort of answer sheet for the future, the teacher's full-proof plan to defeat an absolute God, it takes you only a moment to realize that this picture isn't something particularly rare, it's a photo from the start of the school year, or rather, from the year you first entered Aoyama Gakuen and met the older man. He had forced everyone to stand up and take a class picture at the front of the room... His phone number is on the board, and the photos on his desk reveal the faces of some of the adults -like Liane and Megumi- that you had met over the past few weeks in what seemed to be their younger years, a thing you had never remembered seeing before...
In spite of that it awakens nostalgia:
His phone number was on the board, he had given a cheesy little speech at the start of the year about safety, and while it's hard to remember the exact words at first, flipping the image to it's backside revealed the sheer weight of words he had said with a smile that day:
"As long as I'm your teacher, I want you to promise not to do anything dangerous, okay guys?'
He had said it in a jokey way at the time, and the you from back then had simply been incapable of understanding how serious his jokes were, but:
"However... If it's an emergency, than I want you to call me the moment things become dangerous. I'll come help you wherever you are, regardless of what I'm doing, that's a teacher's promise."
---To that man, his student's were something precious that must be protected at all costs.
People misunderstood him a lot, some probably blame him for going off and trying to do everything alone, but from the start that tendency had existed to protect others.
And down below, written in smaller text, not a spoken quote from the past but rather a thought he had never said aloud, a reminder to his own self throughout the endless years was:
"Never forget."
...A declaration that he truly meant it.
---
Watching you silently, a Goddess that has already found what she was looking for, a fragment of power from the teacher that had certainly existed for the purpose of falling into her hands, she nevertheless...
Waits quietly in case she is suddenly needed.
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