Volume 4—Chapter 109: Sideway Flow
In the middle of Times Square, New York, battles were unfolding at once.
Monsters poured from fractures hanging in the air, twisted hems carved into reality itself. Their forms twisted between solid and unstable, limbs reshaping, bodies reforming as if the world could not decide what they were supposed to be. Screams, collapsing metal, and the constant shattering of glass blended into a single continuous roar.
And above that chaos, another fight was taking place.
Two figures moved against each other with a force that bent the battlefield around them.
“Does this even make sense…?” Carol muttered under her breath, struggling to keep a creature away as it lunged again.
She drove it back, barely creating enough distance to breathe, yet her eyes kept drifting toward the real centre of the disaster.
Miyazaki Aria.
Emilia Lorena.
Those were the names of the two fighting.
Each strike between them rippled through the street. Light condensed, warped, then shattered. The ground did not simply break. It reacted as if it were being corrected and rejected at the same time.
Carol swallowed.
“Was that even an Esper ability…?”
She knew Emilia was not an Esper. Emilia had said it herself. A witch. Someone who used magic, not the structured abilities Espers have in this world.
But Aria…
Carol could not place her.
She had witnessed Aria before. In the forest. On that bizarre talent show stage. And now here, in the middle of Times Square, as reality itself tore open. Every time Aria had fought, Carol felt the same confusion tightening in her chest.
To her understanding, Espers followed a system.
Rank determined scale. From F at the bottom to S at the top.
Type determined nature. Physical. Mental. Elemental. Energy. Spatial. Temporal. And countless rare branches beyond those.
One Esper, one category. That was the rule.
Aria broke it.
At first, Carol thought Aria was a physical type. Her strength, her speed, the way she moved in close combat, it all pointed there. But then Aria manipulated objects without touching them. Telekinesis, clearly Mental type.
Then came teleportation.
Cloning.
Distortion in space that no Physical or Mental Esper should be capable of.
Carol’s grip tightened as another monster rushed her, and she pushed it back again.
“That’s not possible…” she whispered.
An Esper could not hold multiple categories. The structure of their abilities did not allow it. Mixing types was supposed to destabilise the user, fracture their mind, or simply fail.
Yet Aria fought as if none of those limits existed.
And more than that, she was holding her ground against Emilia.
Carol had no doubt now.
Whatever Aria was, she was far beyond standard classification. Even an S rank felt insufficient.
Aria did not look like she followed anything.
Another clash echoed across the square. Light met something invisible. The impact bent the air itself and forced every monster nearby to recoil.
Her breathing grew shallow as she watched Aria stand there, steady, unshaken, facing Emilia as if this level of destruction was normal.
“Yeah… no doubt about it,” Carol murmured, half in awe, half in fear. “She’s S rank… maybe even beyond that.”
The clash between Aria and Emilia intensified, each exchange more relentless than the last. But the monsters did not stop.
They kept coming for her.
Carol ducked under a swinging limb and drove her fist into its core, her power snapping into place for a split second as the creature froze just long enough for her to break away. The moment passed, and time resumed its normal flow, the monster collapsing only after she had already moved.
She exhaled hard, shoulders trembling.
“In the first place… why are they even fighting?” she muttered, half to herself, half to the chaos around her. “Is it some kind of grudge… or something else entirely?”
She had no answers. Only noise, destruction, and the constant need to survive the next second.
Her stomach twisted painfully.
Days.
It had been days since she had eaten anything real. Ever since she got stranded in that forest, it had been nothing but scraps, exhaustion, and running. Now she was here, in the middle of a city she had never even seen before, forced to fight things she could barely comprehend.
And all she had were her fists.
And her power.
Carol clenched her hands, breath uneven. The familiar pull settled behind her eyes as she triggered it again. The world slowed, then halted for a heartbeat. Just enough to dodge. Just enough to reposition. Never enough to truly recover.
If only she could stop it longer.
If only she could make it last.
“If I could just freeze everything… even for a few minutes…” she whispered, frustration creeping into her voice. “I could rest… just a little…”
But it never worked that way. It never stayed.
Time always resumed. It always dragged her back into motion.
Another monster lunged. She staggered back, nearly losing her footing this time, her arms heavy, her body finally beginning to fail her.
Desperation rose before she could suppress it.
“Hey!” she shouted, voice cracking as she forced it louder. “Seriously, can someone help me here?!”
After a moment, Carol noticed the two of them pause. The clash stopped, only briefly. Instead of striking, they stood facing each other, exchanging words she could not hear from where she was.
Hope flickered.
Are they finally stopping?
Her shoulders drooped for a second, relief threatening to take over.
Then, a moment later, Aria appeared right in front of her.
“Well… lend me that power, and I will give you rest,” Aria said.
Her tone sounded gentle, almost kind, yet something cold lingered beneath it. Before Carol could react, Aria’s hand closed around her neck. The grip was tight.
Carol gasped, startled, hands immediately clawing at Aria’s wrist as she struggled to breathe.
Then she heard it, spoken softly, almost like giving a blessing.
“May you rest in peace…”
Darkness crept in. Her strength slipped away. The sounds of the battlefield faded, and her consciousness dissolved into silence.
Aria released her without hesitation and tossed her aside like an empty shell.
As Carol’s body hit the ground, Aria’s blue eyes shifted, colour deepening into violet. A faint glow formed around her, an aura that pulsed softly, the same shade of violet spreading through the air.
“A power to stop time, huh… not quite right,” Aria murmured, studying the sensation settling into her. “It does not truly stop time. It slows it. But even that is only the surface. There is more to it.”
She raised her hand slightly, feeling the flow bend.
“You can change its direction, too. Not backwards… but sideways.”
Emilia watched from a short distance, her expression tightening as realisation sank in.
“I can’t believe you used such an underhanded method to take her power,” she said, anger laced with regret. “I thought you would try to convince her. I miscalculated.”
Her hands clenched at her sides.
She had believed Aria would never harm Caroline. That their connection, even fragile, still meant something. If she had known this would happen, she would have protected Carol instead of provoking Aria into acting first.
Author's Note
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