"You're very talented," Kyuuto commented as he listened to Kanata's story.

"Yeah, but talents alone weren't enough to live the days," she replied as she hugged herself.

Their sights were focused on a bright star blinking from god-knows-how many miles away. Kanata continues her story as a drizzle falls from the dark sky.

----

Kanata was excited about her next life, living happily without any crisis in the future. The announcer announced that the qualified contestant will be given special treatment, as well as forming the group that they've been competing for. The group itself will debut about three months from that day.

"Come back next week, we'll have all the preparations ready," said one of the committee, then the meeting was dismissed. On their way out, the girls shared their anxiety and eagerness to each other.

After parting ways with others, Kanata pulled out her phone to call her mother about the announcement. As she scrolls through the contact list, and pressing the call button, something happens on the horizon, in the direction of her home.

A powerful lightning strike.

The call changed from 'ringing' to 'unanswered'.

"Mom!!" without thinking too much, Kanata sprinted towards the lightning strike, only to see a massive explosion and some of the buildings flew tens of meters away. "No!!" she screamed even louder.

As she was getting closer to the location, a second lightning struck, blowing her away. More buildings were destroyed, and she even saw some other buildings get crushed. Gathering all of her energy from the blast, she tried to run as fast as she could.

When she arrived at the neighborhood, she witnessed the horror never seen before, most of the houses there were already level with the ground, while some of them collapsed with people still inside.

"MOM!!" Kanata rushed to her house as she saw a huge column fall from a nearby hotel.

To her horror, her house was completely obliterated, with the huge column in the middle of it. She could even see the corpse of her mother crushed beneath the rubble. "This... is not happening..." she pulled out her own hair in desperation.

"no... no way... mom..." she began to cry while punching at the ground.

After feeling being watched, she looked up, and she saw a towering figure standing on the column, with his back towards her. The man glanced at her, but as she made eye contact, she looked left because of another hunch, and sure enough, there's other man to the left.

She remembers faintly about the men, the one on the left looked like Koori but wearing a mask. He then left, at the same time as the man on the fallen pillar vanished seemingly into thin air.

It didn't stop there, the pillar started to break in half, with Kanata directly in front of it, it was too late for her to actually get up and run. She was desperate and even intentionally just sat there meaning to kill herself.

----

"Then two mysterious men came up and saved me. One of them stopped time, keeping the pillar from falling on me. While the other touched us and... a few days later I was on the island," Kanata ends her story.

"They might be..."

"Yuukai and Raizen, no doubt," Kanata cuts Kyuuto's sentence, "they have those powers, Ishimaru also already told you right? The beacons, they reverse time and space. A person with a power like that shouldn't be trusted much, Kyuuto. The last thing I heard from them at that moment was 'find and keep him',"

Kanata's story inspired Kyuuto with a new perspective of thinking about their whole situations. What if Yuukai and Raizen have nefarious intentions? The warriors don't know much of their origin after all.