Chapter 121

Melinda Desmond has skipped her follow-up at Berlint General Hospital, so Loid pores over her file with Fiona Frost. Nothing in her testing points to cognitive abnormality or mental illness, and Loid redirects the investigation toward what Donovan was doing around the births of his two sons, hoping the material gives him an edge at the coming Imperial Scholars mixer. He tasks Fiona with combing Donovan's known associates for occult connections and counts on Yor as his remaining channel to Melinda.

Yor, meanwhile, joins the Lady Patriots Society, Melinda among them, for a bowling outing, hurling the ball hard enough to threaten the pins. Afterward she offers her friend a Valerian-root tea blend from Gympie for her insomnia, eating a spoonful herself to prove it safe when Melinda hesitates over edible gifts. In the car, Melinda confesses she has been seeing Loid as a patient but stopped attending because his perceptiveness unsettles her the way Donovan does. Yor admits she too fears being truly seen by someone, meaning Loid, and Melinda brings her along to a group reading run by the occultist Magical Crowley.

Pressed to name a worry during the seance, Yor hides both her assassin life and her feelings and instead admits she enjoys scraping the leftover bits from yogurt and pudding lids, and that Loid caught her doing it. Crowley's vision returns only bad omens, and he advises her to give the habit up, leaving Yor deflated and Melinda indignant on her behalf. Outside, Melinda insists the reading was wrong, promises that Loid will accept every part of Yor, and hands over her completed therapy notebook for delivery to him. Reading it that night, Loid finds Melinda's accounts of feeling her mind invaded by Donovan, and is stunned to see Sigmund Authen named among the men who met Donovan after his term as Ostania's Prime Minister ended.

Melinda avoids her hospital appointment, and Loid learns her test results rule out any disorder. He assigns Fiona to recheck Donovan's associate list for occult ties.

Yor attends a seance with Melinda's reading group, where Magical Crowley delivers an unfavorable fortune about her lid-licking habit.

Melinda entrusts Yor with her therapy notebook. Its pages describe the sensation of Donovan reading her mind and reveal that Sigmund Authen met with him following his resignation as Prime Minister, a discovery that shocks Loid.

This chapter establishes Melinda's age as 46 and Demetrius's as 14. The occultist Magical Crowley debuts here.

Several art details differ between the initial digital release and the Volume 17 printing, including Crowley's beard coloring, Yor's sleeve, and Anya's uncolored ribbon on page 2, the last of which was never corrected. The English edition also alters the bowling scene dialogue: the Japanese text has the Lady Patriots Society celebrating a win over the North side team rather than a North side victory.