Random Curiosity

Summary:

With the Stargazer still speaking cryptically about the stars, one of the girls in the Astronomy Department wonders if the Stargazer is reading the stars’ Garching wavelengths, and Kanami feels that the Stargazer even speaking is a message in itself. Meanwhile, an announcement is made throughout metropolitan Tokyo of a curfew because of the terrorism threat, and no one on the rainy streets notices or cares about July walking along getting soaked without an umbrella. At the same time, Yin wakes up in Amber’s lap at a shrine with Amber complimenting her on how cute she looks while sleeping. Hei and Mao discover Yin gone from the cigarette shop, and in her place is a pink envelope with Amber’s name on it. Hei runs out after seeing the note, though he gets cut off by Huang who offers him a ride. Back at the Observatory, Kanami violates an order to keep silent and phones Misaki to tell her about the Stargazer. She offers to send Misaki a list later of the stars that sparkled during the building explosions, but Kanami is curious about the Contractor involvement because she had thought that those explosions were retribution attacks by the various intelligence agencies. Misaki doubts this because of how public the incidents were compared to how shadowy those agencies usually move.

As she drives along, Misaki then notices July talking to an officer on the street. When she talks with him, July reveals how November 11 wanted the boy to find her if something happened to him. Since Misaki wants to know where November 11 had been headed, July explains that he tracks his comrades, so Misaki gets him to take her there. November 11 is actually being held in the old bar that Maki and Amagiri are using as a hideout, and at the moment, Maki is practicing his Japanese greetings when Amagiri brings him milk to drink. Maki burns his tongue trying to down the hot milk, and when Amagiri tells him to drink it slowly, Maki points out that cold milk wouldn’t fulfill his price. Their conversation gets interrupted when November 11 suddenly sits up and asks to be allowed a smoke. November 11 claims that he has some in the left pocket of his suit, but Amagiri refuses to touch him because he knows that November 11 is an excellent Contractor by how November 11 had protected himself from Maki’s explosions earlier with a shield of ice. Amagiri then starts lecturing November 11 about the dangers of smoking, though of course November 11 knew all of that already. Realizing that this is November 11’s price, Amagiri wonders what happens to Contractors who don’t pay and jokes that they melt like butter.

After Amagiri heads out, November 11 calls Maki praiseworthy for studying between blowing up buildings. Maki responds by saying that Amber taught him the meaning of words and that she wanted him to practice. He is willing to do anything for her, including destroy the city. Meanwhile, inside Huang’s car as it races down a road, Mao questions why Amber took Yin and what happened in South America all those years ago between her and Hei. Instead of answering the cat, Hei orders Huang to stop since he’s just realized that they’re going the wrong way. Huang then turns into a warehouse and explains that the higher-ups in the Organizations have ordered him not to let Hei and Amber meet. Hei runs out of the car when he hears this, but Huang shoots him in the leg to stop him. In pain, Hei threatens to kill Huang for getting in his way, however Huang feels that it’ll be Hei who gets killed for defying the Organization. When Huang then momentarily gets distracted by Mao telling him to stop this, Hei uses the chance to limp and roll to safety behind a crate. A combination of Hei’s cables and a roof crane crashing down causes Huang to trip onto the ground, giving Hei the opportunity to electrocute him.

Back at the old bar, Maki questions why Contractors are being used by man. Maki feels that they as Contractors are the chosen ones and cites how people who can’t make contracts fear them. He believes that they are the more suitable beings to lead the world of the future. Maki eventually reveals that they’re trying to cause the same tragedy as the one that happened in South America, and although he doesn’t know why, he thinks that because Amber said so, it must be necessary. Amagiri then joins the conversation by saying that November 11 should understand the meaning of their creation and actions. He claims that their group, Evening Primrose, welcomes November 11 and tries to get him to join them, so the MI6 agent asks what privileges he’d get. Amagiri’s simple answer is the future, and he feels that November 11 doesn’t have many other choices in such a situation, so he should decide rationally. Hearing this causes November 11 to laugh because he remembers saying the same thing to a certain Contractor not long ago who he didn’t think had a chance to win. That Contractor had still attacked him, and November 11 had questioned what that person was thinking. In any case, November 11 rejects the offer to join, and at the same moment, a heavily armed SWAT team bursts through the door with Misaki.

After November 11 jokes that Misaki is like a princess riding a white horse, she reveals that his companion - July - informed them of this place. Although he’s being held under gunpoint, Maki uses his powers to blow up parts of the room and create a distraction long enough for himself and Amagiri to escape via a secret passageway. When they reach the street, Maki wants to know where Amber is, but Amagiri still only reveals that she’s waiting for the final key. This causes Maki to question who is so important that Amber would leave him, and he gets angry when Amagiri says that there’s no need to tell him. Amagiri then sends Maki towards the second rendezvous point and gets the boy to comply by claiming that it’s Amber’s order. However, as soon as Amagiri goes out of sight, Maki turns and runs the other direction. Amber is at that time telling Yin about how a certain guy has only truly smiled once. She admits to feeling that she can do anything for this person if she can see just see his smile again, and she thinks that Yin feels this way too. The person she was talking about - Hei - is currently limping in their direction, but he runs into Maki along the way.

Recognizing who Hei really is, Maki reveals that their previous encounter was the first time he had said thank you without thinking about it, and that made him very happy. However, Maki now feels jealousy and throws several exploding rocks at Hei. After dodging behind a car, Hei electrocutes the water puddle that Maki is standing in, but Maki manages to get out of it in time. Maki then throws another rock that blows up the car, and after it explodes, Maki says that Amber had always spoken of Hei and that’s why she didn’t take Maki with her. Hei’s body isn’t beside the car though, so Maki tries to chase him, but the boy doesn’t get very far because his legs get frozen to the ground by November 11. When Maki escapes by using his power to melt the ice, November 11 tells Misaki to go after Hei while he and July go after Maki. November 11 then sees Maki blow his way into a nearby building, and the boy challenges the MI6 agent to come after him because he’s used his handprint as a trap on everything so that November 11 can’t attack him. Feeling that the appropriate Contractor for Amber is himself, Maki wants November 11 to show him something stronger than himself.

Rushing up the stairs to the room that Maki is in, November 11 almost opens a door, but July stops him from touching it shortly before it explodes; July feels that they can do it together. In a semi-delusional state now, Maki wants Amber to tell him that he’s the best, but when he stumbles to the door and opens it, he finds rain pouring through a hole in the ceiling. Standing in the rain is November 11 holding a spear of ice. By now, Amagiri has reached the shrine and Hei eventually limps his way there too. As soon as Amber sees that Hei is hurt, she runs to him in concern, but he slaps away her hand. He isn’t going to forgive the person he thinks is a traitor, though before he kills her, he wants to know what happened back then to his sister Bai. Amber thinks that he should say something else before talking about that, like how it’s been a long time since they’ve seen each other or how she’s still beautiful, but when Hei insists on her answering him, she questions if he wants to meet his sister. She offers to let him meet Bai, though when Hei asks where she is, Amber playfully replies that Bai is very far and very close as she points to his heart. This earns her a slap across the face from Hei, but Amber remains calm and tells Hei that he can meet his sister if he comes with her. However, she questions what Hei would do if the town had to disappear into darkness for the sake of that meeting. This only gets Hei angrier at her, and he starts to activate his Contractor power right as Misaki bursts onto the scene with her gun drawn.

Seeing what Hei is about to do, Yin yells for him to stop and Amagiri activates his power as he yells for Amber to get out of the way. Amber, however, chooses to use her own Contractor power and freezes everything. Though Hei can’t hear her, she tells him that she’s traveled a lot and that she’s wanted to see him for a long, long time. With tears in her eyes, she then kisses him. Afterwards, she flicks Amagiri’s forehead to unfreeze him, and when he realizes what’s going on, he warns her about how there’s a limit to which she can pay her price, so she should think about when to use it. As she passes by Misaki on her way out of the shrine, Amber asserts that this was one of those times. Back at the Observatory, the Stargazer is the only one unfazed by the time stop, and she tells the stars not to be impatient because the full moon is yet to come. When the world returns to normal, the Stargazer has fallen silent once again. Misaki emerges from the time stop to find her glasses on the top of her head instead of on her face, and by the time she puts them back on, there’s no one left at the shrine - only an umbrella.

In the aftermath, Amber and Amagiri head to the rendezvous point and meet with two other women and a man. They are willing to wait for now and feel that a certain man is necessary to make the flower of their Evening Primrose bloom. Amagiri then notes that Maki should have already come here, but Amber knows that the boy isn’t coming. In fact, Maki had been stabbed by November 11 who had been helped out by a bandaged up, but otherwise cheerful April. Huang meanwhile wakes up in the warehouse and realizes that Hei had gone easy on him. As the sun rises, Hei returns to his apartment and checks the inside of a drawer where he keeps the charm Amber gave him.

Preview

Well, this episode gives us plenty of Amber, and she turned out to be quite nice and caring, making her that much harder to hate as a villain (which is probably a good thing in terms of storytelling). It seems pretty clear that she’s in love with Hei, regardless of how he feels about her or abuses her, and she even went as far as to use her Contractor power, which shows how important this was to her. Heck, she even appeared to have pushed up Misaki’s glasses, allowing Hei and Yin those extra few seconds to get away while Misaki was putting the glasses back on. I get the feeling that everything Amber has done, she’s done for his sake, but their past still remains unclear, so that’s just speculation. We also don’t know what Evening Primrose’s ultimate goals are - unless it’s making Contractors the dominant race - and how Amber’s feelings for Hei fit into it, but for now I have a hard time believing that she’s sinister enough to be the final boss type bad guy. That being said, I don’t expect that she’ll survive through the end of the series, especially not if Hei doesn’t either.
As for Maki, his attachment to Amber led to his downfall since he didn’t just do what Amagiri told him to. I didn’t think November 11 would kill Maki since he was only a kid, but he did in fact stab him. Maybe it’s okay since we only saw the before and after and not the actual act. On a related note, I like how they contrasted the MI6 group working together to overcome Maki’s power with how Maki was all alone. Similarly to Yin two episodes ago, July seems to put a lot of importance into being a comrade and companion to November 11 and April.
Overall, I’m beginning to think that we’re at the point where there’s more than enough story for them to completely cover in the remainder of this series. Among other things, we still know relatively little about the organization Hei and Huang belong to, Hei’s past, what happens when Contractors don’t pay their price, and now there are three new characters belonging to Evening Primrose who might complicate matters further. It doesn’t look like Amber will be in this next arc, but regardless, I’m excited about where the story is going.