No more suits. No more polished shoes. No more making a show of pulling on clean white gloves.
And…
"Elegance"? To hell with it.
Ling Ke had no use for those masks anymore.
Right now, he was cutting loose.
A black T-shirt up top. Across the chest, in deeply ironic English: Love_And_Peace.
Loose casual pants down below. Canvas shoes on his feet.
Throw a baseball cap on top of all that, and he'd look like nothing more than some kid who came to do a bit of street dance.
Ling Ke. The "world-ending great player" who had erased an entire era. The Herrscher of Dominance, of "Legion." Once, briefly, he had ascended to godhood. Now he was the kind of being who pruned the newborn Imaginary Tree like it was a potted plant.
He. Was. On. Vacation.
In his hands, the classic combo: popcorn and a cold drink.
By rights, that combo belonged in a quiet cinema without people shouting around him. He should have been sitting in a soft seat, legs crossed, soaking up the comforts of single life, getting force-fed dog food by the couples seated beside him.
Except his thoughts had wandered off, and his cinema combo had wandered off with them. He had brought it to a place that had nothing to do with peace and quiet.
A concert.
The people around him were holding glow sticks and cheering at the top of their lungs.
Only Ling Ke sat there in the middle of all of it, the wrong bird in the flock, jaw working away at his popcorn without stopping.
Doing exactly as he pleased, taken to its absolute limit.
This was Eden's concert.
The great star herself had broken through during a charity performance not too long ago, and her name had climbed straight up the charts since. Now she stood on her stage, with countless eyes fixed on her, singing for her era.
She was still an ordinary human, at this point.
She did not know that her era had "returned."
She just enjoyed the moment.
"The performance is genuinely great, I'll give it that."
Ling Ke chewed and chewed and reviewed it inwardly. "Even though I'm not really into classical music or opera, I'm enjoying this quite a bit. Nice little boost on top of an already good mood."
"Still, I prefer the script I put together myself."
Speaking of which…
"That first batch of passengers I sent has already started moving."
A nasty little thought slid in. "Funny, I never saw her this efficient before."
"Goes to show. To make a person grow, to make them transform, you have to apply just a tiny, tiny bit of pressure. It's a necessary thing."
Obviously, this was what he was really enjoying.
The productions he himself had staged. His favorites. Those were running around the clock now.
For instance. Right now.
-----
The Middle East.
Religious factions were tangled together here, and war almost never stopped.
And somewhere inside it all, even in the eyes of the people who lived nearby, there was a place that was especially strange and especially dangerous. A lawless zone.
Its name: Sundown Alley.
Today, Sundown Alley had an uninvited guest.
The figure was bundled up tight from head to toe.
By the build, female.
Beneath the hood of the long coat, strands of purple hair could be seen.
What slipped past the wrappings, when it slipped past at all, was the suggestion of a tall, well-shaped figure, and a face good-looking enough to draw the eye.
So it was no surprise. The figure, she, was already drawing plenty of looks. None of them well-meaning.
"Hah."
The travel-worn purple-haired girl, Raiden Mei, let out a long, tired breath.
She had been in this era for two days now, alone. An era she knew of, but had never really stood inside.
She was no longer the Herrscher of Thunder.
But her combat strength, by some uncanny logic, had not dropped. It had risen.
It was as if, days ago, when her heart cracked, she had stepped onto some strange "path" without realizing it.
After noticing the change in herself, Mei had gone out into this era's Sahara to test the strange power that had attached itself to her.
It was the kind of power that made it very easy to lose yourself.
It was also unusually strong.
So strong that, looking back, even her former complete Herrscher of Thunder self now seemed weak. Something she could erase with a turn of her hand.
So strong that, these last two days, the same thought kept rising up: if she had had this kind of power back then. If she had had enough of it…
Could everything have been saved?
But it didn't matter how often the thought came. It led nowhere.
Because this power, strong as it was, could not interfere with time.
That was not its path.
It could only inflict pure destruction. It was loss. It was annihilation. It was the act of taking everything that "existed" and reducing it, all of it, into "nothing."
So the Raiden Mei standing here now could not save anyone. She could not save herself either.
All that was left to her were the means of doing harm.
She was lost.
She did not know which way the road in front of her was supposed to go.
She had learned a great deal from those too-beautiful nonexistent memories. There were inside truths in there she now knew.
But.
The one-way ticket against time that Ling Ke had forced into her hand was not a gift. It was a shackle.
He had clearly killed off, at least for now, even the possibility that any of them could travel together.
"You all didn't actually think I'd let you huddle together for comfort, did you? No way, right?"
That kind of vicious, soundless sneer kept hanging at the edges of her hearing, never quite leaving.
Mei already knew this much: the "passengers" Ling Ke had chosen would not arrive at the same time. They would not arrive at the same place.
Yes. Her, and Kiana, and Bronya, and the Class Monitor, and the Headmistress. And Durandal, and Rita. And Otto.
All of them, separated.
Every one of his "passengers" would arrive at a different time, at a different place, by a different method.
She and that Kevin Kaslana of "Deliverance" had been the first batch.
After them, where the others would land, when they would land, who would find them first, what kind of chaos would already be waiting to drag them in…
She knew none of it.
She only knew, with certainty, that they would come.
She knew because, at the very last moment, Ling Ke had given her his "thoughtful" parting reminder.
And those few sentences, when they reached her ears, had been almost unbearable to hear.
"Don't worry. Your Kiana isn't going to disappear."
"Because you did, in fact, subconsciously make a choice. You decided she was more important than the world. Or at least, more important than your own biological father."
It was true. She had subconsciously chosen Kiana.
Before the day of farewell came, she had chosen to go to Kiana's side. She had left it to others to protect her father.
So her own father, Ryoma Raiden, had vanished into "void" together with the destruction of an era.
Ling Ke. He had been steadily, in that uniquely cruel way of his, fulfilling one promise after another.
And this was the result of her choice.
Even if she didn't want to admit it. Even now. The fact remained that she had, subconsciously, abandoned the other side.
"A Hypocrite huh.."
Mei wanted to give a bitter little laugh at herself.
But.
She didn't seem to know how to laugh anymore.
A thousand thoughts crossed her mind.
Then, suddenly…
"Mn?"
Mei sensed someone behind her, closing fast.
Thump.
The person had clearly been aiming for her, brushed past her hard on the way through, and was already moving to make a quick getaway.
But.
"Sor— eh?"
A hand. Caught in Raiden Mei's palm.
The girl herself was yanked back with it, her feet skidding to a stop.
Inside her purple eyes was a face she found familiar. And different. And dirty.
No cat ears, and her pupils were still human.
Her gaze dropped.
In the girl's other hand was a small ornament.
It was one of the few real mementos Mei had managed to bring out of the Elysian Realm.
A pink crystal flower.
Yes, it looked expensive. But… honestly, Mei had no idea what it was actually worth in the marketplace of this era.
She just felt it was meaningful to keep, so she had kept it on her.
She had twelve other small keepsakes like it.
In any case, right now…
"Uh, listen, Boss, I, this isn't— don't get the wrong idea, ha, ha ha…"
The girl with one hand pinned was clearly panicking. "I was just—"
"Pardo."
The face in front of her was familiar in flickers, surfacing out of somewhere in memory. Caught up in the strange power and what it had been doing to her, Mei spoke without thinking.
"Could you take me to see Aponia?"
"Huh?"
The dirty girl froze.
This person…
"Why is she calling me Pardo straight out?"
"Why does she sound that close?"