"This is the place."
Travel-worn Raiden Mei, with Pardofelis showing her the way, had arrived at the front of an old, broken-down courtyard.
It looked like an abandoned elementary school.
This was undeniably Mei's first time in Sundown Alley.
The walk in had given her a clear sense of the chaos pressing in on every side.
The greedy looks. The dangerous ones. The ones full of want.
Don't let curiosity drag her eyes toward those darker side alleys.
In there, there were still corpses left where they had fallen, rot, maggots, flies clouding the air.
Or living people, technically, who had collapsed into their addictions until they were little more than walking flesh, tangled into one another, twisting against each other…
The kinds of sights and sounds that Mei, who liked to think she had once fallen into darkness herself, had honestly never come anywhere near.
She did not want to hear it. But unfortunately. This body she now had, with all its overwhelming strength, was not yet something she could control well.
The truth was simple. Inside Sundown Alley, the places the sun could reach and the places it could not were two completely separate worlds.
Even when they sat only a step apart.
Where light ended and shadow began, a chasm opened.
Even within Sundown Alley, of course, being in the sunlit world was no guarantee of safety.
But this place, the courtyard in front of her, was the only spot she had seen so far where children were running around and playing.
They were laughing. Carefree.
Or maybe it was better to put it this way: they had no room to spare on a tomorrow that had not yet arrived.
So they enjoyed today, freely, on their own terms.
This was Aponia's sanatorium.
A short distance off, in one corner of the courtyard, Mei could see a small chapel.
It was just as worn-down as the rest. One of its wooden doors had even lost its latch, and now hung half-attached to the wall.
She looked over.
There, plain in her sight, was a woman with a quiet kind of presence, carrying a rusty iron bucket in both hands before her, walking toward the chapel.
Her hair came down to her shoulders, with small braids worked into it. She seemed to feel Mei's gaze. Her steps stopped. She turned her head and looked back, faintly puzzled.
Those eyes…
Had no focus either.
"!!!"
In that single instant, Mei's body reacted as if something inside her had been triggered, and she stepped back without thinking.
Her body moved into a fighting stance on instinct. She almost summoned that strange "blade." The one that had come to take the place of the Key of Castigation after the authority of the Herrscher of Thunder had vanished. Special. Powerful. Uncanny.
A few seconds later…
"Guest?"
When Mei snapped back to herself, she realized, with some shock, that her back was already covered in cold sweat.
And.
At some point she had not registered, the woman with those equally unfocused eyes had ended up less than three meters away from her.
When had she gotten this close?
Why had Mei not noticed her there until she opened her mouth?
Had she done something?
Or. Was the shadow Ling Ke had left in her mind already this bad?
Simply eerie.
And frightening.
"Hah."
Mei tried to keep her thoughts from running wild.
She looked at the woman in front of her again. There was no question. This was Aponia.
The face. The figure. None of it really differed from the version Mei had seen in the Elysian Realm.
Only without that pair of butterfly wings.
A few shades less divine.
Even so. Even knowing this person was Aponia and not Ling Ke.
Mei still did not want to. Or maybe could not bring herself to. Look directly into those unfocused eyes.
"Could it be that this is a shared trait among people who can see the future?"
A small distraction in her mind.
But thinking back to the first time she had ever met Ling Ke. His eyes had been no different from a normal person's.
Eyes were the windows to the soul.
The reasons unfocused, lifeless eyes might appear on a person came down to only a few possibilities.
Either the heart inside was dead. Or it had become muddy beyond recognition.
Or the heart had been hidden away.
None of those were good.
Mei's thoughts kept multiplying.
The fact was, the moment Ling Ke entered her mind, her insides could not settle down.
"Guest?"
The "Sister" seemed to notice that Mei was not quite right, and prompted her again, lightly.
"Sorry, I—"
Mei started to answer.
Then froze.
Only now did she notice that Pardofelis, who had been guiding her, was no longer at her side.
That's right. The girl who was not yet the future catlike MANTIS had carried out the plan she had set up for herself a little earlier. She had quietly slipped away without making a sound.
Of course, she had not actually left.
Following the second part of her little plan, she had ducked around a nearby corner. Now, with all the stealth of a sneaking cat, she was poking her head out to peek.
And right now, on top of Pardo's head, sat a small cat that liked her very much. Its fur was almost exactly the same color as her hair.
Together, the two of them made one perfect cat-head image.
Yeah. Enough with the bad joke.
This was Sundown Alley. Not Sumeru City.
Right now…
"If the guest has business here, perhaps we should speak inside."
Aponia seemed to have already seen straight through Mei's reason for coming.
She turned partway, one hand still holding that rusted iron bucket, and gestured with the other toward the worn-down chapel.
"Lost traveler, please believe…"
"Our Lord will guide the road ahead of you."
That, frankly, did sound like the kind of thing a believer would say.
Even so, Mei could not quite shake the discomfort.
Something about it sat wrong with her, faint but circling.
There was a reason. In those few days she had spent in the Elysian Realm, the place had not, like in the original story, been invaded by another Herrscher of Corruption who also did not want to die. Ling Ke's butterfly effect had prevented that. But Aponia's strings of sentences that started with "please…" had still left Mei a little… sensitive.
Still…
"The Aponia who hasn't yet become a MANTIS shouldn't have the power of Discipline."
Mei worked it out from the slice of Previous Era information she actually had.
So.
"Sorry to trouble you."
That was what she gave back.
And with that, she followed Aponia into the sanatorium.
-----
Meanwhile, on the other side of things…
Eden's concert had ended.
It was the time when crowds spilled back out. Across Nagazora, night had already set in.
After Ling Ke walked out of the dome venue behind him, he had drifted casually into one of the noisy night markets.
The cinema combo he had bought earlier was long gone.
But his arms were still full of bags of food. Skewers. Sushi. Takoyaki. And plenty more.
"A supernatural body really is convenient. No matter how much I eat, I won't get fat."
He was muttering it to himself.
Then his steps stopped, as if he had felt something.
A moment later, the corner of his mouth tugged upward into a curve of amusement.
"Honestly, I still wanted to be on vacation."
"So the 'next act' is starting already?"
-
Guys my bad for not posting the past day about the bonus but this is my recompense for not posting the chapter with another free chapter.
But remember! Double chapters for 90 power stones okay! That makes 3 if we add the daily single chapter per day. XD