Inside the broken-down church.
Raiden Mei found a place to sit, and lowered herself into it like a believer come for prayer, hardly caring whether the seat had too much dust on it or not.
The Sister. Aponia. Had prepared water for her thirst.
Plain boiled water, of course. Nothing more.
The sanatorium did not have the means to offer anything more luxurious.
Mei was, in fact, thirsty.
She took the cup from her and brought it to her lips for a small sip.
It was just plain water.
But even if it had not been water, the Mei sitting here right now would not have tasted a thing.
She seemed to have lost her sense of taste.
A few small heads were also peeking around the doorway of the church.
The children were clearly very curious about this unexpected guest.
Especially the clothes she wore. The cut and style of them, in this place, were the kind of foreign that made local eyes stop.
What was strange drew the eye. That was natural.
"Laila. Anqi. Take the children and play somewhere else. Don't disturb the guest."
Aponia spoke without warning.
"Aww."
The children's faces fell, plain disappointment all around.
But every one of them was obedient. "Yes, Mother Aponia."
A chorus, and then they scattered, gone in a moment.
Mei turned her head and watched their small backs running off into the rest of the courtyard. A complicated feeling sat in her chest. Guilt. Pity. Something heavier than either of those, that she could not quite put a name to.
It had been mentioned before. Two days ago. Or rather, two days ago by her own subjective sense of time.
Back then, Ling Ke had used a level of power that broke every regulation to reverse time, erasing the entire existence of her era and dragging everything back to the Previous Era of more than fifty thousand years ago. To here. To now.
In that process, every single person who had been forced onto the "one-way ticket against time," herself included, had seen that stretch of "nonexistent memory."
So she had understood, in an instant, what Ling Ke's true intent was. Or, to put it another way, she had understood how he had decided to take revenge on the enemies he saw in front of him.
"You want to save your era? The Current Era that's already turned into 'void'?"
"Then start by destroying the Previous Era that just got its 'second chance.'"
"After all, if the Previous Era is still standing, where exactly do you think there'd be room for yours?"
Mei knew. He was aiming his blade at the heart.
He was denying everything she and the others had ever pursued, held to, longed for.
He was calling their conviction "hypocrisy" and grinding it under his heel.
And then, with that particular cleverness of his, he had taken "saving the world" and "destroying the world," two ideas that had once stood at opposite poles, and welded them into one inseparable thing.
It had to be said. It was a terrifying way to do it.
He had once been a person so kind.
But after he had fallen into darkness, he had proven, to all of them, to the world itself, that he could just as easily be the most terrifying Demon King.
Ling Ke had a precise grip on every soft place in their group's defenses.
He was not even here right now. And yet every detail in the space around her, every small change, seemed to be asking the same silent question.
Can a hypocrite like you still resolve yourself to save the world. To destroy the world?
Could she?
Mei looked at those children, who now had hope of going on living, maybe even longer than they ever had a right to. And she. Could not answer.
Most of the others, the ones who had not yet arrived in this era, probably could not give a clean answer to that question either. Otto might be the exception. The rest, no.
That was why she felt lost.
So.
"Aponia… ma'am."
"Just call me Aponia."
Mei had paused before adding the polite form, conscious of the fact that the two of them did not actually know each other yet.
But Aponia had cut the distance herself.
"All right. Aponia."
Mei was not the kind of person who got hung up on something that small.
She thought for a moment, but did not introduce herself the way she had with Pardofelis.
Instead, what she put forward was this question.
"May I ask. Can you see where I come from?"
It was, plainly, a test.
And to that…
"A lost traveler who has lost her homeland. Wandering alone through the world, at least for now."
That was Aponia's answer.
Her voice was calm. Hardly any feeling carried in it.
But Mei still got the sense that the woman across from her felt. Something close to pity.
Mei did not care about that.
There was one thing she could now confirm.
"So even now, you can foresee the future."
Mei was something close to excited.
In two days, she had heard almost nothing she would call good news.
Or rather. Now she could see one thread of hope.
She pressed forward at once. "Then, Aponia…"
"Please tell me. What exactly do I have to do to find my lost 'homeland' again?"
When she asked it, Aponia did not give an answer immediately.
A long pause stretched. Mei sat there, and the sitting got harder. She was almost on her feet by the time Aponia finally spoke.
"The road you already know. That is the only road."
"But…"
Mei could not stay still.
She remembered. In that stretch of "nonexistent memory," Ling Ke. Even without obtaining a Herrscher's authority, on his own strength, had created a "Neighboring Realm" capable of holding the entire Previous Era inside it.
He had proven, by acting on it, that two eras could coexist.
Even if one side had already been destroyed, he was still able to pull it back out of "void."
He…
"Right."
Mei laughed at herself, bitter. "He's the only one who won't help me."
The instant she said the fact out loud, her shoulders sank, the strength leaching out of them. Her eyes were full of regret.
There was no helping it. In that "nonexistent memory," everything had been too beautiful.
Ling Ke had achieved everyone's wishes so easily.
As if it cost him nothing.
Ling Ke's abilities. They came close to walking over the truths of this world like the truths did not matter.
He could have been her savior. Everyone's savior.
But thinking about any of that now was useless.
A nail could be pulled from a board.
But the mark it left was hard to erase.
And then…
"Lost traveler."
Aponia spoke slowly, as if to drive the words home. "The answer you seek is not with me."
"The guidance our Lord can give you reaches only this far."
"Either you stop here and go no further."
"Or you seize another's road."
"You. Have only those two choices."
-----
Mei left.
Aponia did not invite her to stay the night at the sanatorium.
And Mei herself, plainly, did not have it in her to linger there either.
She seemed to have decided to go look for the next "possibility."
She walked away alone, and she did not look back the whole way.
"…Weird."
On one side of the church, Pardofelis, who had been crouched against a wall the entire time, now had open puzzlement on her face.
She had watched the whole exchange between Mei and Aponia.
Only. She kept feeling that…
"Why was Nia saying so many strange things today?"
"She doesn't usually do that. Talk like… uh, what's the word again?"
"Right. A riddle person!"
It wasn't as if Pardofelis had never eavesdropped on Aponia helping someone before. There had been a few times, in fact, when she, the absolute master of catlike skulking, had been caught right in the act.
Ahem.
Anyway. The way Aponia usually went about helping people was clear and direct. Practically blunt.
If she had to put it some way. Aponia preferred handing a person the fish over teaching them to fish.
Just from Pardo's current memory of her, the Aponia of right now had not yet picked up the bad habit of those later Flame-Chasers, where every last one of them spoke in riddles.
But today.
Something felt off.
Off in a way she could not point to.
It was nagging at her.
Then.
"Hee~"
A bad little laugh sounded from inside the broken-down church.
Pardofelis was, granted, not yet the future cat-eared girl.
But every hair on her body still stood straight up.
In that moment, she did not dare look back inside.
But, curiosity. Curiosity…
Her body moved before she had agreed to it.
Pardo, slowly, very slowly, gripped the edge of the windowsill with both hands and eased her head up to peek over it.
"Hwsh~"
What appeared in her vision were schools of brilliantly colored flying fish, swimming through the air inside the room.
And in the middle of those fish, "Aponia" was still in her prayer posture. But the corner of her mouth.
The smile on it had gone wrong, somewhere along the way.
"!!!"
Pardo jerked her head back down at once.
"She…"
She was not Nia.
Then. Then who was she?
And.
Where had the real Nia gone?
"Aiya. The lesson about curiosity killing the cat. You don't really not understand it, do you?"
"Lit-tle. Par-do."
"!!!"
Pardo nearly jumped out of her skin again.
The shocks were stacking on top of each other now, and her small heart was already pounding hard enough to give out, hammering against the inside of her ribs.
The sunlight slanting down from above was casting someone's shadow now, and that shadow was already up close in front of her.
Without thinking about it, she curled her thin little body smaller.
What came into her vision was a black-haired young man, who, at some point she had not noticed, had clearly been right beside her for a while.
Bags of food were stacked in his arms, large and small, and the heavy smell of a night market's worth of cooking had already reached her.
He was just smiling. He kept walking forward, slow.
Step. Step. Step.
Until he stopped.
He crouched down in front of Pardofelis, completely casual about it.
He raised his right hand.
"Shh."
He made the gesture for silence.
It was pure body instinct.
Pardo clamped both her hands over her own mouth.
Trying, with everything she had, to prove she meant no harm.
Seeing how quickly she had cooperated…
"Mn. Good girl."
The black-haired young man smiled, gently.
He even reached over, very fondly, and patted her on the head.
The way someone might smooth down the fur of their pet.
However…
In the academic field, there was a particular term for it.
Westerners called it: apex predator.
Translated directly: top of the food chain.
Such beings had no natural enemies.
They sat at the very top.
And right now, the Pardo whose head was being lightly stroked by the black-haired young man in front of her, was getting the most direct possible feeling of one.
It was as if she had been pinned, with no real effort at all, beneath the claws of some massive beast.
So even though her whole body had already been shaking out of pure terror, she still did not dare make any sudden moves.
She was afraid of disturbing him. Of making him angry by accident.
All she could do was press her lips together hard, lower her head, and watch her own pupils shrink to pinpricks.
Her eyes were full of nothing but fear.
-
How was it? Took me days, well.. i took account to it because i passed out from work. So yeah, did it improved or nah?