Chapter 89: Arc 2 - Chapter 30: Come Out (1/2)
After their conversation about the Mora, the rest of their journey was quiet and ended when the ship reached the port of Redchapel.
This time the journey was faster than the first two. The ship had the wind at its back, so the journey was shorter.
"Now... We will look for this address."
Every street in Rolderhelm was numbered, so it was easy to find an address. There were signs everywhere and numbers on every house.
"Lobster quarter, sixty-eight, twenty-eight."
The houses the Sivina and others rented were number twenty-eight on street number sixty-eight in the Lobster neighborhood.
"We're on the fifth street now, if I remember correctly, the municipality is on the twentieth street or something. We will find it by asking around."
Redchapel was as they had left it, dark and depressing. Yu couldn't imagine that summer had ever visited this gothic city.
In addition to such a dreadful atmosphere, the rain clouds gathering with the effect of the season colored Redchapel in a more melancholic and restless tone.
"There's something I'm curious about."
"What are you wondering?"
"Well... or whatever, never mind."
It was something he should have asked much earlier. He had wanted to ask it on the first day they embarked on this adventure together and during the silent time they spent on the ship on the way here, but he had given up because he thought it would look like he was giving hope.
Now the idea of asking the question came to him again, but he decided it was better to put the idea out of his mind and kept silent. Because the more he pretended to be interested in the subject, the more hope he might give Yurine, and he didn't want to do that when he himself was struggling to have faith that they would succeed.
His question was what Rie had said. According to Yurine, her mother had said that it was possible to take everything back, and Sharley would say the same, looking for a way back to the past.
What could it be that Yurine and Sharley believed in, that Rie had told them about a way to turn back time?
"It is possible to turn back time, is that all she said? Are we struggling over just a few simple words?"
Yu couldn't believe it. Even though he was in a fantastic world, even though he found himself in an unbelievable story the moment he came into the world, he still couldn't believe it.
"I don't want to believe, I want to know. But how?"
In the month he had spent here, he had gained enough insight. Rewinding every single event in the world, going back in time, seemed impossible even by this world's standards.
Moreover, Yurine had told him about the gods and the people of this world believed in the existence of gods. In fact, if the stories were true, gods were known to exist. If they were like the gods in Yu's head, they had to be above everything. Why would the gods allow an act like rewinding time?
"Well…" Yurine interrupted Yu's deep thoughts with a shy voice. "Well... You, I mean if you want..."
"What I want?" Yu tilted his head and looked at Yurine as the rain beat down lightly. Yurine blushed as she looked down.
"It's going to rain now, it's going to thunder..."
"Are you afraid of thunder? You were calm when it thundered before."
"Of course I'm not afraid! Oh, forget it!"
Yurine puffed out her cheeks and quickened her pace, Yu speeding up to keep up.
"Tell me, tell me! I'm listening."
"Hmph!" Yurine started walking at their old pace again. "You're a coward."
"What's this about?" Suddenly humiliated, Yu automatically became defensive. "First of all, I don't accept the word 'coward', I'm just a person who acts with reason and logic. If I was given magical powers, I would also go and do 'brave' things, but it's not because I'd be too overpowered, it's because you need to balance the characters."
"I have no idea what you're talking about, you're just a coward. I mean, well... well... if you insist," Yurine held out her hand to Yu. She was still looking at the ground to avoid making eye contact. "I can grant you the favor of holding my hand so you won't be scared or lost."
"I see..." Yu smiled the biggest and most sincere smile he had ever seen on this earth. "First you worry about me and now you use thunder as an excuse to hold my hand. Of course, it is no wonder that this is the case and that you have finally come to accept the intense love between us. On the contrary, it is surprising that for all my greatness you have not been able to accept this love until now. After all, my intelligence, charisma and perfection, along with every single good quality I possess, are far above this world, my world and every other world that could possibly exist. As such, it is completely inevitable that any girl I give a little smile to will fall head over heels in love with me."
"Never mind."
Yurine's flushed cheeks turned white after Yu's little monologue. When Yu saw Yurine's outstretched hand land on the ground, he quickly bent down and grabbed it.
"Okay, okay, okay. I'll hold your hand."
Yurine's small hand seemed to disappear in Yu's palm. It was warm and soft.
"When was the last time I walked hand in hand with someone?"
Lucia was the last one to hold his hand. Before her, Rie had held her hand when he first came into this world. If he didn't count her, he still remembered holding his sisters' hands last spring and the warmth of those hands.
But when it came to holding hands and walking, like now, he should have done it six or seven years ago, again with his sisters.
Walking like this with Yurine now brought back memories of the old days. Whenever he remembered those days, so far away in his own world that he could never reach them again, a feeling of melancholy overtook him and made his heart bleed.
But today, even though he remembered those memories, he didn't feel melancholy, he still knew he would never reach those days, but he didn't feel sad.
At the moment, he was just happy to be adding to the list of good memories.
"Such innocent feelings are the only thing that gives meaning to life."
It was only his cowardice that prevented him from dying during the short period he lived without this feeling. He did not want to go through that period of being deprived of this feeling again. He didn't want to be deprived of this feeling again.
"Look over there," Yurine said. With her free hand she pointed to the wall on the side of the road.
On the wall was the figure of a knight with silver hair and sea-green eyes, no stranger to them.
"It's what we wanted."
The picture on the wall was not as good as the graffiti of the First World, but with the distinctive silver hair and sea-green eyes, you could tell who he was.
If he took into account that silver hair is a rare color in this world, the other people in the town would have known that the knight in the picture was Sivina Ecues.
The further they went, the more pictures and slogans were painted and written on the walls. Some of them were so different in style that Yu thought they were drawn by independent parties.
"Anyone with a brain would suspect it was a trap," Yurine said.
"I still think it's going to provoke him, and if we don't succeed in provoking him and drawing him to us, I have no idea how we're going to solve it. We're not going to get anywhere just knowing he's in the woods."
The rain picked up and with it other people on the street started running to get less wet.
"Now it's time to ask someone." When they arrived in front of the municipality, he looked around. People had taken shelter from the rain under trees and shops. "Or we could wait until it stops raining."
***
"Twenty-eight, this is it." He looked at the paper in his hand and then at the writing on the door of the house in front of them.
When the rain stopped, they asked the first person they met for directions, and then found the way by asking someone else.
By the time they arrived in front of building number twenty-eight, the rain had started to fall again.
The building was two stories high and made of wood. All but two of the windows had closed curtains and the curtains were abnormally stuck to the wall.
"I hope they're not dead before we arrive."
Although they hadn't knocked yet, the door suddenly opened with the sound of bells and out came a girl with green hair and a slight smile on her face.
"I think you should be a little more positive," Ana said, then added. "We are still alive."
Ana's eyes fell on Yu and Yurine's hands. They were still holding hands.
"Hmph!"
Yurine pulled her hand away when Ana smiled at her and took a step away from Yu.
"It broke my heart." He grabbed Yurine and pulled her to him. "But it broke my heart more when Ana left us out in the rain."
"Oh, pardon me. Here you are, welcome."
Ana curtsied to them as if she were a maid in a skirt and then stepped out of the doorway. Inside the house was almost completely empty and dark. The furniture inside seemed to be a hundred years old.
Wooden planks were nailed behind the windows where the curtains were drawn, blocking the entrance into the house. That's why the curtains seemed to be stuck to the glass.
"Motherfu-"
Inside the house were two creatures he had not expected to meet. Two dogs came out into the hallway and bared their teeth at the strangers who entered the house. It was clear from their looks that neither of them liked Yu.
"We thought they could help protect the house. Met and Nito are guard dogs. Hyene is a hunting dog. Actually, Lylphia said we should get another dog, but the people at the shelter wouldn't let us, and then they let them out on the street."
As he spoke, he knelt down and calmed the dogs by patting their heads. The guard dogs were of the Doberman breed, but the hound was a breed not found in his world. It had a dark green coat with brown stripes.
Yurine grinned when she realized that Yu was afraid of dogs.
"Where are the others?" Yu asked. He tried to ignore the dogs as much as he could and keep a calm expression, not wanting to lose his charisma.
"Girls upstairs, Raul outside."
Staying behind Ana meant staying right in front of the dogs, so he climbed the stairs without waiting for her to lead the way.
The door to the first room he encountered on the second floor was open, and Lylphia waved to her from inside.
"Yu!"
He was still not used to someone calling him by his name.
"I'm right in front of you, Lylphia. You don't have to shout."
This must have been the most occupied room in the house. There were three beds in the room, which meant that the three girls were using one room for security purposes. That way, if the killer got inside the house, at least he wouldn't be able to kill them all unnoticed.
"What about Raul? I hope that bastard doesn't share the same room."
If he stayed alone, he would have been the killer's bait, but Yu would have been jealous of him staying in the girls' room. So it was better for him to be separated, even if it meant he would be the bait and die.
"You have arrived," Sivina said.
"The tone of your voice is very unintelligible. I can't tell if you mean 'you're late' or 'we didn't expect you to come' or 'you might as well not have come.'"
"What insolence is this? They should come to a supreme being like me, but I come to them and greeted with such an unpleasant reaction? You should kneel before me and ask for forgiveness."
Yu only smiled and mocked her, but Yurine took him seriously, her angry eyes sweeping over everyone in the room.
"Calm down, I didn't mean it like that." Sivina said, looking at Yu, who was obviously joking, instead of looking at Yurine.
"We are only a little offended that it was inappropriate for Yu to enter the girls' room as if it was perfectly normal. It would be embarrassing for him to overhear our conversation."
"What were you talking about?"
Lylphia's explanation had suddenly made Yu curious. What could they talk about that might be embarrassing?
"My sisters were shamelessly talking about everything in front of me... Was it?"
Sometimes they talked about boys and made Yu jealous, sometimes they gossiped about girls they didn't like at work, sometimes they talked about games or technology. Yu didn't know which one would be embarrassing.
"But logically their talk about men should be embarrassing. Were they talking about me? Hehehe... Hehehe..."
He would have loved to know what they were talking about.
Yu heard the bells ringing downstairs. The door to the house was open.
He didn't think the killer would come here in broad daylight, so it had to be Raul, but the voices still made Yu nervous.
They waited in silence for Raul to arrive as the footsteps grew louder.
"I can't just walk into the girls' room, but he can?" Raul reproached. Then he dropped the bags on the floor.
"Of course it's normal that there's a difference in the way we're treated. After all, I'm... well... a little too handsome."
"Tch..." Raul sat on the end of the empty bed by the wall.
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