Ana and Lylphia were sitting cross-legged on the middle bed. Yu moved with Yurine to the bed where Sivina was sitting. The bed was by the window and from here he could face the others directly.
"Since everyone has suddenly gone silent, I will assume that my words have been approved." Yu interrupted the silence. "Then let's get to the point. I want a report, what happened over the last week?"
"We've been doing a lot of publicity for Sivina, and I have to hand it to you, it seems to be really effective, Sivina is suddenly popular with the public," Lylphia said.
"And Sivina helped solve two cases in town. I mean... I wouldn't say cases exactly, but she caught the bad guys," Raul said.
Yu nodded to show he understood. It was good that Sivina was popular with the people, but what he really wanted was for that popularity to reach the killer.
"Any sign of the killer or Sony?"
"No, there has been no news of the killer since the last incident."
What Ana meant by the last incident was Satoshi's death. At the mention of the final event, the atmosphere cooled briefly.
As she saw, some were still reeling from the death of their friend. Raul's face instantly fell and Sivina lowered her eyes to the floor.
"You keep your shifts like I told you, don't you?"
"Yes," Lylphia replied. "There's always someone awake in the house."
"I told you to keep two houses, where's the other one."
Yu turned around and looked out the window. Sivina stood up to show him the house and opened the window, pointing with her finger to the house diagonally across from theirs.
"That empty house over there," she said. It was a little shorter than this one, but still similar. "Like this house, we boarded up the windows and put bells in the accessible places. So if the killer wants to enter the house, he will have to do it from the front and the bells will ring to let us know."
The houses had a clear view of each other, just as Yu wanted.
"Good. So tonight we will split into two groups and the other group will stand guard at that house. The guards must never leave the window to look out. They must not leave, not even to go to the toilet."
Sivina looked at Ana, Lylphia and Raul. If he had to rank them in order of power, what kind of list would he draw up?
"Lylphia is a trained fire mage. Fire... She must be very powerful. Sivina and Ana must be strong too, one a knight and the other a mage. Raul... I don't know, 'tracker' is not a very effective word."
He thought he was weaker than Yurine. Raul must have been, since he had been afraid of Yurine before.
"But I don't want to think of Yurine as a fighting force right now... Hmm... Me, Yurine, Lylphia, all three of them together... No, not Raul bastard with the girls. Me, Yurine, Raul... We're too weak like this."
He spoke believing that he had found the grouping that would make him most comfortable:
"Lylphia, Raul, Yurine and I will stay in the house across the street. Sivina and Ana should stay in this house. As I said, let's not miss our shifts. The guards must never leave their posts, never take their eyes off the outside. Remember, if you look away, you will die."
There were two houses and in each house a sentry would watch outside. If the guards took their eyes off the outside at the same time and at that exact moment the killer entered the house, and if the dogs didn't make a sound and the bells didn't work, one house could be full of dead bodies in the morning.
"Why are Sivina and Ana alone?"
"There are two of them."
"There are four of us." Raul, unsurprisingly, protested. "If I stay with them, there will be three on each side."
"No."
"Tell the truth, you're saying no because you're jealous of me staying with girls."
Yu turned his head slowly and looked at the mirror in the room, his reflection looked perfect. Then he turned his head slowly again and looked at Raul, he looked like an average human being.
"Did you really believe I'd be jealous of you?"
"Tch!"
Yu had indeed made this distribution out of pure jealousy, but no one would have believed that he was jealous with the gesture he had just made. Not even Raul could deny the level between their appearances.
"What am I doing..."
"I didn't want to put Yurine on guard duty. I thought Lylphia would be one person and Raul and I would join forces to make one person. That's why I made such a distribution..."
"Don't worry Yu, I'm strong than ten person!"
Lylphia raised her arm and squeezed the muscle.
"You're so reassuring."
Being a girl, Lylphia naturally didn't have prominent muscles, but Yu would question the credibility of someone whose breasts attracted more attention than her strength.
"So, is Sivina stronger or Ana?"
He confronted Sivina and Ana with her question, and both girls looked at each other.
"Why did you ask?" Sivina asked.
"I just want answers."
"Sivina is very strong, stronger than me."
Ana gave him the answer he wanted. Yu sensed that Sivina was about to start talking to be humble, so he stopped her and spoke himself.
"You look stronger than Raul too, am I wrong?" Ana looked at Raul. Neither of them objected. "I don't think the killer will come in the first hours of the night, I don't think he will come in the last hours. If he comes, it will be in the middle of the night. Of course I could be wrong, but that's how I would act if I were the killer, so let Raul take the first watch."
Even though he didn't want to, it made more sense for Raul to stay with the girls, to act on his logic instead of his emotions.
"Sivina will take the second watch at the time I think the killer is most likely to arrive. I want her to sleep well before that, so she'll have energy in case we meet the killer, and Ana will take the third watch."
"Yeah, that sounds reasonable." Lylphia nodded her head up and down in agreement. The others had no objection.
"We will be on watch more than them, there is nothing to do. I'll take the first shift, you take the next."
"All right!" Lylphia lit a matchstick-sized fire on the tip of her finger. "If the killer shows up, I don't think anyone will mind if I use magic against him. I hope he doesn't keep us waiting too long."
***
"Did we have to bring this dog?"
After Lylphia left Met downstairs, they went upstairs. Yurine was in bed waiting for Yu to arrive before going to sleep. When Yu entered the room, he sat on the bed and Yurine began to cast a healing spell on him.
Neither of them was sure if it would do any good, but since the fainting incident at the inn, Yurine had made sure to use a healing spell on Yu three times a day.
"At least nothing has happened since then."
He had felt like vomiting several times and headaches were a daily problem. Still, Yu was hopeful about the healing spell, as he had not experienced a seizure for a week.
"You will wake me up if something happens," Yurine said.
"Don't worry, I'll definitely wake you up."
Although he did not want to see Yurine as a fighting force, he could not deny that he would need her strength if they had to fight.
Yurine pulled the covers over her and closed her eyes. There was only one bed in the room, so Lylhpia lay down on the armchair they had carried into the room to sleep.
When they went to bed, Yu opened the curtains and watched the Sivina's house. If his eyes were not deceiving him, he could see the silhouette of someone looking at this house from the window of the house across from them.
---
The vigil was as calm as he expected. Not a single suspicious person, not even the slightest living creature, passed through the street.
The silhouette of Raul in the window of the building diagonally across from them disappeared briefly, and then the silhouette of someone with long hair covered the window.
"You look like a pervert when watching the house where two young and beautiful girls are staying."
"I am."
"What?"
"I'm kidding."
He answered without looking at Lylphia, who had woken up on her own.
"Now Raul's watch is over and Sivina has taken his place."
"I can take your place."
"I still have time."
He wanted to lie down and sleep, but he could not compromise his discipline.
"It's okay, I've already wake up, I can't go back to sleep. So I'll stay up anyway."
Lylphia came to Yu. Yu was sitting in a chair. She looked out over his head.
"If you have to go to the bathroom, do it now and don't go later."
"No, I don't have pee."
Yu got up from his seat and Lylphia sat on the chair Yu had warmed.
"When Sivina and Ana change shifts, get me up so you don't lose sleep."
Lylphia nodded in agreement.
She went to sleep on the couch where Lylphia had gotten up. The couch was warm. He looked at Yurine who was sleeping before closing his eyes.
"You know, when we were walking today, Yurine wanted to hold my hand."
"Hmm... How beautiful."
"Isn't it? I wonder what her mother would think about that?"
He imagined that they had managed to turn back time. He wondered how Rie would react to seeing her daughter with a man she didn't know.
"If I had thought about today a month and a half ago, I could not have imagined that I would be at this point."
Just before he came into this world, he saw no future ahead of him. His only motivation to live was that death was scary. He had given up, given in and was doing nothing.
He was unhappy and had no faith that he would find happiness. He could not have imagined that he would be happy now and that he would find this happiness with a person he had never met.
"Life is interesting, isn't it?"
"Yeah, you never know what you're going to get."
Lylphia's eyes were watching outside and her ears were listening to Yu.
"I am greedy, selfish, hypocritical, a liar. I am... I'm a bad person in every way. And yet I desire a happiness I don't deserve."
"All people are like that. I think it's good to be aware of your bad sides. In fact, usually people who think they are bad are kind people."
"This is a wrong, a stupid point of view. Leave this stupid view or people will hurt your heart."
Yu had found a comfortable position to sleep. He was about to close his eyes and fall asleep when Lylphia's scream made both him and Yurine jump out of their beds.
"There they are!"
Lylphia opened the window to jump out, but was stopped by a horrible sound of rage echoing through the street.
"VALARFIIN! COME OUT!"