Chapter 244: To you
Right now neither Ethan nor Cyan knew about the loop. Leon could tell them, but then he would have to explain how he already knew about it in the first place. Which he would rather not do.
"What is happening to this thing?" Cyan moved closer to Ethan and leaned in to get a better look.
The prism in Ethan’s hand was behaving strangely. Its holographic screen was displaying continuous streams of letters and numbers, scrolling faster than either of them could follow.
And the mechanical top segment was opening and closing on its own, over and over, as if it could not decide what position it was supposed to settle into.
Click–!
With a sharp click, everything stopped at once.
Finally, a readable set of information appeared on the screen.
"Hm? What does this all mean?" Ethan and Cyan asked in unison.
At this point Leon acted curious as well and walked over to stand beside them and take a look.
"Is there a problem?" he asked Ethan, who was still holding the prism.
Leon glanced down at the holographic screen and read the content.
[Current Location: 71°24’N, 156°47’W]
[Current Iteration Count: 81,448]
[Wielder Loop Experience: 0]
It was exactly the same as mentioned in the game. Not a single day up or down.
This was perfect. That meant the plot here had not changed at all.
As Leon thought to himself, ’Looks like this arc would be easy to predict...’ the sound of something heavy falling echoed through the tree line.
"Hm?"
All three of them turned their heads at once.
At the edge of the forest, a massive tree came down with a loud thundering thud. The long bark hit the ground and sent a cloud of dust rising up through the air around it.
"I think it is better if we move from here," Ethan suggested.
Leon and Cyan agreed. Before the situation got any worse they took a different route along the right side and entered the forest from there.
After ten minutes of walking they had cleared the border and pushed inward.
The trees were dense but manageable this close to the edge. All three of them drew their weapons without needing to discuss it and picked up their pace.
Leon held the Moonblade in one hand and with the help of his lens he observed the surroundings. He quietly tasked Rumi to flag any abnormalities the moment she detected them.
Several minutes passed.
Nothing came to their sight.
Not a single creature, and not a sound from anything living.
"Haah..." Cyan exhaled, keeping pace beside them. "This is weird. Is this place completely deserted? Did we drift to some uninhabited island or something?"
They were approaching the centre of the forest now. The tree density had increased significantly, the trunks growing wider and closer together until they had to use their blades to cut a path through. Leon and Cyan followed behind Ethan, who was navigating with the prism in one hand and his sword in the other.
Then Ethan stopped.
He raised his sword.
Shhhh–!
All three pairs of boots slid slightly on the wet mud as everyone dropped into position without a word.
"Did you smell that?" Ethan asked, sniffing the air.
Cyan and Leon blinked at him.
"Smell?"
They did now.
And once they were actually paying attention to it, they understood immediately what he was referring to. Something bitter and sweet and warm was drifting through the trees.
It was faint, but Leon guessed what it was.
"Coffee?" He said.
He looked around. Nothing but large trees and wet undergrowth in every direction. Coffee beans and cocoa had no business growing in a climate this wet and cold. There was no logical source for it anywhere near them.
And yet there it was. The chocolaty smell and the familiar bitterness.
"I will take points," Ethan said quietly. "Leon, Cyan, cover my back. And watch above you."
All three moved into full alert.
They pushed forward for roughly one more kilometre.
Then Cyan stopped walking after he spotted it.
"What the... in a place like this?"
Leon and Ethan looked ahead.
Beyond a break in the trees, past a cluster of low bushes and thick roots, stood a small house.
It is made with metal and wood, simply constructed, nothing luxurious about it. But something about the proportions and the way it sat in the clearing reminded Leon faintly of those modern minimalist houses from back in Japan.
They pushed through the last of the bushes to get a closer look.
’Haru,’ Rumi said. ’There is someone ahead.’
Before Rumi warned, they had all seen her already.
A figure sat in the open space just in front of the house, it was completely still, a cup held near her lips in a motion that had been paused mid-sip.
Long platinum hair fell past her shoulders in easy waves. She wore a loose flowing casual gown that moved slightly in the forest breeze and a comically oversized straw hat rested on top of her head. Her face was tilted upward toward the empty sky above the clearing, as if she had been watching something there and had not yet decided to stop.
’There is Astral Matter surrounding where she is sitting,’ Rumi said quietly. ’This is strange. The matter is fluctuating in an irregular pattern.’
’What do you mean?’ Leon asked inwardly.
’I am not entirely sure,’ Rumi replied slowly. ’But something about it is not behaving the way it should.’
Before Leon could pursue it further, Ethan took a step toward her and lowered his weapon.
"Hello. Miss?"
The woman murmured something without moving her gaze from the sky.
"So that is how it is..."
Ethan tilted his head.
"Excuse me? I did not quite catch that."
She lowered her head.
Then turned it slowly toward the three of them standing at the edge of her clearing.
For the first time they saw her face clearly.
It was the kind of face that made you stop thinking for a second. Not just beautiful in the way people described beauty. Something more than that. Something that did not entirely belong to the ordinary world, like a painting that had decided to breathe.
But it was not her face that caught all of their attention.
It was her eyes.
Leon had only ever seen that colour on a few other people.
On himself and on his family.
"Oh?" The woman looked at them with a mildly puzzled expression. Her golden eyes moved from Ethan, to Cyan, and then settled on Leon, pausing there for just a moment longer than the others.
Then she asked in a soft and unhurried voice.
"Who might you all be?"
"..."
"..."
"..."
Cyan and Ethan were one thing, but even Leon could not take his eyes off her.
He noticed the small details without meaning to. The platinum glow threading through her hair where the light caught it. The smoothness of it, the single blue rose tucked near her ear as decoration
If the world were a garden, she would be the flower everything else had unknowingly arranged itself around.
And yet what unsettled Leon was not her appearance.
It was the feeling.
A years long familiarity that had no business existing in his life. His mind was quietly insisting that this was not the first time he had stood in front of this person. That somewhere in the layered confusion of everything he was and everything he carried, this face had appeared before.
But she was not a major character. He was certain of that. Not he had designed or any scene he had mapped out of her feature. She was possibly an NPC. A background existence with no file, no backstory, no entry anywhere in the architecture of the game he had built.
Leon pulled his thoughts together and was the first one to break the silence.
"Hello. We are kind of lost. Do you know the way to the city?"
The woman’s golden eyes paused on him again. The same slight pause as before. As if something about him was prompting a question in her mind she had not decided whether to ask him yet.
Then she asked anyway.
"Golden eyes. Just like mine." Her head tilted slightly. "Have we met before?"
Leon answered without hiding it.
"I do not know. I do not remember."
The answer did not seem to surprise her. She absorbed it the way someone absorbs information they had expected.
"Is that so..."
Then she smiled and gestured ahead with one hand, the cup still held in the other.
"The way to the city is that direction."
Ethan spoke before anyone else could.
"T-thank you for the reply." His tone was just slightly too hurried. He bowed quickly and turned, already gesturing at the other two. "Okay, let us go."
But Leon did not move.
"Can I know your name?"
"...?!"
Ethan’s eyes went wide. He stepped back toward Leon immediately and took him by the wrist, pulling him sideways and dropping his voice to something urgent.
"Hey. We should seriously leave right now," he muttered close to Leon’s ear.
Cyan had caught it too. Whatever Ethan had noticed in the last thirty seconds, it was enough to make him shift his weight toward the exit of the clearing without fully committing to it yet.
Leon glanced at Ethan.
"Just give me one minute."
He turned back to meet her gaze.
The woman was watching him with the cup still raised.
"Your name?" Leon asked. "If you do not mind."
She smiled before she answered.
"The name is Irene Adler."
She paused before adding.
"And I am a detective."
.
.
A/N: 2 extra chs for every 100 Golden Tickets.